|
|||||||
|
|
|
|||||
|
|
|||||||
This thing serves a few purposes, like creating a loud bang, a puff of smoke, a shower of sparks, and a lot of wierd stares from nieghbors, through the rapid vaporization of a small piece of wire. It also exploded the chamber of an experimental water cannon, and has crushed cans magnetically.
It's quite simple really, just a half-wave rectifier charging two really big caps, that break down accross a spark gap when the critical voltage is reached, dumping all that stored energy through a wire far too small to handle the instantaneously immense currents present.
This is a basic schematic. All connections between the
capacitors, spark gap, and the wire to be exploded are made with
1/4" copper tube. Each end of the tube sections were
flattened and drilled to be bolted to the various terminals.
New switching method: a few sheets of 4 mil LDPE are lightly squished on the spark gap, which has now been closed down to a point where air would break down were it not for the intervening plastic. After the caps are fully charged, the power supply is removed, and the plasic is jerked out via an attached string. The HV breaks down the gap, and the power feeds into whatever experiment I have attached.
Right now the HydroSpud Cannon is completely destroyed, as the PVC chamber shattered into splinters the first time we fired it, and that was with an open barrel, no projectile loaded.
Discharging through coiled copper tubing and coils of 1" wide strips of aluminum flashing, wrapped around aluminum cans, have yielded ones with bizzare lateral striations. We either need more power, or a bigger coil to really crush the suckers.
"Is the extension cord plugged in?" "No" "Okay." JAM! RMRMRMRM--FIZZLE, CRACK-BBAANNG!!! "JESSE!!! YOU SAID IT WASN'T PLUGGED IN!!" "You picked up the wrong cord"...
email: electrophile@juno.com