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Re: [TCML] Burnt Joint (Cap Bank)
Hi Michael,
I see nothing in the images that would looks seriously amiss. It's my
guess that the joint was just poorly soldered, came apart due to mechanical
stress before power was applied, and the resulting gap simply arced after
power was applied. I think if you just solder the loose wire back to its
cap, all should be well.
Regards, Gary Lau
MA, USA
On Sat, May 4, 2013 at 5:04 PM, Michael Gray <graymp89@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I fired up my (first) TC for the first time today, after months of putting
> everything together. Needless to say, it didn't work! I was slowly turning
> up the variac, the spark gap fired up, and then I saw some smoke coming
> from the cap bank. So I powered down and investigated - turns out one of
> the soldered joints had smoked. I kinda regret buying the caps I did, the
> legs on them are tiny and this makes it difficult to string them together.
> The caps are mounted on some Vector prototyping board, and because the legs
> are so small I've had to solder a very small length of high voltage wire
> between each cap. I'm looking for some advice really on my cap bank - is
> soldering prone to burning out like this? What's the best way to make the
> connection? Should I try to solder the legs directly together instead of
> using an adjoining length of wire? Should I invest in different caps?
>
> The caps are rated at 0.047uF at 2kV:
>
> http://uk.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Kemet/PHE450SD5470JR06L2/?qs=s4t14sB06yQTV0lacTv0rw==
>
> In 6 strings of 10 their total capacitance should be in the region of
> 28.2nF.
>
> Here are a couple of pictures of it, you can see the burnt out joint on the
> right:
>
> http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/841/20130504212930.jpg/
> http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/713/20130504212952.jpg/
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