Bug zapper gets a microwave transformer upgrade
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- Опубликовано: 10 июл 2024
- What do you do with a dead electric fly killer if you have a couple of microwave oven transformers lying about? You give it an upgrade, of course!
Check out • Wasps vs a 4400 volt b... if you want to see this zapper go to town on a wasp nest.
INDEX
0:00 Index
0:17 Introduction: A dead electric fly killer
3:05 Inside: lighting ballast and HV unit
6:42 Testing with a 150W-ballasted MOT
8:09 MOT supply wiring
9:47 Testing with TWO 150W-ballasted MOTs 
Наука
That's the big problem with flies. When you go to test a bug-zapper there are never any around. For reference, the insectocutor lamps are apparently just blacklight tubes, but the version without the dark filter glass.
Yeah. Flies sucks anyway.
you know what's funny, from the beginning of this video I was thinking I wonder if big Clive & this guy know/watch each others content & sure enough first comment I come across is from you LOL
@@pcparlor why???
Thanks to this, my rude neighbor no longer tries to come in my screen door without permission.
I think that will actually zap small birds, not just insects..
lol
Pretty sure it'll zap humans too dude
Use an electric fence power supply and chicken wire grid kills anything that flies into it.
BEyond what i want to play with ..
i was thinking the same thing, until i noticed another feral cat leaving diarrhea in my yard, which got me thinking.....
Genius episode. Man, I love seeing topics like this, which give me ideas of what to do in my spare time.
Brilliant work ! same concept as my wasp zapper which works very well awaiting next summer wasp activity.
4 kV may be a bit on the high side for the grid spacing. Perhaps use one ballast on the 240 Volts supply to drive both MOT's.
I was half expecting to have to variac the supply down, but the 4kV seems just about right, albeit with a hair trigger :D
Cool idea using the ballast ....I wanna build one but using a capacitor to do some vaporization
"Good thing it didn't catch fire... So let me replace it with an MOT!"
Making sure that there will be a fire during the next malfunction?
I like it when the Zapper is so scary the flys don't even bother coming around anymore.
Problem with an unballasted MOT at rated voltage is the huge magnetising power - one I measured drew over 100 watts with no load on the output, which soon overheats the MOT if there is no fan cooling. The MOT has minimum iron and minimum copper/aluminium.
Solution - use two MOTs with primaries in SERIES (and anti-phase). The two MOT cores are connected together as before. HV output is now about 1000V from each MOT, but about 2000V between HV outputs, so connect the two HV outputs to the killing grid. No-load draw is now about 8 watts per MOT at half voltage, with no ballasts required and no significant long-term heating, but you still get your full 2000V (at somewhat reduced current) for fly-killing. Magnetising power is hugely reduced because the iron core is taken out of saturation, from about 2 Tesla at full voltage to about 1 Tesla at half voltage.
And - one hand in your pocket is a good idea because a hand-to-hand shock from a MOT source will very likely cause cardiac arrest as well as serious burns to your fingers.
Many years ago a friend and I "uprated" an insectocutor.... it was dc but with a largish value capacitor on the output and a highish current limit.... bugs would get zapped with a huge bang that could be heard around the house... unfortunately moths would often catch fire and fly around the kitchen in flames....
Sounds like yours was the inspiration for the BBC 2 ident :)
ruclips.net/video/nPrdWH7m4pc/видео.html
"unfortunately moths would often catch fire and fly around the kitchen in flames...." That would be funny to see on video!
@@abysspegasusgaming perhaps not so funny for the moth.(??)
If you are going to kill something kill it humanely.
@@davidfarmer2049 LOL seriously? That's like saying "guns kill people" when humans kill humans without much of a fuck given.
Nice
Very nice, though it could do with a bit of capacitance across the grid to make it a bit more snappy.
