My Capacitor

• To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
• Subject: My Capacitor
• From: D Mills <ap7012-at-qmw.ac.uk> (by way of Terry Fritz <terryf-at-verinet-dot-com>)
• Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 11:59:31 -0600
• Approved: terryf-at-verinet-dot-com

Hi,

I just thought I would share the details of my capacitor 
construction.  It is just a simple salt water type, but I have made 
some modifications to reduce losses.

I use 4 1.5 liter clear glass spirit bottles (from work).  I cover 
the outside in thick aluminium tape.  Only over the straight sides of 
the bottles.

Each bottle is filled to the top of the aluminium tape with 25 molar 
NaCl solution and about 2" of oil is floating on top to protect 
against corona.

Contact is made with the salt water with thick lead free solder and 
this is brought to a eht connetor on top of the cap. The foil 
connection is made from large pipe clips.

Each cap is measued at 15.4 nf (they each are between 15.2 and 15.8 
nf)  and this is supprisingly constant for each one I have made.

The bottles are wired series/paralell to double voltage reating and 
keep capacitance constant.  I have tested them up to 30kv and seen 
only a small amount of corona.  I now run them under cheap engine oil 
and have had no problems.

On testing them I have found that they hold at least 3/4 of their 
charge over 36 hours and still hold somting after 2 weeks.

In use with my new coil, still badly tuned I get over 2.5 feet of 
snappy arcs.


Total cost for the cap:
Bottles: free
Al tape :stlg12
Nacl sol :stlg4
Oil: stlg4
Misc:stlg10

total cost :stlg30 and about 5 hours to build.

cheers

David

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