Yay! I finally got myself some capacitors. Now to learn how to use them...

I've wanted a stun baton for a long time, but stupid laws in Michigan let you carry around a handgun, but won't let you use non-lethal alternatives like a tazer. And they just recently allowed pepper spray to be had...

So, to get around this I'm just gonna make my own. If anyone asks, its a science project.

Heh heh... my brother's gonna get very annoyed, very quickly...

why in God's holy name would you want one?
I mean... wouldn't you be tempted to just zap people/animals/bums?

Well, yeah. Thats exactly why I want one.

But its gonna be a pretty weak one. I plan on it feeling a bit like a bad case of static electricity.

you're getting as bad as DC and SB...they also love caps...well, they love anything that has a shocking effect!

Sounds awfully illegal to me...
Same reason you're not allowed to make soap bombs. lol

Illegal? Nah... I walked into RadioShack, asked for some caps, the person asked what I need them for, I told him I want to make a coil gun. He asked if I'd tell him how it turned out.

Perfectly legal.

SB and DC gave me the idea, actually. But, do they have a chainsaw on their computer desk?
I do.

yes X.. you're a character

lets us know how your stuff turns out!! and some shots

Please, Please don't put big caps in a stun gun!!!
You'll kill someone, then get shunted over to jail!

High voltage will provide a nasty zap, but if you start adding caps that will provide the current, then you gonna start getting into very dangerous territory. You might even kill yourself in the process.
What kind of caps anyway? Are these like soda can size or like pencil diameter?
I got a bank of 16 450Volt, 2400uF caps... Make for nice coilgun... I tried a low voltage coilgun: 24v with about 20 little 6800uF caps. It fired a nail across the room. Also did a 200v 2000uF one. Bigger nail ricochetted around the room.

Don't worry. I just got small stuff right now. No ones gonna get killed.

Not entirely sure how to safely and properly charge them yet, but I'll find out today.

When I get something made I'll be sure to take pics of it.

On a completely unrelated note, if I suddenly stop posting on RuneStorm, it might be due to a slight miscalculation...

Laws are made to break them, especially silly ones.

Yep, exactly.

Oh yeah, forgot to ask, is your coil gun a single stage or multi stage, DC?

Also, how did you acquire pop can sized caps?
...gonna need to get me a couple of those some time...

thats a big capacitor. I should get some and make my own coil gun too so we could a coil wars.

Woo hoo!!! I managed to scavenge 10-15 caps from a fried computer power source about half an hour ago.

I have no idea if they're fried or not, but it looks like I did get some significantly more powerful caps out of it.

Of them, two are 330uF 200v caps, which seem like an improvement to my other ones. Now I just need to find out if they work...

What ever you do, never put more voltage on it than it's rating

We did that once way back when I was on training (electrical apprenticeship). It was fun, but boy do those things make a mess when they explode never mind the noise and sparks

A coil gun that works like a grenade launcher, launches coils about to explode from overcharge. Now that would be fun.

Hmm... I see...
Exploding coils though? I think you meant capacitors, but I don't think I'd want to kill capacitors for ammo though.

An (air, spud?) gun (or crossbow??) that launches charged capacitors might also be cool, both IRL and JW. What type / size capacitor would you need to put someone out of action for a while?

Spud guns are fun... I should make one some time...

Had a funny experience with one though. We had some old potatos and we wanted to get rid of them. So, my dad took out his spud gun and put some hairspray in it.

First he fired one off, then he let my brother fire one off. Well, it wouldn't fire for my brother, so he added some oxygen to the chamber to add a bit of a kick to the explosion. It worked, and the potato went flying.

It was my turn to fire it, but it wouldn't fire, so he added some oxygen, and it still didn't fire. So, he took the oxygen hose, and held it in there for a good long time. Well, I didn't know much about chemistry back then, but I knew that was way too much fuel...

He told me to fire it. I said no way, it'll blow up. Then he said something about me being a wimp and fired it. It fired, but the potato wasn't the only thing to fly out. The end cap flew out the back and left a big square shaped scar on his arm, and we never found the cap until next year.

