Hi Dave (Ronous?),
Welcome to the coiling community. Your capacitors sound like the electrolytic type, and if you were planning on jumping straight into a dual resonant solid state Tesla coil project (DRSSTC), these could prove useful for the filtering in the H-bridge circuit, I believe. However, if you are looking to start with the classic spark gap driven Tesla coil, they would be of little more use than a boat anchor. This application would require higher voltage rated pulse type or snubber capacitors. They necessarily have to be quite robust to withstand the rapid pulse charge/discharge cycling in Tesla coil duty.
Many coilers opt for the multiple mini-capacitor (MMC) and the Cornell-Dubilier 942 series are often the caps of choice. Larger spark gap coils often employ one or more large high voltage commercial pulse capacitor, like Maxwell (now General Atomics) brand. The cost of these units new often drive coilers to searching for them used on eBay, although they don't seem quite as readily available, even on eBay, these days as they once were.
Also, lower voltage rated, run type capacitors (but NOT electrolytic) can be used in parallel with the input to the high voltage transformer to correct the power factor for reduction of the wall plug amperage draw.
David Rieben
On Saturday, March 14, 2015 4:45 PM, Dave Buchanan <david.buchanan@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
One of these days I plan to make a Tesla coil and have been gathering various components that could possibly be used. Recently I was offered 16 each large baby blue capacitors. I know looks don't count but they are impressive to look at. They are Cornell Dubilier DCMCE 1507, rated 4,700 µF at 450 VDC. They measure 3" x 5.625" and just happened to have resistors; Micron 94T, R7W, 51KQJ across each cap. Any chance these could be used for a Tesla coil project? Regards, Ronous Synch
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