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Registered Member #10
Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 09:45AM
Location: Bunbury, Australia
Posts: 1424
Not such a bad idea to have a backwards facing smoke ring machine with the usual red illumination and a strobed tail. My strobe is a 1500W one picked up in a surplus store for $190. It was a hit with the kids on my open day trying to play catch with a strobed ball. Very hard!
However I did post this in the HV section and the capacitor bank next to the car is actually attached. If you look carefully you can just see a fine wire from the top of the upper copper strap to the car roof. This is an EXPLODING WIRE LIGHTNING SIMULATOR. Ooooohhhh
Lets fire off 5kJ into a 2 foot iron wire in daylight. The iron wire gives the sparkles effect. This is taken with a Nikon D300 with a 2 second exposure backed right off to f22. Cap bank is 220uF charged to 7kV
The second picture shows the same shot through a neutral density filter - actually some aluminum foil coated plastic used for wrapping flowers over the lens. This shows the central arc channel clearly. Same exposure settings. I have not done current measurements yet but this cap bank has been measured at over 100kA which is the same as lightning current but for a shorter duration.
Now I need to optimise length of the spark channel and make it go to ground over the tyre. I will need to experiment with this. I suspect that adding inductance will lower the peak current (but not total energy). It may be useful to allow the inductive kickback to bridge developing gaps better. Whether this is outweighed by the slower onset of peak current and hence greater wire separation remains to be seen. I have this beaut air cored 10 turn inductor that looks good for 200kA that may be help or maybe the inductance of the longer leads will be enough.
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A car project ... an exploding wire lightning simulator
