Nice job for freehand. I spent a lifetime in Aerospace tooling though I am retired now. When you have a lot of identical parts to make, if you can join the individual parts into a larger block you accuracy and speed go way up. If you want to make another tuning condenser after you cut your plates but before trimming to final shape or drilling any holes, you can use double sided tape (very thin) to join all your parts into a block. Now final sanding to shape will go much quicker and the parts will be all the same. When drilling your holes, all the holes will also be the same. If you have even a small hand drill press, that will keep your drill square to your work and a belt sander or disc sander will make final shaping a snap. With better accuracy you can then reduce the gap between the stator and rotor too. Again, very nice job for free hand work!
hopefully i an keep this story short. way back in the day, my Dad called a repair man to look at his TV and radio. The repair man first looked at the radio. I as a baby boy thought wow! there's a city in there! The gang capacitor was like a gothic cathedral. Then the repair man giggled and say to my Dad, here's the problem, and proceeded to pull a tiny deceased mouse that had nibbled it's way into the radio for its new home. And of course shorted out the tube while scurrying around in there. Thanks, your presentation evoked a lot of great memories. Wish you the very best, you and your family. This generation will never realize how wonderfully great those days were before everything changed.
Love the idea and great execution too Mike. You could design the plates on a PCB system and get them made through the like of PCBWay, 10m boards for a few pound, then use std brass washers to space them. With double sided PCBs and plated holes it could be very interesting.
Hi, nice capacitor you made. Though you need to round all the corners or you will leak out at high voltage. I have built some of them also, and yes it is a lot of time. But you have something you built yourself and can now build even better. Great job there. Jeff
Impressive dedication! I bought an old radio to get the tuning capacitor and germanium diodes and after destroying some of the polystyrene capacitors realised it did not have germanium diodes and was using tube diodes as detectors..............so months later I am slowly getting the radio to work as a restoration project
I think the word you Brits use to describe something fantastic is BRILLANT, so we can go with that. Years ago Crushcraft sold a vertical called an R3 it had some traps for 10,15,20 but also used a capacitor like you just built with a motor and outside box plus it had a control box for inside. I acquired the control box, have a 24-28 volt motor and should have other parts to try to make something work. I also have the driven element from an av4 beam that is about the same as the r3. You make everything seem so easy, but every time I try a project, some hard to find or use tool gets in the way. Trying to build some spreaders for a version of DX Commander the key whole size was not available. You really have a lot of talents !! If you get bored or would like a challenge, I would send you the control box and other parts if you would like to tackle building the outside box, etc to remote tune the antenna. The control box has the voltages etc? Also, the same inside control might be stable with other capacitor tuned antenna like those loops you have built recently?
Super job - it came out really well! I must say I did chuckle when you baulked at the price of a VC on ebay, and then spent twice as much on just the saw, let alone the parts, but inspiring all the same.
You should be proud of that one Mike! Excellent, I would not have thought to try it. I threw a box of these out when I got married, never thought I would ever have a use for them :-(( the daft things one does when moving house in a hurry!
Nicely done! There's a design I have in mind that's much easier to make. I'll just cut out squares. Drill a hole in one corner for shafts so the square is used as a diamond shape, and nip off the opposite corner to clear the next shaft. I know it's a little unconventional and won't look as cool as semi circles but I'll save a lot of time. Accumulating hardware as I go along.
Very cool. I assumed special materials and exact spacing would be required. I may actually give this a go. I have a very nice variable capacitor that came out of an old ham radio but it's lost in my "collection."
It is important to deburr the edges to reduce arcover. I used to make similar parts on a CNC Punch machine. I would check with local sheet metal shops for a bid. They can make complete parts that are drilled and deburred very quickly.
Ahh, I see you beat me to sharp edges bit already, sorry to have made the point again. Something to be said for reading comments first before shooting my mouth off.
Next time, for that semi-circle notch on the stator plates, try this: Drill the holes first, then cut them out. That small diameter semi-circle is hard to get right with a scroll saw. Also, this project would warrant the purchase of a small drill-press.
nice prototype and a lot of work . I hope you don't forget to peel of the plastic from the alu. The value is a bit different then. But I am sure you know. looking forward to the next video
All I can think of here is that if I tried half of the stuff you do, they'd call me "Lefty" (with the local hospital getting plenty of my gear money). Fun to watch your craft, Mike...good stuff. 73! de WX0V
That is inspiring! I too have always wished to get a big air gap capacitor. That is a nice simple design. I wonder how large of range one can possibly get with this concept, going big?
