this about sums up the entirety of this channel in one video. dangerous voltages, practical applications, reverse engineering, and explosions. Oh, and cats.
that serial number looks more like a label that Clive put on himself to protect privacy of the owner. It's on top of the plate and looks easy to peel off. Normally serial numbers are punched into the plate.
I used those in UK coal mines but this is the first time I've seen inside (thanks). A couple of points: 1. You don't connect directly to the short, thin detonator wires in a round to the exploder. A thicker "shotfiring cable" is used, all but the closest few feet can be recovered and reused. 2. The red display light that flashes to indicate discharge also displays constantly during the cranking if the circuit is not continuous. 3. The red wax is a tamper seal to discourage a fool from attempting to open the exploder underground. If the wax was disturbed the lamproom staff could identify the last user from the sign-out book. The same wax was used on a caplamp battery and head unit screws too.
@@markrainford1219 My Dad was a miner. That thin orange wire was everywhere when I was a lad and every shed roof was covered in black and white check squared plastic.
@@xcruell Old eletricans do that all the time with their fingers. But now they stopped because doctors said its bad for your hearth. I wonder why. I learned that also. Its not sooooo bad but its bad :1)
As far as actually being seriously injured/killed, something like this is quite safe actually. The circuit would only be completed through one hand, which wouldn't be seriously detrimental to your health. The danger is when the electricity goes through your heart, and even then it has to stay connected for a little bit before serious damage occurs, at least on (relatively) low voltage circuits. It's quite common for an electrician to check if a wire is live by brushing it with their finger because even if it is live the contraction of the muscles in their finger will just pull them away from the wire, thus keeping them safe
IF you are going to do this, your hands must have the palm facing AWAY from the electrical contact, so if your muscles contract from the electricity, they won't involuntarily close your fingers around the wire/contact and thus maintain the connection. Also make sure that if you were to jump or fall, that would break the contact rather than reinforce it.
@@gloverelaxis It also helps that the circuit he tested was not referenced to ground, meaning the only way the circuit could be completed was directly through one finger and one finger alone. No path through the heart, no path through the brain
+dumle29 Dot and comma don't seem obvious choices for the task, until you realize what symbols _also_ appear on those keys: < and >. I just did a quick test and < and > also do things, but not the same things as dot and comma.
HA! How did I miss this one so many years ago. I think you had another splody box somewhere. Cat herding with our friend Big Clive. That was awesome and even better that you made things right again with our little quadruped friends. Thanks Big Clive.
clive , years ago i used one of these in my role as a shotfirer for british coal. as i remember the output was about 1200 volts but this was an earlier version my recollection is that i turned the key until the neon light came on and then pressed the button to fire the shots. the resistance of a detonator was 1 - 2 ohms i think. because we were in an explosive environment the output was limited to a pulse of about 4 ms so there was obvious some logic in the unit. the big p on the unit means that it was a permitted device for use underground. all the explosives we used were marked with a p and a number to say what there permitted use was. i think p1 was hard rock, p3 i cant remember and p5 was for use in coal seams. bill
Same as the type I used there was a tale about the shotty who used shotwire as bootlaces and coupled them up to the exploder - Having decades down the Pit I can quite believe it
My dad was an explosives engineer with Cementation for many years after working initially down the mine (like all the men at that time), he has some wonderful mining equipment failure stories including lit gas pockets behind shaft rings being ignited by a newbie welder, idiots running charges down to the face what were on effectively stacks of batteries with wheels, men doing full back somersault holding stupidly heavy gear and landing on their feet to great applause. Ah the mine, Where Health and Safety was a decent snap and a good pair of braces.
My dad worked in a mine for awhile before he met my mom, and from the sounds of things, he's lucky he didn't get his head blown off from setting off charges with a detonator that wasn't as secure or well built as this one. Glad they make safer models of these things. From the looks of things, that black and white cat at the end really wanted to help with the demonstration, too.
Gameboygenius My friends and I use that phrase quite commonly since his influence forever "damaged" us. Among a few select other words and phrases he has inspired. :-)
anyone know some more channels like ave and clive? i like watching mechanically inclined people disassemble things and explain internals using their area of expertise.
ash G. Most of these you will likely have but. Julian Ilett, Ben Heck, Cody's Lab, The Post Apocalyptic Inventor, This Old Tony, Tinkernut, HandTool Rescue, Photoinduction, EEVblog, Techmoan.
