mmc testimonial

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Mr Gregory Peters by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <s371034-at-student.uq.edu.au>

Before I make my big (over 100 caps) mmc for my pole pig coil, I 
decided to make a smaller one for my NST powered coil to see how well 
it performed. Here is my story:

CAPS ARE 0.1uF 1500VDC ARCOTRONICS 72 SERIES CAPS.

I always like to use the tesla "equidrive" tank circuit whereby the 
caps are placed on both sides of the primary. On each side of the 
primary I have two strings of capacitors in parallel. There are 8 caps 
per string. Therefore, in total I have 16 caps per string, and two 
strings in parallel, for a little over 0.01uF (with 32 caps). I ran 
this with my 15kV/90mA tranny setup for several minutes. I used my 
airblast gap which provides excellent quenching at these power levels. 
It performed well, with minor arcing over due to me not leaving enough 
clearance between strings. I then hooked up 4x 0.01uF homemade poly 
caps in series/parallel with the mmc cap for a total of about 0.02uF. I 
hooked up my 11kV pig, current limited to about 4kW. If you use E=CV^2 
you will see that the 0.01uF at 15kV and the 0.02uF at 11kV have a very 
similar energy per bang. The beauty of the pig was I knew I could 
provide enough current to fully charge the capacitors. 

I ran this system for 10 minutes flat (timed, not guessed) producing 
over four foot sparks. The primary got very hot. The MMC caps had 
warmed ever so slightly (barely detectable) and the big poly caps had 
not risen at all due to so much oil. I am very impressed with the 
ability of the mmc caps. They weigh probably 10 times less than the 
poly caps, they self heal, self discharge and don't leak oil. I was 
skeptical of their ability at first, but they really are great and cost 
a lot less than the 4 poly caps I made (taking into account plastic, 
foil, pvc pipe, oil, etc). Many thanks go out to Terry for his 
excellent web page.

Cheers,


Greg Peters
Department of Earth Sciences,
University of Queensland, Australia
Phone: 0402 841 677
http://www.geocities-dot-com/gregjpeters