[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: Caps



Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz <teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" <Tesla729-at-cs-dot-com>

In a message dated 1/29/03 7:14:26 AM Pacific Standard Time, 
tesla-at-pupman-dot-com writes:
>Hello,
>
>I am looking to buy or built 4-12uF caps rated for 10KV DC MAX. I looked
>at the article on building caps with Aluminum/LDPE and looked for
>suppliers of the LDPE sheet/film. It looks as though it might cost
>upwards of $300.00 just for the materials for this cap. Am I out to
>lunch or is it possible to make or buy a cap of this size for less
>than $150.00 (my budget).
>
>Thanks,
>
>Tad


Tad,

Check out ebay under terms like "high voltage", "tesla" or "capacitor".
You can sometimes locates large surplus energy storage/discharge
capacitor units for a fraction of their original retail price. BTW, I pur-
chased a 10 kVDC, 100 uFD unit on ebay last year for $161 total, including
shipping the 140 lb. beast (from New Orleans to Memphis). Not a bad
deal to complete my quarter shrinker /can crusher cap bank ;-)

I would forget about the homebuilding idea as it would be quite expensive
as you've already discovered, not to mention the multiple hours of te-
dious labor that would be required to home build a cap of this magnitude.
Besides, there's no way that you would be able to achieve the quality of
construction of a commercially built unit, unless you had access to the
same multiple $10000 worth of equipment and facilities that a professional
capacitor manufacturer has at his disposal. Your homemade equivalent
would weigh many hundreds of pounds and mosy likely fail. And failure
mode of a cap of this size can be quite dangerous to be anywhere near!

I assume you're interested either in quarter shrinking or a filter circuit
for a large DC powered Tesla coil as caps of this rating would be FAR
to large for any Tesla coil primary tank capacitor.

Sparkin' in Memphis,
David Rieben

PS: Please be careful with such huge capacitors as an accidental
contact shock with one or more of these would cause catastrophic
bodily injury at best, and most likely DEATH !!!