Hi,
I'm trying to put together a Tesla coil following plans for a vacuum tube based design.
I need to find the following parts, and wondered if these could be salvaged from anywhere...
1 x 0.004 mfd 1000 volt polypropylene capacitor 1 x 0.003 mfd 3 kv mica capacitor 3 x 0.01 mfd 10 kv mica capacitor 1 x VARIAC 18 amp variac with built in meterAny help in locating them would be greatly appreciated.
Dave
Dave if you are in the Bay Area or other large city try the local electronic surplus stores. In the Bay Area there are three really good ones one off Central in SunnyVale I believe called Halted or Haltek (also on line) Alltronics on Yanker Rd in San Jose and one just off the freeway near the old Merriots Great America. There are a number of other samller ones around to. In Portland area there is one in Downtown and one in Hillsboro or Aloha Weird (something) lots of old strange parts. Phoenix there was one out next to the airport don't know if is still there. Boston area there is one out on the loop don't remeber what its called but with a little digging you may be able to find it-- was right off the loop. Online there are a zillion surplus houses also is you don't want to go digging your self. Hope this helps
Cliff
Try Skycraft Parts and Surplus corner I-4 and Fairbanks, Winter Park FL, skycraftsurplus.com
Good luck. Mica caps, even used transmitting caps command a fortune.
How did you arrive at a need for three .01 ufd 10KV caps???? That seems like a lot. My biggest coils were on the order of .01 uf @ 30 KV - for 10 KV excitation.
You can make your own caps a lot cheaper. Glass plate caps with 3/32" picture frame glass and aluminum foil or flashing, leden jars, or HD polyethylene bags and aluminum foil, poly propylene sheet and aluminum. ETC
Many TC'rs use something they call MMC's (multi-mini-cap). Large quantities of low dissipation factor caps in series and parallel. They will outperform many other types and do so at modest cost. It would be safe to say that they are the hands down winner for cost, and performance.
Variac - for current control? You can also just wind a large inductor and have a movable iron core and put it in series with the HV transformer. When you slide the core out the current to the HV transformer rises.
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