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Re: Cap Safety Question



>Original Poster: Terry Fritz <twf-at-verinet-dot-com>
>Hi Adam,
>	If you ask around, most shocks coilers get are from partially
>charged caps zapping them at one time or another.  So bleeder resistors
>are very useful especially since they do not affect performance in any
>way.
>	However, most Tesla coil setups will bleed down automatically
>since the transformer is wired across the capacitor.  You can check this
>by removing the cap and using an ohmmeter check for resistance across the
>circuit where the cap was (with the power off, of course).  The
>transformer windings will probably measure around 5K ohm.  Of course, you
>may want to be double safe and use resistors too incase something goes
>wrong...

<SNIP>

Speaking of going wrong, I should mention something that happened to me...

I wanted to determine which primary tap yielded the best results.  It's
difficult to determine which of two taps has better output when you have
to shut down for a couple of minutes while changing over, so I decided to
try hot-swapping it, on the fly.  With the tap lead at the end of a pole,
I poked it across the primary, but each time I broke the connection, a
very scarey power arc developed at the broken connection, so I
immediately abandoned the idea.  Back to plan "A", reconnect the wire and
subjective comparisons will just have to do.  I picked up the loose end
of the tap wire and YIKES!!!  OUCH!!!  SHOCK!!!  It's obvious now that
the normal discharge path through the primary and NST was no longer in
effect.  I thank my lucky stars that the cap had less than a full charge
on it and I got to live to tell this story.

Moral of the story is, a permanently mounted bleeder resister is a good
idea.

Gary Lau
Waltham, MA USA