RE: help needed with building a mini table top tesla coil

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

Original poster: "Lau, Gary" <gary.lau-at-hp-dot-com> 

For your 10kV/30mA transformer, the mains-resonant cap value would be
.008 micro Farads, commonly abbreviated uF.  .008pF or pico-Farads is a
value smaller by a factor of one million, too small to be used for
anything practical.  When using this transformer with a static gap, it
is common practice lately to use a value of 1.5-2X times the
mains-resonant value, for a Larger-Than-Resonant (LTR) cap.  So I would
suggest looking for a cap between .012 and .016 uF.

If your transformer is rated at 10kV, your cap needs to have a voltage
rating of at least 1.4 times this value, or at least 14kV.

Caps with this rating are not off-the-shelf parts.  Coilers typically
construct them in various ways.  The most compact and best performing
way is building a string of series-connected off-the-shelf polypropylene
film caps.  Ten 0.15uF 2000V caps connected in series will give you a
.015uF 20kV cap.  A good source for such caps is the Geek Group,
www.thegeekgroup-dot-org/mmc

Gary Lau
MA, USA


Original poster: mizpoon <mizpoon-at-burningart-dot-com>

Hi everything,

firstly, thanks for your advice on my tesla coil project.

i'm now looking for the right capcitor for my tesla coil and am running
into difficulties.

the capacitor I think I need is about 0.00795 pFarads and is rated at
10KV.

However, when calling up a few places, this kind of capacitor is hard to
find... do you guys have any idea where I could find such a thing?

everyone I talk to says that the capacitor is tiny, and that I'm trying
to
get the wrong thing... what do you think is the problem here?

I know that Ebay has many capacitors for sale, but there are pretty
jumbo
caps for a larger tesla coil...