Selling 3.5kv 50uf maxwell energy discharge cap

Not a laser I know, but it's still pretty cool. For those who don't know this cap can be used to blow up fruit and explode things like wires/tinfoil strips. It's really quite awesome seeing a thin strip of tinfoil or wire vanish in flash of blue light with a thunderous bang louder than most firecrackers. Also when shorted through a typical diode it literally blows the thing to bits. See youtube for videos of HV caps exploding stuff.:evil::evil: This thing also has a ton of interesting HV applications if you aren't interested in blowing stuff up. Possible uses in VT tesla coils, radar?, anything requiring Filtered HV DC.

This is a big maxwell labs energy discharge cap rated at 3.5KV 50uf. I've discharged it about 20 times blowing fruit and stuff up with no ill effect on it. Measured it with my multimeter and it showed 48.0uf. It can be yours for $75 (or best offer) shipped assuming that you live in the US. This is a great price compared to what you'll find similar caps on ebay for. I'm selling it cause after having some fun with it it's sat in my closet for like a year unused. Pm me with offers if you want it.

!!!WARNING!!! Do NOT buy this if you don't know how to safely charge, use and discharge this cap. General high voltage knowledge required. If you screw up with this YOU WILL BE DEAD in the blink of an eye! Also eye/hearing protection should be used if you blow stuff up with it.

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This has got to be the scariest thing i have ever seen FS here..

*Hats off to you good Sir

Consider keeping a 10 MegOhm or less resistor across that beast as a bleeder resistor.
That is a bad news cap.

HMike

Hemlock_Mike said:

Consider keeping a 10 MegOhm or less resistor across that beast as a bleeder resistor.
That is a bad news cap.

HMike

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I had one back when I was actually using this thing. Even after letting it sit for a while unused I'll quickly cross a screwdriver over the terminals just to make sure. Some caps are weird and can rebuild a charge somehow just sitting around. Fortunately this one doesn't seem to do that. You can never be TOO paranoid with these big scary capacitors.

Btw fully charged to 3.5kv this packs 306 joules of energy. A typical camera flash cap contains like 7. That should give you an idea of what this thing can do.

I know I would be uneasy selling that to anyone unless I was sure the buyer had high voltage experience.

Razako said:

I had one back when I was actually using this thing. Even after letting it sit for a while unused I'll quickly cross a screwdriver over the terminals just to make sure. Some caps are weird and can rebuild a charge somehow just sitting around. Fortunately this one doesn't seem to do that. You can never be TOO paranoid with these big scary capacitors.

Btw fully charged to 3.5kv this packs 306 joules of energy. A typical camera flash cap contains like 7. That should give you an idea of what this thing can do.

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Dont use a screw driver. Just throw steel wool over it. the most it can do is light the steel wool up. It will stop burning after a while...
But capacitors dont Charge by themselves. Its not possible. Or the world could have a huge 100terrafarad capacitor and leave it there. Then after a while, it will have enough power to power the world

They don't charge themselves but sometimes they aren't fully discharged.

Its called dielectric absorption or for old timers 'soakage' IIRC.

Typical in old high voltage caps. Oil filled and paper being the notorious ones of the bunch.

wannaburn said:

Its called dielectric absorption or for old timers 'soakage' IIRC.

Typical in old high voltage caps. Oil filled and paper being the notorious ones of the bunch.

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Thank you. They can indeed regenerate a charge depending on the cap.

I found a SWEET electronics warehouse where I'm moving, and they have boxes full of HUGE caps, and I'm sure some are like this. It's literally like 20,000 square feet of small electronic components. This includes, of course, lots of LM317s and laser stuff. I almost picked some up, but I got a new solder tip instead. Maybe I'll build a fruit exploder with some capacitors like that