Hi Warren, A friend of mine that has a cnc water jet cut all my parts for a very very very big air variable cap lol 900 pf minimum to 1.8 uf max that i put inside a plastic sealed clear box. I use it to tune and find the peak's when i tune the coils of ( Not A BiTT or A BiTT ) The variable 1.5 uf cap is used with other ac caps to get in range and find the peak output of the BiTT or Not A BiTT.. Cheers!!!
An interesting project, well done, I may make similar but using double sided PCB for the plates with brass hardware. Watching the test I got the impression your minimum capacitance would be lower if the lower pates were a simple rectangle below the spindle. Not being critical but would make construction a little easier. I do see some companies offer water jet cutting..... might be worth looking into?
Good job building the capacitor! I'm wondering if you could cut the individual capacitor plates from plastic or wood, then cover them with a layer or layers of aluminum foil.
I seem to remember kits being available to construct variable caps. Hamfest flea markets another good source. Surplus military gear (old stuff) another source for us scroungers.
Real nice job on the cap. A few years before I bought a commercially made antenna tuner I red necked a tuner together from junk box parts. My coil was the spring which was still in a 5 subject school notebook and the variable cap was from a defunct 9 volt transistor radio. I switched the number of turns on the coil using Rat Shack test jumper wires. You remember those. They had spring loaded alligator clips on each end. Oh, and the 5 subject notebook served as my log book. lol I used it with a 200 watt Swan 400 tube rig and it never arced. My key was a Rat Sheck roller switch - hand held. ((-: Long live CW.
Nice job. A belt sander and a drill press might make that a lot easier. Why did you leave the plastic film on the plates? Wondering if it changes the capacitance. I would think it does.
I was wondering that, too. There's no good reason to leave that film on there. It shouldn't change the capacitance too much but it might increase the dieletric losses.
To people looking for a way to make it, and does not have access to all tools, that could be made using raw printed circuit board and a rotatory (?) sand papper. Prefer fenolite (?) pcb over fiber glass. Great job.
Good job because they get an arm and a leg for them these days if you can find them. Although some can be had at a decent price if you look hard enough. 😎👍
73 Mike, great achievement, but you have to be patient. I was just talking about it this morning with my friend but it will be a 500pf. ps: do not forget to remove the blue plastic which protects the aluminum.
FB OM! I built one this week too, but I used PCB's and switches. It actually went to about 400pf, but I don't think it would handle the higher voltages that yours would. My channel has it if anybody wants to see. But I like yours a lot- very properly built and as good as any much more expensive one, if not better :)
You could have stacked the plates together and secured them in a vice, with some support blocks judiciously placed, before filing them. That way you could get uniformity. Achieving uniformity with the spacers is more critical to making a precision part and also harder to achieve but still doable. It would be best to cut them using an alignment jig though in order to minimize the filing work needed afterwards in order to get them all to be square cut and of the same length.
Looks great Mike! I´ve used a cheap nibbler attachment on my drill. The thickness of the aluminium plate was 1,5 mm and it works fine. Some filing is still needed of course. 73 de Kari OH2BCY
@@mike-M0MSN haha bad as me I had yaesu 767 Gtl DX on the kitchen table apart for over 1 week yer it took me to fix it my wife was very supportive at least she knows where I am lol
Looks good! I wonder, with all the work and expense, if it would not have been more effective to have them cut (water jet or laser) professionally - you obviously have the means to draw the CAD files required. That would also benefit from tighter specifications, allowing for smaller plate gap and smaller size for the same range of capacity (unless you are going for an high voltage application).
Yes, all you need is a 300 dollar table jigsaw, some high-dollar aluminum plate material, etc., etc., to make your very own variable capacitor!!! Great!
The protective covering on the "al-you-min-ee-um" as you say, is going to give you a little capacitive bump due to the dielectric effects. Don't know how much (or if it will even be noticeable). I would say that you did an excellent job of achieving your goal for a very high Q cap at a very low cost. What cap value were you shooting for?
you can make it's rang more better and flexible by connecting each stationery plate with jumpers connectors or 7 step rotary switch found in Stepped fan regulators and sure you have to seperate all plate electrically .
