The Improved Simple Tesla Coil

Step 8: The Capacitor Bank

I used the same capacitors as my previous coil, but added six more. The ten old bottles had to be removed and mixed up again, as the salt settled out of the water. Also, I had to re-glue the wires extending from the tops, as the old glue had weakened and started to leak. The oil in the old ones appears to be molding (it's been almost 6 months), but I see no issues yet.

I glued all my capacitors to plywood sheets in groups of 4, 6, and 6. The plywood is screwed to the lower "deck" of my support structure. This way, I can remove a set of capacitors easily if there are any problems.

The total capacitance of my bank is about 0.0160µF, as opposed to 0.0104µF that is ideal according to the equation. Having less capacitance can be a problem, as the bank will overcharge and explode. Having exactly the right capacitance (while being nearly impossible to judge when using leyden jars) is a bad thing, because the perfect resonance may somehow damage the transformer. Having more capacitance doesn't really effect anything, and it can help if some of the capacitors fail.

Comments

[disappearingshadow]

what type of wire did you use? Like what type of high voltage wire? and where can i get some?

[disappearingshadow]

sorry to keep bothering you, but when you covered the capacitors with aluminum foil, did you cover the bottom? Also I'm having trouble on how to connect them together. Say i had 10 capacitors. would they be attached in a single file? or would they have a figure 8 pattern to them

[MistaStokes]

No problem! I did cover the bottom of each capacitor. They would be connected in "parallel", meaning that all the foil would be wired together, and all the nails or wire would be connected, just like when you wire light bulbs in parallel.