Capacitor bank discharge

[Diddleshot]

Dangerous things, I don't recommend shorting yourself on one of these.

[123legalos]

OMG i was messing around while vid was loading and at 0:05 u can see a bright light lol. awsomness

[Coiltec]

I think that are very old capacitors(high ESR). With new capacitors the bang will be much louder. Also, for 540J nowadays you need only one or two capacitors of the same size as the ones in the video.

[cumesoftware]

@Coiltec Indeed. Low ESR capacitors deliver a much higher current in a shorter period of time, since the current is less limited by the internal series resistance of those capacitors.

[StewartSpicerGaming]

@Coiltec The video was 3 years old when you posted this, buddy...

[sargeantneo]

i expected a bigger bang

[gcruzatto]

sweeeeeeeeeet

in my opinion, that´s what capacitors are made for ^^

[radudman]

yea nice bank but not really safe 2 short em out like that....could heat up hugely. or the wood might have some moisture in it...lol

[HLSDK]

I wouldn't normally worry about heating, but you're entirely right. Discharging it as fast as possible does mean quite a bit of current is flowing. I would be worried that - and this may be a stupid concern - that the inductance in the metal that you use to short out these electrolytic capacitors with will cause a back-emf, effectively applying negative voltage to the positive terminal.

Or I have it all bass-ackwards and the EMF would not reverse polarity of the electrolytics. Hmmm...

[genesis1357]

it shouldn't. that would be like trying to reverse the polarity of a regular 1.5v battery. as long as the capacitor bank used electrolytic capacitors, u won't rev. the polarity.

now if you were using non electrolytic capacitors, then it wouldn't even matter. so u dont really need to worry about it, mate.

[rgsgww]

can u tell me your setup???

[Fastenjaw]

Use a high wattage resistor of the correct value for a safe discharge. That way you don't have to risk frying the ones you have.

[AlessandroAUS]

Thats stupid, decent capacitors are either hard to come by or expensive. Thats a good way to kill your bank quickily

[bauerb2]

i have that same multimeter

[tylerlavite]

thats a nice cap bank man

[Bryceyc]

....K