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Registered Member #1430
Joined: Sun Apr 06 2008, 11:12AM
Location: Ã…rhus, Denmark
Posts: 102
hey everyone. i have been using the flash of a disposable camera as a coilgun trigger(hook the capacitors to the tube and flash it) for a while, one of my friends told me im losing a lot of energy this way, is it better to just touch the wires together?
Registered Member #952
Joined: Mon Aug 13 2007, 11:07AM
Location: Finland
Posts: 388
I can agree to all that Bjørn said. In my first coilgun I used flash switch too, but man was the efficiency poor! Buying a SCR is highly suggested, but if you can't get one, you could also use a quite heavy (some Amps@230V) mechanical switch for low energy systems (<50J)
Registered Member #1471
Joined: Tue May 06 2008, 03:17AM
Location: Irvine, California
Posts: 13
isn't there a manual switch on the disposable camera, you know, when you press the take photo button it would not only trigger the shutters but also trigger a mechanical switch? There should be something like that on the board. Its a low voltage contact switch, you can use any regular switch in its place by soldering wire to it, connecting up any switch of your choice. For my first coil gun I just bought a small pushbutton from radio shack to use as a trigger. I soldered some wires to the contacts on the board, and soldered the wires to the pushbutton.
just use that instead of the flash tube. In fact, remove the tube altogether. What i did for my coil gun i removed the tube, and put my coil in its place. The coil is triggered only by the mechanical contact switch on the board.
Registered Member #540
Joined: Mon Feb 19 2007, 07:49PM
Location: MIT
Posts: 969
zephir wrote ...
isn't there a manual switch on the disposable camera, you know, when you press the take photo button it would not only trigger the shutters but also trigger a mechanical switch? There should be something like that on the board. Its a low voltage contact switch, you can use any regular switch in its place by soldering wire to it, connecting up any switch of your choice. For my first coil gun I just bought a small pushbutton from radio shack to use as a trigger. I soldered some wires to the contacts on the board, and soldered the wires to the pushbutton.
just use that instead of the flash tube. In fact, remove the tube altogether. What i did for my coil gun i removed the tube, and put my coil in its place. The coil is triggered only by the mechanical contact switch on the board.
The coil doesn't need a trigger. If you just put it in the place of the flash tube then it goes directly across the capacitor and the trigger won't do anything. The flash tube has a very high resistance before the gas inside it has ionized. A coil will have a low resistance.
Mechanical switches work well. To increase the efficiency, you would want the switch to close as fast as possible. You also don't want the contacts to bounce.
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flash switch