I would like a go at doing this one day but is there any special calculations that need to be done to determing the spacing of each plate for the power used on the radio? I do know that the larger the gap the lower the capacitance will be.
Hi! Wonderful job you've done! A quick question thought... Isn't going to too lossy for a magnetic loop antenna? It wouldn't be a good idea to weld the plates together to form a one block? The same for the rotor and stator.
There are a number of things that could be done to improve the Q of the capacitor here, but a lower Q might actually be somewhat beneficial in that it would make the normally-stupidly-sharp tuning of a magnetic loop antenna less sharp. It all depends on exactly how poor the Q is, really.
need to get the foot to sit on the work to keep it from jittering. :-) You need to add a disc or belt sander to your tool list to help with the shapes and edges.
Hello. I got a boombox with an analog tuner from a friend. It does not play any FM station with no static noise. Stereo light comes on. It has a new antenna. FM stations’ signals are good because my other tuners have no problem. Inside the boombox is like new. Antenna cable is connected to the pcb. I cleaned all the switches and pots with contact spray. It has one of those little variable tuning capacitor in a plastic see-thru square with 4 screws on it. I played with the tuner cap screws but it did not get any better so I put them back to the initial position. The tuner cap may not be set properly because the tuning needle does not show the proper station frequency. What can be the issue? How can I tune the cap? TY
One trick to drill holes from even distance is to drill a clamped stack of roughly cut sheet metal peaces all at once. The final shaping could be done after the drilling then.
congratulations for the channel excellent constructions and above all well done videos ... greetings from Italy IZ8NON Angelo ... I follow you keep it up
Would Tin Foil from kitchen not work .. Can you please explain why you choose Aluminum ? I understand you may have current requirements , but for a ham radio it should not need that much current.
Foil will burn or pit but it can be used with low power, I used Aluminium because it is malmble and less expensive than Cooper and can withstand high voltages, and when using power of over 50Watts many kV are present.
@@nevellgreenough404 Thank you. I found another youtube video that covered the formulas as well (after I posted this question) I also checked my ARRL Handbook 2013, and it was covered in 2.7.2.
Good call. Ebay prices on these things are astronomical. I guess most of those items have long been scrapped or are simply rotting away in sheds or labs.
Nice. :) But without a bandsaw it would be a lot of work,right?. Did you try different sorts of filament and compare the initial capacity?. Next time build a split stator please :) Greet videos btw.
@@mike-M0MSN i'm courios about the difference of the materials. I don't know what kind of materials you are able to print. According the numbers PETG should give better results (lower iniital capacity) than PLA. Dialektrical constant @100Mhz: PLA/ABS ~ 2-5 to 3.0 (the color makes a difference, transparent has lower values). PETG a litte lower, arround ~2.5 - 2.8. ABS falls with higher frequencies. I would be super happy if you could make a comparison.
Nice job for freehand. I spent a lifetime in Aerospace tooling though I am retired now. When you have a lot of identical parts to make, if you can join the individual parts into a larger block you accuracy and speed go way up. If you want to make another tuning condenser after you cut your plates but before trimming to final shape or drilling any holes, you can use double sided tape (very thin) to join all your parts into a block. Now final sanding to shape will go much quicker and the parts will be all the same. When drilling your holes, all the holes will also be the same. If you have even a small hand drill press, that will keep your drill square to your work and a belt sander or disc sander will make final shaping a snap. With better accuracy you can then reduce the gap between the stator and rotor too. Again, very nice job for free hand work!
Great tip many thanks 😊
He needs that big of a gap because there might be up to 5000Volts between them when used for trimming a loop antenna.
hopefully i an keep this story short.
way back in the day, my Dad called
a repair man to look at his TV and
radio.
The repair man first looked at the radio.
I as a baby boy thought wow! there's
a city in there! The gang capacitor
was like a gothic cathedral.
Then the repair man giggled and say to
my Dad, here's the problem, and proceeded
to pull a tiny deceased mouse that had nibbled
it's way into the radio for its new home.
And of course shorted out the tube while
scurrying around in there.
Thanks, your presentation evoked a lot
of great memories. Wish you the very
best, you and your family. This generation
will never realize how wonderfully great
those days were before everything changed.