Stuff like this what RUclips was made for. Get to see things you'd never see in normal life. Just found this channel recently I love all the random stuff. I'm an auto mechanic and it's super cool to see someone do stuff like this. I'd like to make videos myself with some of the rare work I do that comes in every now and then
I love this channel so much. I'm one of those people who have a very limited knowledge about technology and circuitry but I love how he takes things to bits and explains how everything works. Just really cool. Keep doing what you're doing bud!
I've used low value resistors as ignitors on my pyro for years. it's crazy cheap, and it's reproducible, quite easy to plan for complex series-parallel strings. Flash pots that have to go off precisely on the beat are another story. Isolated 110ac through steel wool, with a thyristor driven from a mic'd sound meter circuit. Right on time.
that wiring management in that device is oh so very pleasing. It is actually relaxing to watch. That gummy gel-potting is probably there for durability or maybe thermal protection. I imagine they are trying to protect some components from either being reverse engineered OR they are protecting them from external high temperatures of a strip-mine perhaps. You wouldn't want to combine thermal degradation of a circuit with high explosives. Great video, I love hearing about how things work. Two of my favorite shows are "Modern Marvels" and "How it's Made" I just have a passion for learning how things work and how they are made. I may not remember it all but I still find it fascinating to hear.
This thing is a piece of art, look at that wiring. Wired very neatly. Wish I could find one of these and make it into a mini portable generator with super caps.
At my high school which had a technical trades program, we had a bunch of old tech in the electrical dept., and one of the things we had were old crank telephone generators with the large horseshoe magnets. I was showing one off and turned the crank while holding it and got quite the shock across my hand. I measured it at 100vac later, but that was quite the surprise.
This looks very much like DIY off the shelf engineering, but I'm assuming they are incredibly expensive for what they are through lack of competition because of all the safety certification it would need.
Well, I underestimated those explosives greatly, I turned my headphones up to hear Clive, was too focused on him and the cats and then Bang! Damn near shat myself, made me spill curry everywhere as well... was worth it though. A very interesting device indeed, would definitely be a fun toy to have around
We used those in the mines in Australia. Ours was old and 'leaked' current, so we used to press the button with a pencil to save frying ourselves. It was OK to fire series parallel circuits too. Just had to make sure you had exactly the same resistance in each parallel circuit, or one wouldn't fire. Making for a big expensive mess on the rock face
I worked for a restaurant equipment repair shop in the 1970's. The shop owner had repaired a large floor buffer by replacing a bad start capacitor. Unfortunately he wired the cap backwards. He turned the buffer on and BLAM!!!! My ears rang for five minutes afterwards and I was glad the cover was on the machine. Capacitors can do more than just shock you. They can make great firecrackers!
Are you sure it was a motor starting capacitor that exploded? If this was a typical single phase AC motor that needs the temporary extra boost from the starting capacitor, connecting the capacitor "backwards" should make no difference at all: The capacitors used for this are not electrolytic and hence not polarised at all. You can tell because they have a surprisingly low capacitance relative to their size - an electrolytic capacitor of the same capacitance and voltage rating would be a lot smaller. If it was the capacitor that exploded, the shop owner had probably made the error of connecting it directly across the mains AC supply. A capacitor wired up this way will act like a short circuit, so will get extremely hot, very quickly. There are two main types of construction for non-electrolytic capacitors like this: If it had a plastic casing, it was probably a polypropylene film type - a couple of rolls of metal foil separated by thin polypropylene film, stuffed inside a casing made of the same plastic. Shorting out one of those across the mains would likely cause the plastic to melt, but not an immediate explosion. If it had a metal casing, the rolls of metal foil inside were likely separated by waxed paper, immersed in some sort of oil and then sealed inside. If the case was cylindrical, the seal was probably soldered at one end, or maybe at both ends. Microwave oven capacitors are constructed this way, albeit rated for a much higher voltage. Shorting out one of these and therefore rapidly heating it up would likely cause some of the oil inside to expand or even boil: This would equally rapidly cause a pressure increase inside the casing - the soldered end seals would be the weak point, the pressure blowing one of these off, which could easily be an explosive rupture.
As a regular watcher, I highly appreciate "and girls" when you commented about being made for us bad'uns :) As for why two of each output component - same as the switches which will be in series. It's all about safety. You can roast one of them, and the other will be fine and still functioning, protecting against the fail-short issue. (and in the case of the switches, protecting against the contacts welding themselves shut)
Hi Clive. My dad was a blaster at the Louisa Colliery in Durham and used an older version of the Beethoven generator. There was none of this new fangled digital readout, just a neon that used to flicker when the capacitor had charged to 10000v. Then you had 3 seconds to press the buttons on each side of the box, yep that was the safety device - before the cap discharged and it needed winding again. Bit of history and I hope you find it interesting.