A lot of these small transformers have a integrated thermal fuse on the primary winding, and now add a bridge rectifier and a large high voltage capacitor, thumbs up :)
Down Under we have a "fly problem" (don't you know!), and the commercial stuff (even when modded with "a few" HV ceramics, "just because") is often not up to it. I've designed many Cockroft-Walton ladder systems which do work very well, but my "best" (from an entertainment viewpoint) used an NST with a nice big HV cap. bank for storage (and a decent (25mm) grid spacing). Not so efficient for the smaller stuff, but the big stuff really went with a bang (and a bit of a splatter). Amazing how much juiciness our larger insect life contain :-)
Wow, that's friggin nice. I have these euro wasp and when we turn on the flood lights they come to it. I got a zapper and it's doing the job but nothing like that. That hook up is very nice. No survivors with that hook up.
Keep in mind the air gap spacing between the grid is designed specifically for that voltage at varying humidity. Once a spark initiates you will see all sorts of arcs.
You could make it more like a hand held zapper by rectifying the output of the transformer and then using the rectified voltage to charge a high voltage capacitor. A bank of the metal capacitors you also find inside a microwave should be pretty powerful ;) Aim less for extremely high voltage and more for instantaneous current... BAM!
11:58
Electrons: What is the shortest path?
Another electron: Maybe this one....?
Man that's gnarly. I've love to see the bugs getting smoked. Maybe remove some of the grating so bigger bugs can get in and be smoked. Bet that would throw off smoke.
I have a vintage flowtron bug zapper, lantern style and I've had it for maybe 35 years and still works to this day. I had to fix it a few times. It has 5600 volts at maybe 10mA.
Very good.
Now that is one great invention. A real mans bug zapper!
If you like this, you'll love RODALCO2007's wasp killers. Here's his latest (although I prefer the arcing of his earlier AC versions) ruclips.net/video/22_7W1r0D-Y/видео.html
AintBigAintClever Holy sh*t! He added some capacitance and explodes these little bastards
Heh, now that's what you call a bug zapper. Might be worth measuring the current going through that choke as the 150w rating is really meant for the quite low arc voltage of a SON/ MBI lamp. If it still kicks out 1.8 amps when you pull 240v through it that's quite a bit more than 150w!
Love that "fuse" i remember my dad telling me that his dad used to put tinfoil on fuses. Scary!
Nice mod. Nice "fuse" in that plug as well. :)
I need to make one for my garage at night. I have a dedicated 120v+120v 30A socket for stuff like this, and I have six MOTs...
I also want to make one that uses my 35uF 5KV capacitor...
Luke Den Hartog try bear bait because that seems overkill for a few flies
This is overkill. A bug desintegrator.
Can't understand how did you connected the ballast to the trasformer. Is it just in series? and what kind of "ballast" is it?
In series on the LV side. It's just a metal halide lamp ballast.
@@AintBigAintClever Thank you! I have the exact same lamp and I was thinking about an "upgrade" because some bugs got simply stunned by it. Need definitely more power :) #lol
a great way to dispose of small hedge parts just burn them up!
Hello Mr, I need to know this wiring diagram..
Does the secondary of that transformer have a capacitor inside? I have an old vintage flowtron zapper that the transformer no longer zaps but the lights work. I might take it apart and see.
Which transformer, the original one? Don't know, there was a cap across the grid connections which blew itself to bits, though.
Methinks you have converted the bug zapper into a small bird zapper!
Awesome!
Combine the microwave transfirmer with the diode and the capacitor and it will instantly vaporize the bugs. 😁
I don't know about UK, but I have fixed a number of transformers in Canada by unwrapping some of the insulator around the primary and replacing the embedded thermal fuse that was just under some wraps and in series with the primary.
I recall a NAD amplifier with integrated primary thermal fuse... Isn't that a British company?
Awesomeness!!!!
Nice leaf zapper
Does a good job on wasps too, check through my newer videos where a nest was built just a few feet from where this one was filmed.
A n00b question:
Why do I need ballast for inductive load or huge resistive load?