Beautiful story, thank you for sharing. best wishes Mike-M0MSN
Thank you for the inspiration. I have now built 2 for my antenna tuner. Not as hard as I had imagined.😁
Love the idea and great execution too Mike. You could design the plates on a PCB system and get them made through the like of PCBWay, 10m boards for a few pound, then use std brass washers to space them. With double sided PCBs and plated holes it could be very interesting.
I feel certain you've explained how effective the scroll saw is at cutting sandwiches. Very effective. Great work, Mike.
Thanks 👍 almost as good at cutting fingers...
Hi, nice capacitor you made. Though you need to round all the corners or you will leak out at high voltage. I have built some of them also, and yes it is a lot of time. But you have something you built yourself and can now build even better. Great job there.
Jeff
Thanks for the tips!
Impressive dedication! I bought an old radio to get the tuning capacitor and germanium diodes and after destroying some of the polystyrene capacitors realised it did not have germanium diodes and was using tube diodes as detectors..............so months later I am slowly getting the radio to work as a restoration project
I think the word you Brits use to describe something fantastic is BRILLANT, so we can go with that. Years ago Crushcraft sold a vertical called an R3 it had some traps for 10,15,20 but also used a capacitor like you just built with a motor and outside box plus it had a control box for inside. I acquired the control box, have a 24-28 volt motor and should have other parts to try to make something work. I also have the driven element from an av4 beam that is about the same as the r3. You make everything seem so easy, but every time I try a project, some hard to find or use tool gets in the way. Trying to build some spreaders for a version of DX Commander the key whole size was not available. You really have a lot of talents !! If you get bored or would like a challenge, I would send you the control box and other parts if you would like to tackle building the outside box, etc to remote tune the antenna. The control box has the voltages etc? Also, the same inside control might be stable with other capacitor tuned antenna like those loops you have built recently?
Maybe one day, but for now I have too much to do... thank you for your nice comments
Excellent video. Lots of work involved. May your new variable capacitor serve you well.
Many thanks!
Super job - it came out really well! I must say I did chuckle when you baulked at the price of a VC on ebay, and then spent twice as much on just the saw, let alone the parts, but inspiring all the same.
You should be proud of that one Mike! Excellent, I would not have thought to try it. I threw a box of these out when I got married, never thought I would ever have a use for them :-(( the daft things one does when moving house in a hurry!
Yes I think I did the same, we live and learn.. :)
Nicely done! There's a design I have in mind that's much easier to make. I'll just cut out squares. Drill a hole in one corner for shafts so the square is used as a diamond shape, and nip off the opposite corner to clear the next shaft.
I know it's a little unconventional and won't look as cool as semi circles but I'll save a lot of time.
Accumulating hardware as I go along.
Very helpful and an inspiration because the price of variable air caps are through the roof..ty
Glad it was helpful!
Very cool. I assumed special materials and exact spacing would be required. I may actually give this a go. I have a very nice variable capacitor that came out of an old ham radio but it's lost in my "collection."
It is important to deburr the edges to reduce arcover. I used to make similar parts on a CNC Punch machine. I would check with local sheet metal shops for a bid. They can make complete parts that are drilled and deburred very quickly.
De-bur very important.. and yes next time CNC it maybe££
Ahh, I see you beat me to sharp edges bit already, sorry to have made the point again. Something to be said for reading comments first before shooting my mouth off.
Nice. the variable caps I use for my homebuilt A.M. radios have gone from $15 to $36. 10 pf to 360 pf. I too am looking into making my own. Thanks!
Very nicely done, My only thought would be to try and get rid of any sharp edges that might help avoid arching, other than that, a good effort.
Complimenti. È bellissimo questo condensarore variabile, costruito con le tue mani.
Next time, for that semi-circle notch on the stator plates, try this: Drill the holes first, then cut them out. That small diameter semi-circle is hard to get right with a scroll saw.
Also, this project would warrant the purchase of a small drill-press.
nice prototype and a lot of work . I hope you don't forget to peel of the plastic from the alu.
The value is a bit different then. But I am sure you know. looking forward to the next video
Thanks, will do!
Congratulations Mike for this wonderful achievement! 73, Philippe (F1PBT)
Merci beaucoup pour vos commentaires
All I can think of here is that if I tried half of the stuff you do, they'd call me "Lefty" (with the local hospital getting plenty of my gear money). Fun to watch your craft, Mike...good stuff. 73! de WX0V
Thank goodness for the NHS
@@mike-M0MSN Indeed...hopefully I will not be in use of their services...keep up the great work here...73!