Love the engineering in the box.For me though a pp3 on the little pro to ignite will always be a foolproof back up if the lematire fire unit goes duff.
Fascinating :) Looks like a capacitor discharge design - when capacitor hits the threshold voltage the SCR is triggered and discharges it through a transformer primary producing the brief high power impulse required.
The things we used in the army had a spinny thing only IIRC, You just spun it really fast and one it was ready you got a loud boom. Those things probably were over 40 years old though
Best video yet. Great anticipation from the title, and totally lived up to it! Not sure it was cat-healthy though. The brown one and the floor departed company by at least 6 inches!
Today, all you need is a Supercap(acitor), 38 Gauge NiChrome, switcheS (for safety), 9V battery and jumper wires. This is good for rockets and explosives. Seeing the twine lacing brings back memories - one of my early electronic tasks in assembly was lacing up many hundreds of yards of self-locking knots in twine used to bundle wire forms together for military prototypes. Tougher than Tie-Wraps!
Crank generator looks similar in design to the later telephone magnetos from the 40s that had the same smaller gears and were more enclosed compared to the older ones with exposed horseshoe magnets. (I've got examples of both)
@@DutchBrony Actually i noticed the pavlov effect myself. I always get schocked by metal stuff (metal railings, metal poles, metal signs) if i want to grab something like that my hand sometimes hesistates from grabbing it. I am not even thinking about it, it just happens automatic
I when remember i get to Clive channel for the first time. It was LED connected to mains . I watched like 15 sec and wrote a stupid comment. Now years later Clive become mine electrician guru, each time i think about that i nod my head and laught :)
I have a T-handle blasting machine/exploder from the 1950s. The way it works is when you pull the handle up, a rachet clicks so you're not operating anything. Then you push down HARD and don't stop. This spins up an alternator to high RPM and when the plunger hits the bottom it lands on a switch made of two pieces of heavy springy contact material screwed to the wooden case. This connects the alternator to the output resulting in your pleasing explosion. It puts out about 250V peak at 1 amp which ramps down as the alternator stops.
You just gotta love the stiff upper lip "shot exploder" being contrasted by the "BLST" part of the serial number. Shows the true nature of the beast...
This seems like something Mikeselectricstuff would take a look at as well :D Thumbnail almost had me think Mike uploaded another FDR video :p Love the video as always
I really enjoy watching these videos even though half the time I have no idea what's going on, no electrical background of kind, I have however learned a few things from Clive so that's nice
Woah, Clive. you did a magnificent job with this one. Seeing how those devices work was really neat-o. You might say that the entire vid was (wait for it...) Mag-Neato!
Wow, man you surely woke me up this morning. When that thing blew my heart jumped right out of my chest! Strange that, since I once worked with those theatrical boxes when I was in the US Army with The Old Guard during our Torchlight Tattoo performance of the History of the US Army, this back in 1976 the big bicentennial celebration i became used to the explosions during the show. I don't know if those explosive devices had yet to be invented back then or if the commander was just too tight to shell out for them. What we used were a sort of fuse box with the lid cut off. Fill the socket hole with black powder the place fuse wire across the top. Made wonderful very real sounding and appearing explosions, and a fellow didn't want to be too close to the thing I would guess. Ah for the good old days.. Thanks for the memories.
Dynamite, beer and cats..... they do mix well. Though hosing them off the walls with a hangover is a bit of a bugger. We found an earlier version of that exploder in a friends stuff, when we were clearing out for his widow. From their demolition work long ago. She was pleased to have it as a momento. Then started finding cardboard tubes marked, submarine blasing gelatine. But when we cautiously opened them, there were just bottles of wine inside.
Oh man, this is going to be good. It would be so awesome to have one of these to add to my eclectic collection of random stuff. Probably hard to find though, doubt these are very common to find these days. I think AVE did an older style one as well which looked cool.
Cool video, and I really like your cats! Naturally they can't resist one of their favorite sources of entertainment; the dangling wire lol. Cody's Lab did a teardown of a similar detonator, but I like yours MUCH better!
When I with in the Royal Engineers in the early 80’s we used something called a Shrike exploder to set off the PE4 we used. Lots more portable than this Beethoven beast… and it ran 4 circuits rather than just 1 too. I wonder what they use these days?
