Re: electrolytic capacitors/homemade capacitors

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Ed Phillips by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <evp-at-pacbell-dot-net>

Tesla list wrote:
> 
> Original poster: "Christopher Boden by way of Terry Fritz
<twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <chrisboden-at-hotmail-dot-com>
> 
> Details...well, Thumper was designed with help of Cornell-Dubilier's head of
> R&D as a demonstration/research piece for the Group. It's a modular design
> and still in the Alpha phase with completeion pending our having the new lab
> in a few weeks and space/tools to complete it.
> 
> Construction is simple, banks of 20 caps (4 rows of 5) wired in paralell.
> banks can be connected in any combination of series/paralell and currently
> we are using 4AWG for cap to cap connections and 500kcmil for the main
> rails. The finished design will consist of 216 caps (we have 250 in stock)
> using 1/4"x1/2" Cu bar for cap-to-cap connections and 6"x1/2" Cu bar for the
> main rails.
> 
> Charging is through the CB-1 cabinet, variac controlled, current limited, up
> to 450VDC and charging time takes under a minute.
> 
> Discharge is though whatever we are using that day, usually a simple
> pop-can, but we have used work coils and other things (including a 486
> motherboard :)) for various demos. We have crushed cans with it, launched
> hard-drive rings *through* the ceiling (and roof), and turned several pop
> cans into various states of solid/vapor, sometimes leaving only a few grams
> of metal left at all.
> 
> Discharge is done through a simple crowbar arrangement, no diode, etc, just
> the switch, the ringdown is torture on the caps but we've never had one
> fail. Thumper has about 150 bangs on it so far.
> 
> Currently we are working on encasing the array in 1.25" thick Lexan to make
> it safe to demo in front of the public, just in case one of the caps let's
> go catastrophicly, since it would immediately become a grenade. The
> discharge chamber will be made of a large, reinforced, steel box.
> 
> Thumper is one of 4 main cap-discharge demonstrations of the Group, they
> are.....
> 
> Thumper: a large DC cap bank, 450VDC.
> 
> Stomper: Can crusher/ coin shrinker at ~15kVDC*
> 
> Groucho: 150kVDC Marx bank using 100 15kV CD caps in oil. This can be seen
> at
> http://www.thegeekgroup-dot-org/Images/2002Winterthon%20demos/Demos/pages/Thon03
> -23-02%20012_jpg.htm
> and is already finished.
> 
> Harpo: A 1.5MVDC Marx bank for the Avalon facility.*

	Sounds like lots of fun and really stupendous bangs!  No space or
ambition for much of that sort here.

Ed