Do I dare ask that we put a cap on this conversation? Steve M.
Gene Heskett wrote: >On Friday 06 January 2006 23:52, Dan McMahill wrote: > >>>Unforch, the one pair of jumpers I missed on the schematic had left >>>the vibrator (remember those?) and plate transformer still wired for >>>6 volts. The radio worked great on 12 volts, until one of the >>>filter cans made a dent about 1/2" deep in the plaster ceiling. The >>>kids, trying to get some sleep upstairs, thought I was shooting at >>>them. >>> >>>Messy, took a couple of hours to clean that up. Stinky too. >>>Probably had over 600 volts on 450 volt rated caps. >>> >>funny. In my case it was my parents who thought I was up to no good >>when I made a very loud bang at 2AM back in high school days. And >>yes, those caps do stink. Probably nasty stuff for human consumption >>too. >> > >Sort of, but we know better than to ingest it while your pets think is >sweet and lap it up, leading to death a goodly portion of the time. The >stink is the combination of burnt kraft paper used to seperate the >foils, and the common anti-freeze ethylene glycol's burning byproducts. >The same stuff you can smell behind an automobile with a cracked head or >head gasket. > >The 'technical grade' of ethylene glycol used in electrolytic caps is >many times purer than the stuff used in auto radiators though. Back in >the mid-70's when the petro squeeze was on the first time, antifreeze >that winter was up into the $13 a gallon area, and I created a >nationwide semi-shortage of electrolytic caps that winter by running >down the last barrel of the good stuff in the country (it was only 125 >miles away, on the Mobil warehouses dock in Omaha at the time) and >buying it for a water cooled tv transmitter which required the pure >stuff else a pair of $150,000 klystrons could be trashed by the >internal electralisis the regular stuff would have allowed. It was >that, or sign off KNXE-TV for the winter. As it was destined for >another customer, I had to talk fast to get it. As the original >customer probably had a fixed price contract, they probably welcomed >the chance to get what the traffic would bear. ISTR the PO I cut in >NETV's name was for about 850-900 dollars for that 55 gallon drum. > >ISTR that barrel was sitting there waiting for shipping orders to >Sprague, who had a plant in eastern Nebraska at the time. 55 gallons >of it will make a heck of a lot of electrolytic caps as it only takes a >few drops to soak the paper sufficiently. > > >>-Dan >> > >