The ballast is there to limit the current. I BELIEVE (in other words I've been told) that an arc (be it in air or in a lamp) is practically a dead short. The ballast controls the current because the arc can't do it itself. In this case it's not because it's inductive or resistive, it's just because the arc on the secondary would pull too much current without the ballast (also known as a choke, and perhaps now you know why it's called that).
Without ballast the MOT takes as much current from the mains as it gets. That creates incredible arcs, but triggers the fuse and/or burns out the MOT very quickly without proper cooling. Especially the secondary is made from very thin wire and cannot withstand arcing longer than a few seconds.
if you take the ballast away like people have said the secondary winding would get cooked or the grid itself would melt and fall apart (if the transformer whitstood the heat for long enough time for that to happen), don't forget if you don't have any current limiter of any type in a circuit and you put a short circuit load on in, according to ohm's law it would give you infinite current, at 4000 volts it would destroy anything fast since there is a lot of tension present...
What's normally in a microwave is a voltage doubler circuit, right? And DC. That would also give you like 4kV but with a bit more bang I imagine
I've just looked up a microwave oven schematic and you're right. The MOT connects across a cap and a diode, with the magnetron across the diode. On once half of the cycle the capacitor charges through the diode, on the other half the capacitor adds itself to the voltage from the MOT.
The will probably make the zapper a bit more aggressive ;)
I quite like the aggression of the 4kV AC version, it's a softer, gentler form of instant death :D
True, it would kinda scare me to be honest
Thank u
I don't think you are going to catch many insects without UV tubes. Some poor insect is going to have a very bad day if it wants to be curious. ;)
I plan to build one of these for zapping. European hornet's and anything else for fun. I have a 400watt mhl to use as light to bring them in and other mhl ballast laying around. However all the ballast I have do not look as clean as that one. do you think that kind of mhl ballast made for 240 will work as a choke for 120v ? I feel like it may not give me the desired burn as if it was on 240.
I expect it'll do the job, I was going to say obviously at reduced power but I could be completely wrong on that. Inductors were never something I got my head round at school. The basics of transformers and motors fair enough, but chokes and tuning coils and stuff? Nope.
Give it a go outdoors, worst it can do (unless you go sticking your fingers in) is catch fire.
What happens if the light cuts on but the zap part does not work??? What would cause this??
In bug zappers there are two separate systems; a fluorescent tube driver (which in some units is electronic and in others a magnetic ballast with starter) and the high voltage generator. One can fail independently of the other. That's what happened to this one.
Nice a bug zapper that will also "zap" humans.
I'm surprised that the high voltage didn't affect the fluorescent tubes, being in such close proximity.
It may be because the average voltage between the grids and the tubes is very low. At the peak of one cycle you've got a row of wires at about 2800 volts (based on 2kV AC RMS), with another row of wires in between those wires at MINUS 2800 volts.
The transformer needs to be cooled actively!!!
The transformer stayed relatively cool without it.
Several viewers have left comments suggesting the use of a capacitor to make your bug sizzler into a bug ZAPPER. I suppose it is just a matter of individual preference, yours being less noisy operation compared to those having a capacitor. Is this correct or is there something else? Something else I am wondering is if these transformers are duty cycle rated and whether or not the use of a capacitor impacts the workload and heat generated by a transformer?
Take a look at RODALCO2007's experiments with wasp zapping, he's done both with and without capacitors. I prefer AC with no capacitor. Humming arcs instead of angry sparks :)
I'm making one for squirrels.
Brilliant! I noticed you have a 'safety' grill on the outside!
We have serious Euro Wasp problem here in Austalia, so much so that when we had a bbq on a lovely summer afternoon there were no "Blowflies", but thousands of those pesky wasps!
i wish i were able to find the nest but am unable to. :(
Will try designing one with some tasty wasp bait in the middle of the electrified zone, and see what happens!
Take a look at some of RODALCO2007's wasp-killing contraptions. They stung the wrong guy!
i hate bugs so much i find this a good tool specially for those annoying bugs that enter tv sets (thrips) i would love to see them go in there and explode to bits of shit...
