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A Novel Capacitor




From: 	Malcolm Watts[SMTP:MALCOLM-at-directorate.wnp.ac.nz]
Sent: 	Tuesday, September 23, 1997 10:25 PM
To: 	tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
Subject: 	A Novel Capacitor

All,
     Here is something approaching an extended foil design that might 
be a help to anyone wanting a quick and dirty but cheap and easy to 
make capacitor. I have no idea what the voltage rating of it is (save 
that the one I constructed can take 15kVDC fulltime). This will 
probably cause Telecom shares to skyrocket.
    
    Get a length of multi-pair telephone cable. The piece I used is 
18" long and contains 10 pairs (20 wires). Strip back an inch of the 
outer sheath from each end. At one end, take every second wire and 
simply bend it back over the sheath. You should end up with ten wires
bent over and overlapping the sheath. Now strip 1/4" or so from the 
remaining 10 wires (stil standing upright) and solder them together.
     At the other end, do the same but this time, you want to bend 
back the ten wires showing continuity to the solder joint at the 
first end. Finally solder, the remaining ten wires together a la
end 1.  You can run a bead of hot melt over the ends of the bent-back 
wires to insulate them and prevent corona.
    The capacitor I made has a capacitance of 200pF. You can 
obviously connect a number of these in parallel to make large 
capacitances. To maximise this value, try and select wires to be 
joined at an end so that they are intermingled with the wires to be 
bent back.
    I have no idea how this will go in Tesla service. The insulation 
is all PVC. However, mine delivers a healthy snapping discharge. As
soon as I get my hands on more cable, I will make one large enough 
for use on a coil and give it a test run.

:)
Malcolm