Glad I didn't fire that spud gun.

Mania...

Caps are fun! My coil guns were single stage... Too lazy to make complicated timing circuits...

I made one electrically safe one, 30v with a bonk of 20 6800uF caps.

Then I got about 10 of those PC powersupply caps (200v 330-500uF) caps and built a much more powerful one. That was not safe (200v).
I suggest you play only with the low volt ones, <50v. NEVER charge them with a powersupply higher than the caps are rated!

We used to take the little 16v and 30v caps and put them across our mains (220v). BANG!!! Looked like a little firework going off.

Be careful!

Cool. I figured a multi staged one is too complicated for what I want, I was just wondering how they did those timing circuits.

Also, I feel kind of dumb asking this, but I don't know how to safely and properly charge a cpacitor... I looked around on a lot of websites, but I don't see how to charge one safely and properly...
Could someone point me to a link that shows how to or something?

Don't worry, I'll be safe.

Man that’s like all we did in phis. tech, BAME, one more cap down.
Needles to say I did not learn much, other then how to overcharge a cap.(unsafely)
Remember X like with all things that go boom its cool to watch but being too close is asking to catch some flack.

Besides if you blow your self up who will sponsor the tri-barrel shotgun?

Good point...
Glad to hear someone likes my idea... wonder if I should put info up on that sometime...
beh... I'll do it later, I don't plan on sponsering it until after 2.0...

I don't want to blow up caps, thats why I want to learn how to charge them right.

btw, we got our large banks of soda-can sized caps and old X-ray machine along with tons of other interesting components!

also, you made have heard our exploding capacitors, in some of my sounds right alongside pencil sharpeners, paper punches, metal scrapes, chains, keyrings, etc, etc

Don't bother with multistage guns now. They require a bit of electronics know how and experience. A single stage coilgun is very simple it involves these:
A coil wrapped around a barrel
A ferrous projectile inside the barrel
A bank of capactitors
A DC powersupply with a voltage output a bit lower than the rating on the caps. (I won't explain how to rig caps to get higher volts right now)
Some cables and croc clips and stuff.
My switch was just touching two wires together by hand. Highly insulated of course!!!

To be safe and as you are still learning, make sure you are using a low voltage DC powersupply! <50v
Connectyour caps together in parallel keeping all the + legs on one conductor, wire, rail, whatever you call it and all teh - legs on another conductor. If you are neat, you should have two wires coming out of yuor capacitor bank. One should be red and caonnected to all the capacitors' + terminals, the other black and connected to all the - sides. Never reverse the polarity with electrolytic caps!

If you now joined up your powersupply output with it's + to your CB's + and it's - to the CB's - (duh), you'd be chargin up the CB (capacitor bank). I would advise you break one of the charging leads with a resistor to limit the load on your poor power supply. Also use your multimeter to show the CB voltage at all times. When it's voltage is equal to the PS output, its fully charged! When your bank is charged, you can discharge it across that coil or some spare change or whatever!
If you know anything about leectrical stuff, this should be very simple to make!
You can get a powersupply just about anywhere! PC powersupply, or one of the black box transformer things that everyone uses around the house for electronic devices. Printers have ones that provide 20v and up. Just try to use a resistor to limit drain on the thing or you will exeed it's wattage and it will not last too long.

As long as you stay low voltage, you shouldn't be albe to electrocute yourself... Just remember to watch outt for that flying projectile as well! It's easy to forget that sometimes, just sometimes, your project actually works when you're least expecting it!

Thanks DC. I didn't really want to do anything with them until I knew what I was doing. Unfortunately, I have very little knowledge of electricity and I was just kind of planning on learning off of these things.

I think I'll be able to figure it out from here.

You have an x-ray machine?! Thats pretty cool.

it came to us in pieces covered in oil and stuff.. froth *shudders*

Bet that was fun to clean up.

X-ray machine, that has to be a great xmas present, heh.

What would you do with an x-ray machine, anyways?

use the caps in it of course