BIG capacitor bank

hehe i was just stirring him - I know they are more commonly referred to as ceramic resistors - I have a really big one which is an aluminium clad 200W ceramic resistor. 30K to discharge the bank

Project is on hold until I finish Thor. I'm sure you guys would rather see some pretty coherent photons, then me blowing stuff up with a 2.4 kj cap bank.

^ Then, you want also build a "Thor Hammer" ?

(you know, lightlings and thunders ..... )

Lol yes but for that I'll need a potential transformer or a pole pig

Major update for this folks - I've been sick and havent been able to work on lasers or electronics, but my doctor "found the trojan and fixed it good". I'm now well and playing with the power tools and stuff needed to make this bank.

I have a few youtube videos to show!

First of all, helping a fellow youtuber with his bank...



Second, a half bussed bank... I need to jump the two copper bars in the middle...


and third, I put my arduino to good use and check my caps to make sure they're ok (they were purchased on ebay after all!). The screen grab shown before you play this video shows high - the arduino needs to take a few readings (and it takes a while with this big a "capacitor), to get an average. Its around 14600uf. That will be a tonne of energy at 850v!


Since I'm going to keep the arduino capacitance meter (I'll box it up with a rechargeable battery pack and some banana jacks) I'll have to buy another arduino. All the sequencing for my bank will be handled with an arduino - it'll make it tonnes easier than doing it with descrete components.

Hopefully soon I will be able to do some destruction with it on youtube and post it here.

edit:
Big update - arduino is almost code complete. Apart from getting and programming a rotary encoder (which I have yet to buy), this shows the system working. I didnt demonstrate all the modes, just the firing sequence. It behaves in similar fashion to The Geek Groups Thumper, 3 blasts on an alarm then fires the bank.



The next step is to get the SCR trigger board made, and put the mess of wires that you see in the above video A) nice and neat and B) into the nice box seen in the video on the top of this post. I may also go for a 4x20 LCD and have a bargraph for charge level.

The bank charging box now has its own dedicated LED voltmeter, independant of the controlbox, and it will always display the bank voltage so long as the master arming key is in the arm position.

The charging box (consisting of the relayboard, interlock board and mazzilli flyback inverter) is house in here, along with a 5V regulator for the LED display.