Capacitor Detonation Circuit

[Pilot53]

Me and a friend are building a circuit that can be used to blow capacitors and other old electronic parts just for fun but Im not sure if we are doing it right. We have a transformer that steps down the ac current to 24v, and then it is rectified so we are getting about 17.6v of dc out of it. Then we have it connected to an enormous bank of 40 10,000uf capacitors wired in parallel.(these are not the ones we are blowing up) We have a few switches that disconnect the cap bank from the rest of the circuit. The idea is that we will charge the bank and then disconnect from the circuit by turning off one switch, and then the cap we are trying to blow will be connected to wires leading off of the 40 capacitor bank. Sofar when we do this nothing has been happening, whats wrong?

[eligray]

It will just charge the other capacitor...

Additional Comment:

and look into supercapacitors if you're looking to do this stuff. They hold hundreds of times more charge

[Danman589019]

Won't enough current to charge the additional capacitor just be released while the rest store the remainder?

[onewecallgod]

Originally Posted by Danman589019

Won't enough current to charge the additional capacitor just be released while the rest store the remainder?

Exactly. The cap you want to blow is just going to charge up until it's full. You blow a cap by running too much voltage through it, or discharge and recharging it really, really fast.

[Saibot]

If you want to blow up capacitors, you're going to need high voltage, not high current.

Look into camera flash chargers. they can generally put out ~350 volts (DC) from a 1.5v dc input, and pretty cheap. Hook up the outputs of afew of these in series and you'd be getting more than 1000 volts instantly.

dont even bother with using a capacitor bank to blow up capacitors. only use a bank if you want to blow a hole in a piece of metal or something (but you gotta make sure you dont go over the voltage specification of these caps or THEY WILL BLOW UP... and having 40 caps blow up is NOT cool)!.

what you're doing right now is simply charging the other capacitors lol (fail).

[treysoucie]

would a cheapo tazer/stun gun work? they put out around 100k volts

[Pilot53]

What do they use to get the voltage that high?

[Danman589019]

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~antoon/circ/hv/hv.html
http://www3.telus.net/chemelec/Proje...n/Stun-Gun.htm