Aluminum Tape

- P
- phaeton
  
  Contact options for registered users
posted
16 years ago

Thu, May 3, 2007 11:01 PM

Hi.

I recently had to purchase a roll of Aluminum Chimney Tape to fix a hot water heater exhaust. All in all, I needed about a foot or so of tape, but the smallest roll I could find anywhere was a ridiculous 95 feet.

So I've made a few quick-n-dirty heat sinks for some low-watt chipamps. I RF shielded an enclosure for an audio device. Could probably do that to a couple of guitars, etc. I spose I could make some awful circuit boards by sticking it to pressboard, and cutting out some traces with an exacto-type knife. Any other uses for this?

I could grab some wax paper and make some crude capacitors. With a little more work I could even make them variable capacitors. Anyone have a surface-area-to-farad scale or conversion?

Hurray!

- R
- Rich Grise
  
  Contact options for registered users
Vote on answer
posted
16 years ago

Fri, May 4, 2007 1:46 AM

I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but none of those ideas will work very well, because it's so hard to electrically connect to aluminum reliably.

And the stickum is probably a relatively good electrical insulator.

Now, if you wanted to do a science fair project, then if you could figure out a way to make a good connection to the aluminum, you could take that roll and another roll, and make a really short, fat capacitor, but it probably wouldn't have very much capacitance, albeit it's related to the thickness of the dielectric, which is the glue.

Frankly, I've always wanted to take a couple rolls of aluminum foil and a couple of rolls of saran wrap, and make a demo cap, but then I saw the pie tin electrolytic....

Good Luck! Rich

- M
- Michael Black
  
  Contact options for registered users
Vote on answer
posted
16 years ago

Fri, May 4, 2007 2:10 AM

The hobby magazines used to occasionally show how to make capacitors that way, using tin foil and newspaper. Not really useful for building with, but a good way of showing what's inside a capacitor.

I never tried it, but one magazine showed how to make an electrostatic speaker using newspaper and tin foil. It was a trick project, you make it and leave the newspaper lying about, and it suddenly starts talking. Again, not likely useful as a serious speaker, but a neat gimmick to show the concept.

Michael