From rmp@sunman.mlb.semi.harris.com Fri May  6 11:12 MDT 1994
>Received: from slopoke.mlb.semi.harris.com by csn.org with SMTP id AA20991
  (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for <tesla@grendel.objinc.com>); Fri, 6 May 1994 10:54:41 -0600
Date: Fri, 6 May 94 12:56:02 EDT
From: rmp@sunman.mlb.semi.harris.com (Russ Pate)
To: tesla@grendel.objinc.com
Subject: Re: Quack Medical Tesla Coil


Sure, that would be great to be on your
mailing list for tesla stuff!  Thanks.

I'll also forward you some interesting 
(humerous) mail that I received when
I asked this question on rec.radio.swap.

Russ Pate


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From grendel!grendel.objinc.com!tesla@csn.org Fri May  6 12:42:51 1994
Date: Fri, 6 May 1994 10:38:58 +0700
From: tesla@grendel.objinc.com (Nikola Tesla (Chip Atkinson))
To: rmp@sunman.mlb.semi.harris.com
Subject: Re: Quack Medical Tesla Coil
X-Sun-Charset: US-ASCII
Content-Length: 189

Greetings,

I will post your message to our mailing list.  Are you interested in 
being placed on the list of names? (Free of course!)

Chip Atkinson 
(chip@objinc.com or tesla@objinc.com)


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From bob@silver.usbm.gov Tue May  3 11:13:09 1994
Date: Tue, 3 May 1994 10:51:44 -0400 (EDT)
From: Bob Chufo <bob@silver.usbm.gov>
Subject: Glass & Foil Capacitor
To: rmp@mlb.semi.harris.com
Cc: bob@silver.usbm.gov
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Length: 836

Russ, I thought you wanted to keep the Medical Quackery unit mint.  If not,
you could scrounge a TV doorknob HV capacitor.  It seems that they are
about .00047 or so. You could use several in parallel.  They are at least
20kv.  Have you tried measuring the leaky unit you have?  If you measure
it at a low voltage you may be able to compensate for the "D" dissipation
loss from the breakdown carbon tracking and come up with a C value.
You ever been to the medical quackery museum in St. Louis, MO?  I have
some sort of muscle exercise unit that applies a variable pulse
width/variable frequency shock to electrodes attached to the legs, arms and
back. It seems like something that might keep me awake at work. Believe it or
not it has the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval! 

Does your server support the Internet "talk" mode?

Bob




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From bat@gdstech.grumman.com Tue May  3 09:15:20 1994
Date: Tue, 3 May 94 09:13:48 EDT
From: bat@gdstech.grumman.com (Pat Masterson)
To: rmp@mlb.semi.harris.com
Subject: capacitors
Content-Length: 989

 I have made many glass-and-foil capacitors over the years
for Tesla Coil projects. We built huge ones from greenhouse
panels. It took days to charge them; 2 kvs, but MANY farads
of storage. We would discharge them thru copper pipes
that would vaporize with a loud bang. Thousands of amps,
just like lightning.
 Your old one there may be glued together, they used varnish
in those days. But, if you can measure the thickness of the
glass, and square inches of foil, you can calculate the capacitance
by formula quite accurately. Only error you may have is that newer
glass will have a different dielectric constant than old glass.
But, don't be afraid to try. No big deal. -pat
*-----------------------------------------------------------*
*     Pat Masterson   D12-25  | KE2LJ@KC2FD                 *
*     Grumman Data Systems    | 516-346-6316.               *
*     Bethpage, NY 11746      | bat@gdstech.grumman.com     *
*-----------------------------------------------------------*



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From mike@garfield.csuohio.edu Tue May  3 15:07:01 1994
Date: Tue, 3 May 94 15:06:52 -0400
From: mike@garfield.csuohio.edu (Mike Mayer)
To: rmp@cica.mlb.semi.harris.com
Content-Length: 1664

To: rmp@cica.mlb.semi.harris.com (Russ Pate)
Subject: Re: Help with Homemade Capacitors
Newsgroups: rec.radio.amateur.misc

In article <1994May2.201258.239@mlb.semi.harris.com> you write:
: I am trying to fix an old
: Quack Medical Device that has a glass
: and foil stacked capacitor inside it.
: I have seen similar capacitors inside
: Leeds & Northrup equipment.  Does
: anyone know how big (uFs), these
: capacitors tend to be and what the 
: breakdown voltages might be?  I hesitate
: to rebuild it.
: 

Russ,

Just a side note.  I once build a capacitor out of a pane of
glass (about 10" x 12") with foil on each side, edges of foil
about 1" from all 4 edges of glass to keep arcing away.  Sounds
silly, but I put 10,000 volts across it (oil burner ignition
transformer, 60Hz) and send a spark across a 1" gap.  The shriek it
emits can raise the dead.  Probably also lots of nice EMI/RFI.
Without my glass cap, the arc is just a soft hum.  Have never
figured out what the cap is really doing, but it's interesting
to see.  Makes plenty of ozone smell too.

I would also like to know what uFs rating this thing is.  Probably
a book somewhere that you can calculate based on distance between
plates, type of dialectric used, (i.e., glass) and surface area and
shape of each plate. 

--
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Michael Mayer, Senior Technical Support Engineer      Amateur Radio KB8RJO
Visual Numerics, Inc.  32915 Aurora Rd.  Suite 160, Solon OH  44139  USA
Email: mayer@boulder.vni.com   Human: 216-248-4900   Fax: 216-248-2733 
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