Re: Awesome Quarter Shrinking Capacitors on EBAY

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

Original poster: Tesla729-at-cs-dot-com 

In a message dated 10/4/03 7:44:36 PM Pacific Daylight Time, 
tesla-at-pupman-dot-com writes:

< Haven't actualy tried it yet, still a work in progress. Plan to have a HV
< website soon. Anyone know where I can get a manhole cover without the city
< complaining or have an idea on how to hold it still? The usual wooden dowels
< that work with quarters no longer apply obviously and this thing at full
< power would probably launch 100# slab of metal over 100 feet in the air
< (that would hurt coming down).

>Hi,
>
>The City of vail Colorado has very fancy manhole covers and they sell them
>to the public in an effort to keep people from steeling the ones on the 
>street.
>
>http://www.ownapieceofvail-dot-com/Manhole/m_overview.html
>
>They are cast iron and wiegh 52 pounds but they now have a small one which
>might be perfect.  The little ones go for $65 ($300 for the big ones) but
>maybe it would be worth a lot more crushed :o))
>
>Cheers,
>
>          Terry


Hi all,

One thing that you would also need to consider before trying to
shrink "manhole covers" is that cast iron is considerably less
conductive than copper or aluminum and higher conductive me-
tals are the best candidates for "shrinking/crushing". I've done
a little quarter shrinking (quite dangerous ballistic energies re-
leased in the process) and a lot of soda pop can crushing (still
dangerous but less so than the quarter shrinking. Anyway,
quarters shrink down to less than dime size in diameter from
10 kJ discharge and aluminum soda pop cans are practically
shreaded. However, nickels and pennies are almost unaffected
by a 10 kJ discharge (10 kJ is my limit w/ (2) 10 kV, 100 uFD
caps). Also, the steel cans, like Campbell's soup cans, are
affected very little from a single 10 kJ discharge but will begin
to deform after several repeated 10 kJ discharges.

The bottom line is it would probably take a cap bank of mag-
nitudes similar to the one at:

http://www.hot-streamer-dot-com/adam/60_MJ_cap_bank.jpg

that Adam shared with us to actaully shrink 100 lb. cast
iron man hole covers. List member Bert Hickman has
done a lot of research into coin shrinking/ can crushing
and has an excellent webpage about it at:

http://205.243.100.155/frames/shrinkergallery.html

As matter of safety, I would read and heed Bert's
safety precautions regarding this as it deals with
very high pulsed levels of electrical energy that
can mame and kill from mechanical injury as well
as the obvious electrocution hazard.

David Rieben