Re: New Capacitor (and a question about bombarders)

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: "J.W." <jwhitmor-at-muscanet-dot-com> 


-----Original Message-----
From: Tesla list <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
Date: Monday, December 04, 2000 9:49 PM
Subject: New Capacitor (and a question about bombarders)


>Original poster: Tesla729-at-cs-dot-com
>
>Hi, Fellow Coilers,
>
>I just received my .22 uFD -at- 50 kV Maxwell pulse cap that
>I won off of ebay today. It was supposed to have come out
>of a Marx generator bank from Los Alamos Labratories. It is
>amazingly small considering its voltage/capacitance comb-
>ination ( 11 3/4" long X 5 7/8" wide X 2 3/4" thick ), but
is
>quite heavy for this size, too (~15 lbs). It's suppoesd to
have
>.93 uH equivalent series inductance ( I'm assuming that
that
>is quite low, which is good?) I determined its actual
measured
>capacitance to be .211 uFD. I figure this is enough
capacitance
>to handle one monster of a Tesla coil ( like Kevin
Eldrege's
>"Biggg Coil"), but may have to incorporate a
series/parallel
>configuration of 4 for the same capacitance -at- 100 kV to
safely
>handle the required voltage and current levels for such a
system.
>
>Now to my bombarder question. I've heard of using pig-like
>transformers to "bombard" a bank of NSTs, but I really
don't
>understand exactly what this is referring to. If it's not
getting
>too much off topic, maybe some of the engineers on this
list
>could enlighten me concerning this ;-]
>
>Keeping 'em Sparkin in Memphis,
>David Rieben
>
>
Dave,
A "Bombarder" is used in the glass-working / high  vacuum
part of neon sign making. The bombarder
provides high current to "cook" the impurities out of
the inside of the glass tubing. The NSTs play no part in
this step of prepairing the neon glass-work. There is
some speculation that a pole pig could be modified to
work as a bombarder in a neon sign shop, but I have not yet
seen any plans to convert one.

If I may be a bit curious, what did you have to bid to
obtain your most capable capacitor?

JW
>