Re: [TCML] Voltage - Gap

[jhowson4@xxxxxxxxxxx]

That's interesting Joe, hmmmm 
I wonder why some people seem to never have problems with the maxwells and you have had two incidents. 
I would love to run your coil parameters threw my sheet and see how the outputs compare to mine and other peoples coils. If your willing to provide your parameters that is, let me know and I will send you a message with the details I would need. 




Thanks, 
John "Jay" Howson IV 


"Why thank you, I will be happy to take those electrons off your hands." 

----- Original Message -----
From: "Joe Mastroianni" <joe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 
To: "Tesla Coil Mailing List" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx> 
Sent: Thursday, February 2, 2012 2:31:29 PM 
Subject: Re: [TCML] Voltage - Gap 

>Speaking of maxwells, what is the rms current that these bad boys can 
handle for short runs? I have a 0.15uf 50Kv unit I acquired at a steal 
price. says 25A rms. What do you guys run them at? 

Hi Jay 
I don't have my JTC files at hand, but in reading your note I felt to 
provide my cautionary tale of using Maxwell castor-oil filled HV caps in 
TC service. 

I have had luck of both kinds - good and bad. 

On the bad luck side, I have had 2 of those caps explode rather 
catastrophically, under 2 separate situations. One was in an ARSG coil 
powered by 2 15/60 NSTs, probably running about 1/2 power at around 
240BPS for 30 secs or so, to a resonator that, as I remember, was an 
8"x48" secondary with a 6"x24" topload. I don't remember f0 offhand but 
it was something north of 110khz. 

I was using a single Maxwell 37667. The cap housing burst, spewing 
oil, though the coil continued to run happily for the two to five 
seconds it took me to realize what had happened. 

It is not difficult to exceed the maximum pulse/reversal rate on those 
things, as I came to learn. 

Some time later, the same thing happened while I was running my pig 
powered coil using one of those 0.15uF 50kv rated maxwells. Cant 
remember the number, though I did post info on the failure here at 
TCML. After 20 seconds or so at less than full input power (maybe no 
more than 3kva? and probably a 300bps break rate) the cap burst, 
spewing oil and smoke while the coil continued happily arcing away. 

Again, I exceeded the designed pulse rate of the cap. My wife was 
standing next to me when it happened and had the iPhone out taking 
pics. They're posted somewhere, maybe on my Flickr site. 

However - in stark contrast to those two failures, I have successfully 
run parallel combinations of three of those 37667s, and have had no 
detonations even with my pig driven coil running at 10kva or so for as 
long as I felt like running. I don't have the ability to go much higher 
than that, so I couldn't say how happy I would have been at higher input 
powers. 

Cheers, 

Joe 
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