That is inspiring! I too have always wished to get a big air gap capacitor. That is a nice simple design.
I wonder how large of range one can possibly get with this concept, going big?
Hi Warren, A friend of mine that has a cnc water jet cut all my parts for a very very very big air variable cap lol 900 pf minimum to 1.8 uf max that i put inside a plastic sealed clear box. I use it to tune and find the peak's when i tune the coils of ( Not A BiTT or A BiTT ) The variable 1.5 uf cap is used with other ac caps to get in range and find the peak output of the BiTT or Not A BiTT.. Cheers!!!
An interesting project, well done, I may make similar but using double sided PCB for the plates with brass hardware. Watching the test I got the impression your minimum capacitance would be lower if the lower pates were a simple rectangle below the spindle. Not being critical but would make construction a little easier. I do see some companies offer water jet cutting..... might be worth looking into?
Great idea
Good job building the capacitor!
I'm wondering if you could cut the individual capacitor plates from plastic or wood, then cover them with a layer or layers of aluminum foil.
Yes you can!
I seem to remember kits being available to construct variable caps. Hamfest flea markets another good source. Surplus military gear (old stuff) another source for us scroungers.
Real nice job on the cap.
A few years before I bought a commercially made antenna tuner I red necked a tuner together from junk box parts. My coil was the spring which was still in a 5 subject school notebook and the variable cap was from a defunct 9 volt transistor radio. I switched the number of turns on the coil using Rat Shack test jumper wires. You remember those. They had spring loaded alligator clips on each end. Oh, and the 5 subject notebook served as my log book. lol I used it with a 200 watt Swan 400 tube rig and it never arced. My key was a Rat Sheck roller switch - hand held. ((-: Long live CW.
Oh I remember them, great times. Cheers
Nice build. 👍👍
Although I'd likely be lazy and outsource the cutting to a friend that has a plasma cutter.
😉
A friend yes, but a company!!! way to expensive..
@@mike-M0MSN Without a doubt.
Really liked your video, gives me all sorts of ideas.
Wonderful built! Impressive.
Thank you! Cheers!
Great work Mike. Doing plate after plate can get a wee bit tedious. 73 Joe
yep two days of work one cap... :(
Impressive, I tried a couple of years back, and it was a glorious failure . After seeing this might have another attempt.
Keep up good work I would love to see this with a mag loop🤔👍😀
Maybe???
Excellent work...thank you for sharing.
Thank you! Cheers!
Very nice job, have a nice day, JB from FRANCE
Thanks, you too!
absolutely the finest capacitor that i have ever seen.
Fantastic work Mike ! I've subscribed so I don't miss the roller coaster inductor video ;-) 73 Andrew G1PPZ
Welcome aboard! and that's a great Idea too.
Nice job. A belt sander and a drill press might make that a lot easier. Why did you leave the plastic film on the plates? Wondering if it changes the capacitance. I would think it does.
I was wondering that, too. There's no good reason to leave that film on there. It shouldn't change the capacitance too much but it might increase the dieletric losses.
To people looking for a way to make it, and does not have access to all tools, that could be made using raw printed circuit board and a rotatory (?) sand papper. Prefer fenolite (?) pcb over fiber glass. Great job.
Brilliant Mike, soon as I saw you using the file I knew lol
;)
I remember the sound of using a scroll saw on metal...makes a heck of a racket.
yep, next time, ear plugs.
Nice job 👍👍👍👍👍
Thanks 👍
Fantastique job !! You are in crédible , you transform idéal in real !!! ( not,so easy) congrats 👍👍👍
Good job because they get an arm and a leg for them these days if you can find them.
Although some can be had at a decent price if you look hard enough. 😎👍
To true 😀
Excellent video.... well made.
Saw this and immediately subscribed. Very nice.
Awesome, thank you!
73 Mike, great achievement, but you have to be patient. I was just talking about it this morning with my friend but it will be a 500pf.
ps: do not forget to remove the blue plastic which protects the aluminum.
Blue plastic, oh yes
Excellent build Mike. I shall put my order in now please.
ha ha,, :)
FB OM! I built one this week too, but I used PCB's and switches. It actually went to about 400pf, but I don't think it would handle the higher voltages that yours would. My channel has it if anybody wants to see. But I like yours a lot- very properly built and as good as any much more expensive one, if not better :)
many thanks I have a visit. :)
You have inspired me to build one it's over halfway done. It's very time consuming I don't know if I will do it again😅
Yep, two days of cutting and filing and drilling and printing and.....
