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Rolled LDPE cap ratings & over design



Hi,
I have noticed several posts in the last few weeks on rolled LDPE cap
failure.
Most of the posts seem to hint that any singe 60 mil cap will be
instantly destroyed by > 12KV.
Just for reference, I am running (2) .060" LDPE caps in parallel for a
total capacitance of .027 uF.
I am powering them with (2) 12/60s running off 140V from the variac.
These 2 caps have at least several hours of run time with no failures
<<yet>>.  My RQ style gap is currently at .180".  I plan to move it to
.210" at the So Cal Teslathon (I have more caps).

Lord knows that I am not disrespecting safety factors and sound
engineering practices, I just want to tell the new guys that this has
worked for me.  Other issues that sometimes get a little caught up in
the hype are variac ratings, grounding issues, and secondary coil form
preparation.

1.  I am running a 10A variac at 15-20A with no problems at all.  I
usually run 1-3 mins and then cool for several minutes.  ( My R-C-R
filter is the component that requires cooling, not the variac! )

2.  My 8' ground rod seems to work nice, although I have a buddy that
routinely comes over and forgets to hook up his ground wire and gets
results similar to mine (40-50 inch arcs from a couple of NSTs).

3.  My secondary is 6" SDR that has been sanded, baked, coated, wound,
and coated again.  It is identical in performance to another secondary
that was only wound and coated once with a really thick epoxy coating.
I'm not sure that drying and coating makes any measurable differences on
NST driven coils.  Has anyone ever made any quantitative measurements on
this?

Making arcs in Huntington Beach, CA
Ross Overstreet