Re: Commercial Caps for Tesla Applications

["Malcolm Watts" <M.J.Watts-at-massey.ac.nz> (by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>)]

Hi John,

On 16 Aug 00, at 13:12, Tesla list wrote:

> Original poster: FutureT-at-aol-dot-com 
> 
> In a message dated 8/16/00 11:18:26 AM Pacific Daylight Time, 
> tesla-at-pupman-dot-com writes:
> 
> > By the way I live about
> >  10-12 miles from Condensor Products Corp.  Unless your a buisness or can
> >  convince them that you know what you are doing they will not sell Tesla
> >  Caps. to private individuals. I have been reviewing some of the old
> >  Tesla List Archives and from what I have read they did sell to private
> >  individuals at one time. I have been messing around with high voltage
> >  for 13 years Im still here and they told me "NO".
> >  Best Regards Jeff KD4LYH 
> 
> Jeff,
> 
> Yes, Condenser products sold to individuals until some of the buyers
> of their caps overvolted them (unknowingly), and blew them up and
> then blamed Condenser products.  

I believe some did but I had a totally different experience 
with mine. The company replaced them under guarantee and I 
think acknowledged that there was a design problem with those 
particular units which were specially built to a group spec 
which included larger studs for some reason. 
     Mine didn't explode but did suffer one of the internal 
units possibly going short circuit under rather stressless 
operating conditions. It suddenly increased in value and took 
several days to recover to the original value. It also caused 
a secondary to catch fire at the base when it suddenly detuned 
the coil.
     I've since used MMCs with a considerably lower DC rating 
with the same transformer and gap setting with no problems. 
The gap setting was metered using a DC supply BTW and was set 
to about 15kVDC, well under the 20kVAC the caps were rated at.
The replacements seem to be fine but I've since switched 
exclusively to MMCs with which I have never had a problem of 
any sort. I admit the thought of a pressurized container of 
oil does worry me. I bring the caps out occasionally for 
single shot testing. Had I known then what I know now, I would 
have spent the money on MMCs.

Regards,
Malcolm