Those flux capacitors are crazy. Total banana bibulation and scheming. Been thinking about doing it in a full stasis pizza loadout.
WoooooW Good job I like . I was want to make one like this but I want made A small variable capasiter
You could have stacked the plates together and secured them in a vice, with some support blocks judiciously placed, before filing them. That way you could get uniformity.
Achieving uniformity with the spacers is more critical to making a precision part and also harder to achieve but still doable. It would be best to cut them using an alignment jig though in order to minimize the filing work needed afterwards in order to get them all to be square cut and of the same length.
Yes, a vice is the next purchase.
Top class ..well done .. SIR
Many thanks
Looks great Mike! I´ve used a cheap nibbler attachment on my drill. The thickness of the aluminium plate was 1,5 mm and it works fine. Some filing is still needed of course. 73 de Kari OH2BCY
Great idea.
I might have a go at building one.but will see if I can get the plate's laser cut.what is the best plate size to use
so how do we make capacitors with more pico farrads ? just add more plates ? do we increase or decrease the distance between plates ? nice work !
yes add more plates or make the plate distance closer
Mike-M0MSN, ty for your videos, how can we know what size variable capacitor we need. I am building a loop for 100 watts for 20 meters?
the reality is you make the capacitor form 10pF to the best you can get (maybe 200pF) and then play the the size of loop....
@@mike-M0MSN ok, ty NS9T
very nice build. i like it
Excellent work love making my own things bet your miss not happy about chest freezer lol
You got that right!, but you should see the kitchen......
@@mike-M0MSN haha bad as me I had yaesu 767 Gtl DX on the kitchen table apart for over 1 week yer it took me to fix it my wife was very supportive at least she knows where I am lol
apply contact adhesive to the printed parts and stick aluminum foil to those?
Looks good! I wonder, with all the work and expense, if it would not have been more effective to have them cut (water jet or laser) professionally - you obviously have the means to draw the CAD files required. That would also benefit from tighter specifications, allowing for smaller plate gap and smaller size for the same range of capacity (unless you are going for an high voltage application).
Yes Jose, Laser or water cut is the next level, I wanted to do it all myself first, that way I know it can be done.
@@mike-M0MSN Absolutely! And as you got the prototype running very smoothly, it can only get better :-)
That is very cool. Thank you for a truly interesting video. It is much appreciated.
Glad you enjoyed it!
good job mike. you should have been in the A team tidy
Merdoc, or Face-man
Yes, all you need is a 300 dollar table jigsaw, some high-dollar aluminum plate material, etc., etc., to make your very own variable capacitor!!! Great!
😂😂😂💋
Mike, most excellent job Mate!
Really great job!👍
The protective covering on the "al-you-min-ee-um" as you say, is going to give you a little capacitive bump due to the dielectric effects. Don't know how much (or if it will even be noticeable). I would say that you did an excellent job of achieving your goal for a very high Q cap at a very low cost. What cap value were you shooting for?
Yes will be removed before use.. :) and 200pf so one or two more fins.. :)
@@mike-M0MSN - Depending on the voltage that it will carry (power), you could also use shorter spacers between fins.
@@stevek5416 I was about to comment the same thing: 3,5mm spacing between fins is a lot. I would've tried to limit it to ~1mm.
Nice build Mike 👍👏👏
Thanks 👍
you can make it's rang more better and flexible by connecting each stationery plate with jumpers connectors or 7 step rotary switch found in Stepped fan regulators and sure you have to seperate all plate electrically .
Just curious, but,
Would it have changed its performance in either direction if the bottom plates were also semicircles?
Not really, maybe a little less capacity...
@@mike-M0MSN Thank you for answering 👍
need this for me crystal radio , nicely done
I would like a go at doing this one day but is there any special calculations that need to be done to determing the spacing of each plate for the power used on the radio?
I do know that the larger the gap the lower the capacitance will be.
yes but the more power it will handle.
1mm spacing= 1kv safely.
@@luckydubeinrc5165 WOW as small as that, many thanks for the reply.
does the size of the gap make any different to the workings?
A large gap between plates reduces the capacitance but increases the working voltage.
