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Registered Member #5323
Joined: Fri Jun 15 2012, 02:14PM
Location:
Posts: 104
In the HV forum, I said I'd post a picture of the 10 monster caps, once installed. Here they are. I was fortunate to have bought these as surplus used by Lawrence Berkley Labs. Each cap is rated at 41kV @ 7.5uf. Built this special wooden cradle made of 6x6 and 6x4 lumber to support the 1450 lbs of weight. This cap bank will be used to help characterize the performance of a proprietary charging circuit. First order of business is safety. I am in the process of characterizing each cap's discharge curve independently from one another to make sure there are no obvious problems and to ensure these used caps work properly before allowing them to be charged up anywhere near maximum specs. Starting with 16kV and charting each cap's discharge curve. If any of the caps have a problem, hopefully there will be a clue in the discharge curve. The only time I plan to interact with the charged capacitor bank is when I use a chicken stick to "throw the switch" to discharge the caps to a zero volt state - I may wear the gloves as an extra measure of safety if the charge on the caps is very high. I will only actually perform work on the capacitors when each is confirmed to be fully discharged by a jumper installed between the positive and negative terminals. Interestingly, these metal caps 'sweat', they easily condense humidity into water on the outer casing.
Registered Member #1403
Joined: Tue Mar 18 2008, 06:05PM
Location: Denmark, Odense C
Posts: 1968
It seems that you have plenty of distance with the isolators to the bar.
Do you have anything in place to avoid swinging caps from bumping into each other, large enough short circuit currents can move conductors around violently due to>
I am looking forward to see what kind of discharge, switch, safety and monitoring systems you develop in this project :)
Registered Member #5323
Joined: Fri Jun 15 2012, 02:14PM
Location:
Posts: 104
Mads:
You bring up a very interesting point about a discharge (if large enough) causing movement of the caps. Right now I am relying on the shear weight of the caps (145 lbs each) to keep them hanging straight down and doing my best to avoid any sudden discharges. Your point is appreciated that a large enough discharge could potentially cause some unintended movement. You have given me something to think about.
Registered Member #1381
Joined: Fri Mar 07 2008, 05:24PM
Location: Hungary
Posts: 74
960 Joules of stored energy (at 16KV) can be really dangerous ( one could die 5 times in a row :P), also these doesn't really seem to be pulse rated caps. Be very careful, cause if overloaded/reverse polarized these things can blow right up, without any notice spraying hot oil and molten metal in a great distance. I wouldn't try to charge these to more then 1kV for testing purposes (still around 4J of energy)
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10 HV monster caps (1450 lbs) installed on a cradle
