I have made several capacitor's from CD's, and hard drive disk's.
Use your center finder tool to mark a center line across the HD disk.
Do the same for the CD.
Mark for two hole's,
CD will be 1 & 3/8 " from outer edge,
HD will be 7/8 " from outer edge.
Drill two pilot hole's with a very small drill bit.
You will be drilling one clearance hole for # 12 solid copper wire. (house
wiring)
Other hole will be 3/8 ".
HD will have the two size holes, and CD will have both holes sized for #12
wire.
Place shank of a small drill bit across flat part on point of 3/8" brill
bit. bit for pilot hole should be about the same width as this flat part on
larger bit.
Double check your marks by centering CD over HD to line up your marks.
Drill holes.
Get some plastic lids, like the ones for coffee cans to use for spacers.
Mark them with the 3/8" clearance hole and 1 " center hole for the HD's.
Find centers and drill the spacer for HD 3/8" clearance hole for the #12
solid wire.
and the center hole spacers for the HD's .
Drill all the center holes first, and then use scissors to trim up close to
the lines, carefully.
Use a CD to transfer the # 12 holes to the CD bottom for the wireing
connections.
There is a raised ring on the bottom center, that will need to be notched
to drill the #12 holes.
Use some kind of a plastic board, like a small cutting board, sandwich
wiring between two pieces.
Use your dremel to cut channels for wiring to lay in.
Bend wires into squared of U shapes with nicely rounded corners at the
bends,
One stub up about an inch for connection to binding post and the other as
high as you want your stack and about an inch more to work with.
Thread the two wires through the holes in the base and put a little dab of
RTV in the channels, and on the entire bottom and set aside over nite to
cure, with some heavy weight on it.
Use some nice brass binding posts, to dress up the connections.
Glue CD case to this base with plenty of RTV oozing out the sides and set
aside with heavy weight on this unit to cure over nite.
Before assembly, there is a small raised ring on one side of esch CD, that
must be filed down.
Use a little piece of sand paper and sand till smooth.
Assemble capacitor unit using a little dab of RTV sealant on both sides of
the center and clearance hole spacers, alternating the #12 hole on the HD's
from left to right, and soldering the HD's to the two vertical #12 copper
wires.
You will be carefully threading each disk over the two wire stub ups.
Start with a CD, then a small HD wire clearance hole spacer and HD center
spacer with enough RTV to ooze out from under them, then slide an HD down
over those spacers, making sure they fit into the holes in the HD, to keep
the HD centered, and solder the small #12 wire hole to the wire with a
small weight on top to keep things tight and free from moving. when solder
cools, put enough RTV on top of the spacers to ooze a little and slide a CD
on top.
Repeat, till finished, and put a small weight on top and let set over nite
for RTV to cure.
Viola !
I don't have any pictures, I don't have a camera, but I may borrow one and
make another cap to document the building steps for clarity.
Enjoy
On Fri, Dec 27, 2013 at 4:22 PM, Mark Olson <kc5gym@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 12/27/2013 11:48 AM, Reverend Fuzzy wrote:
>
>> As I was waiting for the end of this morning's, eh, constitutional, I was
>> thinking... I have a bunch of old CD's laying around... if I were to sand
>> the silver coating off, and glue 3 or 4 of them together, (properly
>> centered
>> of course), would it be suitable as the rotor in a rotary spark gap for a
>> low-power SG coil ???
>>
>> Has anyone actually tried this? Just a thought, so no biggie if it's
>> goofy.
>>
>>
>> Might work, but if you were to use them to interrupt the arc itself, I
> was told that it would just be a sireen.
>
> On another note, I once considered a stack of CDs as a capacitor, but
> never figured out a way to make the connections.
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