Hi! Wonderful job you've done! A quick question thought... Isn't going to too lossy for a magnetic loop antenna? It wouldn't be a good idea to weld the plates together to form a one block? The same for the rotor and stator.
There are a number of things that could be done to improve the Q of the capacitor here, but a lower Q might actually be somewhat beneficial in that it would make the normally-stupidly-sharp tuning of a magnetic loop antenna less sharp. It all depends on exactly how poor the Q is, really.
Nice work! But I wouldn't have had the patience to cut out that ally, I'd have got some metalwork place to CNC cut it!
Next time!
need to get the foot to sit on the work to keep it from jittering. :-)
You need to add a disc or belt sander to your tool list to help with the shapes and edges.
Good call!
Cool, i coudn't even find them online in my country.
Hello. I got a boombox with an analog tuner from a friend. It does not play any FM station with no static noise. Stereo light comes on. It has a new antenna. FM stations’ signals are good because my other tuners have no problem. Inside the boombox is like new. Antenna cable is connected to the pcb. I cleaned all the switches and pots with contact spray. It has one of those little variable tuning capacitor in a plastic see-thru square with 4 screws on it. I played with the tuner cap screws but it did not get any better so I put them back to the initial position. The tuner cap may not be set properly because the tuning needle does not show the proper station frequency. What can be the issue? How can I tune the cap? TY
One trick to drill holes from even distance is to drill a clamped stack of roughly cut sheet metal peaces all at once. The final shaping could be done after the drilling then.
I’m going to build one for my mag loop antenna 🙂
Fine work.
Many thanks!
congratulations for the channel excellent constructions and above all well done videos ... greetings from Italy IZ8NON Angelo ... I follow you keep it up
Thank you very much!
Wonderful job
incredible idea
Thank you! Cheers!
Great job there
How did you know what sizes to make the plates ? Or was it just all guess work ?
Its all guess work, If you do not have enough capacity just add more plates......
Would Tin Foil from kitchen not work .. Can you please explain why you choose Aluminum ?
I understand you may have current requirements , but for a ham radio it should not need that much current.
Foil will burn or pit but it can be used with low power, I used Aluminium because it is malmble and less expensive than Cooper and can withstand high voltages, and when using power of over 50Watts many kV are present.
Hi Mike, Do you have the measurements for the alu parts ? didnt vind any in the comment or i overlooked.
Did you find any calculations on how large plate, distance between, etc? or did you just gustimate?
See any copy of the ARRL or RSGB Radio Amateur's Handbook in the first 50 pages or so. These were made your way in the 1920s. Nice build!
--N2GX
@@nevellgreenough404 Thank you. I found another youtube video that covered the formulas as well (after I posted this question) I also checked my ARRL Handbook 2013, and it was covered in 2.7.2.
Looks like you have answered you own question, but I guesstimated.....
Wow 😯👌👆🙏
To use in a superhet you have make two of them on ganged configuration.Does it make it bigger?
Not sure I understand your question sorry. :(
Good call. Ebay prices on these things are astronomical. I guess most of those items have long been scrapped or are simply rotting away in sheds or labs.
yep!
Nice. :) But without a bandsaw it would be a lot of work,right?. Did you try different sorts of filament and compare the initial capacity?. Next time build a split stator please :) Greet videos btw.
Thanks for the idea!
@@mike-M0MSN i'm courios about the difference of the materials. I don't know what kind of materials you are able to print. According the numbers PETG should give better results (lower iniital capacity) than PLA. Dialektrical constant @100Mhz: PLA/ABS ~ 2-5 to 3.0 (the color makes a difference, transparent has lower values). PETG a litte lower, arround ~2.5 - 2.8. ABS falls with higher frequencies. I would be super happy if you could make a comparison.
Hi Mick
Did you look into a price of getting them alluminium profiles laser or water cut ?
Definitely easier on the ears !!
Yes, way to expensive for the quantities I want..☹️
Très bonne vidéo. Je me lance pour en faire une.thank you.
All I can say is very well done!From Colin,G1PGI
thanks Colin
Nice job!
Thanks!
Nicely done.
Thanks! :)
This is real HAM Radio!
Many Thanks 🤩
looks good, was thinking of something tike this myself. But getting it lazer cut too old for all that hand work.
Laser, I'm still waiting for the quote???
@@mike-M0MSN now while you wait, you can play with the spacings etc on you prototype. Keep up the design work great to see it in action.