Aluminum Electrolytics

From: John Lawson <jpl15_at_panix.com>
Date: Sat Feb 7 10:32:44 2004

On Sat, 7 Feb 2004, J.C. Wren wrote:

> der Mouse wrote:
>
> >
> >What was a 1.36 kilocoulomb bank used for, anyway? Railgun?
> >
> >/~\ The ASCII der Mouse


> >
> I'd guess a medium power laser.
>
> --jc
>

 We were charging magnet structures for speaker design and development.
The capacitors were 'dumped' thru a coil of 3/8" x 1/4" copper bar-stock,
using a small GE distribution-type oil circuit breaker to close the loop.
The magnet assemblies were placed inside this coil, then the switch
closed. We could get 6 to 9 Tesla in the gaps this way.

  The power supply I built to charge the bank suffered a partial regulator
failure (I was using 4 type 6080 tubes as pass elements) and began putting
out high ripple. The caps were 800VDC 850V max rated, and the ripple
exceeded this and gradually degraded a couple of them until they failed -
spectacularly. Damn fine thing I wasn't actually close to the bank when
it detonated - there was shrapnel and cpacitor-guts-fluff all over
everywhere.

 Sorry for the topic drift - I tried to tie this in with classiccmp,
but....



Cheerz

John
Received on Sat Feb 07 2004 - 10:32:44 GMT