Re: Bottle Capacitor Values

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

Original poster: "cd by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <vbprg1-at-hotmail-dot-com>

I built a bath type salt water capacitor....
Information led me to believe that this type was much much less likely to
experience catastrophic failure. Water on both sides of the glass is
available to absorb any heat energy that may be formed when the capacitor is
used. If a glass bottle does break it is still contained in a highly dense
fluid, surounded by a heavey duty PE bucket.

To keep it simple, I used the geek group bucket cap method, but used 4x 1.5
liter wine bottles instead. I used all different kinds of 1.5 liter wine
bottles, and no matter what type I used. All 4 bottles in a bucket gave me
about 7.4 nf....
Just about right for a 12000v 30ma neon.

Ok but here is the deal... on the second cap I built I wanted to build it a
little smaller. So that my cap bank would be close to resonant value for a
12000v60ma PS setup...
So I put a little less fluid in all of the bottles and a tiny bit less in
the bucket....
guess what... even Trying to build it smaller I once again got 7.4nf cap out
of it....
when measured togther they give me 15nf on my radio shack capacitance
measuring  multimeter whcih was 80 dollars but you have to make sure you ask
for the model that measures capacitance not all multimeters do...

So if your looking to build a home made capacitor that is about
ridiculously accurate to a certain capacitance,since the components are
minimized its hard to vary....
(it would be easy to get different levels of saltwater in lots of small beer
bottles and various amounts of aluminum foil in contact with the outer
surface)
think about the wine bottle method....
big buckets and lids are about 5 bucks
the 1.5liter wine bottles you can get from bars, taverns ect..for free..
buy the generic table salt...and mineral oil from grocery store

Im still working on it but...
Oh what the heck it will probably never be done anyway
Terry seemed to like my 3d art maybe you guys will to....
http://home.earthlink-dot-net/~cdowdy2/Links.htm
navigate to my TC site(a non engineer/ newbie look at a TC) link up top
and check out my capacitor page... for a diagram of a 7.4 nf salty
a 3d model of a MMC other cool stuff coming soon

Chris





----- Original Message -----
From: "Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
To: <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
Sent: Saturday, August 31, 2002 4:18 PM
Subject: Re: Bottle Capacitor Values


> Original poster: "Gregory Hunter by way of Terry Fritz
<twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <ghunter31014-at-yahoo-dot-com>
>
> My original junkbox coil used four, 750mL wine bottles
> in parallel for 6.6nF (verified with one very cheap
> Chinese and one very expensive Fluke DMM using cap
> function). That's 1650pF per bottle. These were
> water-clear glass with straight, parallel sides,
> abrupt, rounded shoulders, and short necks. I filled
> them with brine and covered them with foil right up to
> the junction of neck and shoulder.
>
> While I had my paws on the expensive Fluke meter, I
> measured a few other 750mL wine bottles of various
> shapes and colors. These all came in between 1200 -
> 1900nF.
>
> Tank cap value is not super critical. These numbers
> are close enough to get you sparking.
>
> Regards,
>
> > does anybody know of some way to (inexpensively)
> > measure, calculate, or
> > estimate capacitance values of bottle caps?
> >
> > -Chris
> >
>
>
> =====
> Gregory R. Hunter
>
> http://hot-streamer-dot-com/greg
>
> _
>