Dumb Capacitor Bank Question

[RedCowboy]

Man sure has developed an ability and an appetite to create some nasty stuff. Hope we don't ever (need to?) see it used.

That's a noble concept, but with Iran going hot I would bet we are headed for some nasty days ahead, make preparations for you and your loved ones to attempt to survive...I need to update my iodine tablets.

 

[Alaskan]

Individuality allows us to be nasty to one another, i.e. "well, if you do that to me, I will do this to you!".... and around and around it can go, until one of the two (or more) are dead. I guess mankind will survive itself, simply due to the number of us, difficult to completely kill the whole species off, but I bet we could reduce the numbers to 1 percent or less in a all out war using nukes.

 

[Andrew124C41]

Hey everybody!

I am currently in the process of trying to build a solid state laser that is pumped by a charge of flash powder. Usually, people just use flashlamps to pump ruby and such, but if I can get a flash powder setup working, it would be cheap and scalable for LARGE chunks of laser glass and other media.

Obviously my biggest obstacle is in the timescales. I need my powder to fully combust on a timescale comparable to the fluorescence decay lifetime of the lasing energy level of my lasing medium in order to achieve a population inversion. Flash powder is NOT an explosive, so sticking a fuse in the charge definitely is not going to cut it. My idea is to run a thin wire down the length of the charge, and then vaporize it with a very short pulse from a capacitor bank. Will it work? Who knows...but I'm willing to try.

So on to the question. In a flashlamp capacitor bank circuit, a HV pulse is used to ionize the gas in the tube to make it conduct, allowing the capacitors to always be hooked up to the lamp. I obviously cannot do this in my flash powder setup, and if use a switch I'll likely just blow up the contacts instead of quickly setting off my charge. I really don't care if I burn through switches quickly, I just want to make sure the majority of my capacitor energy goes into my flash powder. What kind of circuit do I need to build to achieve this? I'd really appreciate any help!

I suspect you may have seen these but if not, Information Unlimited has an example of what you want along with Marx generators and capacitor banks, and HV chargers. Wire Detonator/URL], [URL="http://www.amazing1.com/categories/high-voltage-products/triggers-ignitors-cdi.html"]Trigers, Marx Generators, Spark Gap up to 100kV, 100 pps

 

[OVNI]

Reminds me of these lyrics ...

EDIT: Cool, 100th post

 

[WizardG]

"Hmm if only there was an electricity conductive FP"

Flash powder is usually about half magnesium dust which conducts quite well. Throwing a kilovolt or so at a line of the stuff should get you a very satisfactory flash. You might also consider using a small flashlamp as a triggered spark gap to switch your capacitor bank into your ignition wire.