I’ve always been a fan of high voltage systems; something about that rush of electricity just gets me on the edge of my seat.
And projects like this only make me do more dangerous things; if you see me out with the high voltage warnings, it’s probably going to be some fun stuff:
Flat Ring Launcher
That’s a flat aluminum washer being launched by inducing eddy currents in it; it’s filed at 240 frames per second (FPS), and at 1.8 meters to that piece of wood works out to roughly 14.4 meters per second (m/s)
This is not full power; we blew the launching rig apart on our way to getting there. This is also just a single capacitor on what will, in the end way down the line, be a large array feeding a set of rails mounted to the roof of my truck (Railgun v3.0). So why isn’t this project called Railgun? Well, I want this capacitor bank to be usable for a lot of things: Blast Art, Can / Quarter crushing, Electrokinetic Acceleration, Plasma Accelerators, and good 'ole fashion making big sparks because one can.
To make all of these things work reliably in a large bank means making modules that take into account their needs; a Railgun needs a longer pulse length than an eddy current ring launcher, and the can crusher has to run at a lower energy than the quarter system to prevent blowing the looser coils apart.
I started with a system from Information Unlimited to get off the ground; it’s got it’s problems, and the original jigs it came with are simply too weak for a lot of the energy being run through (we did blow one apart after all). I remade some over the years with things like heavier gauge wires, and better mounts, but in the end what will make a bigger difference will be things like adjustable inductance to prevent a fast rise time, and a Marx style capacitor configuration where one can “bolt on” additional capacitor modules without having to change anything in the configuration.
I’ll post updates here as I go along; in the interim here’s a photo of things we destroyed last Saturday when I had the rig outside.
Cheers,
~H