I love projects with MOTs but I am rightfully terrified of messing with them. I have a spare MOT laying around. I want to know if it's possible to place a wire along the top of my dividing wall from the output of said MOT to deter cats from walking across it and weeing up the side of my house. O.o :)
My previous employer had a commercial bug zapper on a wall near the back doors. Directly under that zapper was a cardboard bailer (you can see where this is going) I watched one day as I was passing it, a large, fat, fluffy bumble bee meet an unfortunate end in it and it caught fire. Luckily it remained stuck inside the unit but from that one can see how avoidable fires can take hold in commercial and industrial settings just by careless design.
Definitely not an MOT, it'll kill anything that touches it.
Two wires connected to the circuit out of a hand-held bug zapper would be a different matter.
The entirely legal way to deter cats would be something like a PestBye motion activated sprinkler. Cats don't like getting accosted by a water jet.
hi,i would like to ask :i found at ebay this transformer "Neon Transformer 4000V30mA50W"can i use it direct on the grids?will be ok?Thank you.
Sounds like it would do the job nicely.
thank you for the answer!i would like to ask you if i will use the Transformer 4000V30mA50W is it necessary to connect a capacitor or a resistance at the output and after on the grid?or just connect the output wires on the grids(will this damage the Transformer or is ok)?thank you!!
I'd expect a neon transformer to handle it as-is. An arc in a tube or an arc in free air, should all appear the same surely?
Awesome. Bring on the bugs! Need to see bug death!
How many volts is that total
About 4400 volts AC I think (2 x 2200 volts).
This is a great project for kids 👧
weak trolling/jokes over here
Your Subaru is junk
Your just evil....good :-D
I expected a switchmode booster + diode/cap multiplyer in that.
i would guess the winding ratio and saw off the primary E section off the dead 2k transformer, then glue the primary E section off another transformer to it.
Yes im nasty :-D
Those transformers would make a good multimeter insulation tester lol :-D, Bzzzzzzz.
Not so many microwave transformers about now, inverters have replaced them :-(
whose still watching in 2021
Smells like BBQ
Wasps are beneficial insects.
You knows!
more like a bird or squirrel zapper if you take that grate off the front of it. lol
It'd zap pretty much anything without that grate on it. Evil bloody thing :D
AintBigAintClever roast a fish or something. It'll be fun. 😂
actually 4KV with that grid spacing is not good. the arc will eventually either melt the grid or burn out the transformer. The 2KV was plenty. it can vcertainly kill a humand so flies will not be able to with stand it.
16:15: Sounds like it's receiving radio wave static. :D
I bet it's generating more than it's receiving :D
Do the smell of frying buddies bfng in more business?
They certainly weren't best pleased at the barbecue going on just outside their nest.
did this dude even need a bug zapper ffs!?
Does this answer your question ffs!?
ruclips.net/video/UDDhcDnJ8KI/видео.html
Will this make toast?
It's more likely to set fire to the bread than toast it. Wasps, on the other hand, it toasts nicely. They decided to set up a nest literally just above where it's hanging on the line in the video. Turns out they're attracted to the light and really don't like seeing their nest mates getting zapped. Video coming soon.
at 15:29 did that throw a breaker lol
Nope. The original power feed is used for the lights but can be switched separately from the transformer feed. I've done another video using this unit, because two years later and just a few feet from where this was being filmed a wasp nest appeared. ruclips.net/video/UDDhcDnJ8KI/видео.html
Hate to be a wet blanket but you are running it at double design voltage, not surprising you are producing travelling arcs up the grid uprights. And no doubt causing massive radio interference! Spark transmitter? Also 5 mA maximum output is for a reason. Kill bugs, not you. 75 mA will kill you for sure. Stick to the design voltage and current limit for safety!
This is so blursed
Too bad all I see you are burning your leaves no bugs
Check out my other video. Wasps came. Lots of wasps.
ruclips.net/video/UDDhcDnJ8KI/видео.html
bugs,,are the branches mosquitos,,,,dum video...
Is that meant to be a question, a statement, or just a bizarre jumble of words?