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Aluminum Tape

P

phaeton

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hi.

I recently had to purchase a roll of Aluminum Chimney Tape to fix a
hot water heater exhaust. All in all, I needed about a foot or so of
tape, but the smallest roll I could find anywhere was a ridiculous 95
feet.

So I've made a few quick-n-dirty heat sinks for some low-watt
chipamps. I RF shielded an enclosure for an audio device. Could
probably do that to a couple of guitars, etc. I spose I could make
some awful circuit boards by sticking it to pressboard, and cutting
out some traces with an exacto-type knife. Any other uses for this?

I could grab some wax paper and make some crude capacitors. With a
little more work I could even make them variable capacitors. Anyone
have a surface-area-to-farad scale or conversion?

Hurray!
 
R

Rich Grise

Jan 1, 1970
0
I recently had to purchase a roll of Aluminum Chimney Tape to fix a
hot water heater exhaust. All in all, I needed about a foot or so of
tape, but the smallest roll I could find anywhere was a ridiculous 95
feet.

So I've made a few quick-n-dirty heat sinks for some low-watt
chipamps. I RF shielded an enclosure for an audio device. Could
probably do that to a couple of guitars, etc. I spose I could make
some awful circuit boards by sticking it to pressboard, and cutting
out some traces with an exacto-type knife. Any other uses for this?

I could grab some wax paper and make some crude capacitors. With a
little more work I could even make them variable capacitors. Anyone
have a surface-area-to-farad scale or conversion?

I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but none of those ideas will work very
well, because it's so hard to electrically connect to aluminum reliably.

And the stickum is probably a relatively good electrical insulator.

Now, if you wanted to do a science fair project, then if you could
figure out a way to make a good connection to the aluminum, you could
take that roll and another roll, and make a really short, fat capacitor,
but it probably wouldn't have very much capacitance, albeit it's related
to the thickness of the dielectric, which is the glue.

Frankly, I've always wanted to take a couple rolls of aluminum foil and a
couple of rolls of saran wrap, and make a demo cap, but then I saw the
pie tin electrolytic....

Good Luck!
Rich
 
M

Michael Black

Jan 1, 1970
0
Rich said:
I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but none of those ideas will work very
well, because it's so hard to electrically connect to aluminum reliably.

And the stickum is probably a relatively good electrical insulator.

Now, if you wanted to do a science fair project, then if you could
figure out a way to make a good connection to the aluminum, you could
take that roll and another roll, and make a really short, fat capacitor,
but it probably wouldn't have very much capacitance, albeit it's related
to the thickness of the dielectric, which is the glue.
The hobby magazines used to occasionally show how to make capacitors that
way, using tin foil and newspaper. Not really useful for building with,
but a good way of showing what's inside a capacitor.

I never tried it, but one magazine showed how to make an electrostatic
speaker using newspaper and tin foil. It was a trick project, you make
it and leave the newspaper lying about, and it suddenly starts talking.
Again, not likely useful as a serious speaker, but a neat gimmick to
show the concept.

Michael
 
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