Today most commercial blasting is all non electric firing with shock tuning. Many blasters use an electric blasting cap to initiate the shock tube, in this case the use a small hand held device powered by a 9v battery.
Potential new Pet, in Pet Sop: "what did you say your name was?" - "Big Clive, see you jimmy, etc." - "Well you can fuck off, I'll wait for the next customer!"
Fifty years ago I used to use a wind-up Megger resistance tester, which I think would have done duty also for setting off a bang. It certainly pumped out enough oomph to make anyone who fell for 'just hold these wires a sec' wince.
Works like one of those Evershed ohm's testers, the old type, they had an analauge meter rather than digital. Some used batteries because I have seen Ever Ready exploder batteries, marked as such, D cell size with the ICI logo on, this firm also made exploders, have also seen the old battery type using the 1289 battery type 4 half volts, excellent video Clive as always.
My Dad was in the Army Corps of Engineers in Korea, 1950 or so...he showed my an operators manual for a hand-cranked detonator...not much to it back then...you cranked the handle to charge a capacitor, then pressed a button marked 'test' which illuminated a neon light if the circuit was complete...then pressed 'fire' to discharge the big capacitor, hopefully the charge would detonate. I assume the 'test' light wouldn't come on if the capacitor wasn't fully charged... Only many years later did I understand how you used a neon light this way, a voltage detector, and current limiter...surely there was a resistor involved...but I was only about 5 years old when he showed me the manual.....I could read OK by then, but not yet an electronics engineer...
this about sums up the entirety of this channel in one video. dangerous voltages, practical applications, reverse engineering, and explosions.
Oh, and cats.
Perfect.
Andy Rattmann agreed
I am totally happy with that.
And lots of facial hair
tenne foure!
You made the cats disappear in a cloud of smoke!
Thomas Richter 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😭😭😭😭😭😭😂😂😂😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
The Magic Circle will be livid!
Considering cats got 9 lives, no problem.... on second thought, it's a great way to neuter cats, just blow their thingy off. lol
No, the cats are just ninjas!
I like how the serial number was BLST69
that serial number looks more like a label that Clive put on himself to protect privacy of the owner. It's on top of the plate and looks easy to peel off. Normally serial numbers are punched into the plate.
not sure what makes me feel more uncomfortable :D
Now you quit with that logic use right now!
AND with Clive's humour choosing BST :)
No way! he wouldn't do that, would he?
I used those in UK coal mines but this is the first time I've seen inside (thanks).
A couple of points: 1. You don't connect directly to the short, thin detonator wires in a round to the exploder. A thicker "shotfiring cable" is used, all but the closest few feet can be recovered and reused.
2. The red display light that flashes to indicate discharge also displays constantly during the cranking if the circuit is not continuous.
3. The red wax is a tamper seal to discourage a fool from attempting to open the exploder underground. If the wax was disturbed the lamproom staff could identify the last user from the sign-out book. The same wax was used on a caplamp battery and head unit screws too.
I'd imagine 1kv could start a pretty nasty coal dust explosion
Yes and every coal face workers living room stereo speakers were wired with shotfiring cable, including mine.
@@markrainford1219 My Dad was a miner. That thin orange wire was everywhere when I was a lad and every shed roof was covered in black and white check squared plastic.
Yeah, but its pretty crap wire for stereos to be honest. Better using stranded copper fibre wire.
@@Steve211Ucdhihifvshi Free is not "crap". :)
A puff of smoke and the cats disappear!
magic smoke.
I did like that 1 second disappearance by the cats! ROFL!!
Was this a special special cat disappearing special effect pyrotechnic?
3:18 how you professionally check 1000v circuit safety “I’ll just Mmmyeah mmmyeahm safe “
You do this with 240v too!
@@xcruell Old eletricans do that all the time with their fingers. But now they stopped because doctors said its bad for your hearth. I wonder why. I learned that also. Its not sooooo bad but its bad :1)
As far as actually being seriously injured/killed, something like this is quite safe actually. The circuit would only be completed through one hand, which wouldn't be seriously detrimental to your health. The danger is when the electricity goes through your heart, and even then it has to stay connected for a little bit before serious damage occurs, at least on (relatively) low voltage circuits. It's quite common for an electrician to check if a wire is live by brushing it with their finger because even if it is live the contraction of the muscles in their finger will just pull them away from the wire, thus keeping them safe
IF you are going to do this, your hands must have the palm facing AWAY from the electrical contact, so if your muscles contract from the electricity, they won't involuntarily close your fingers around the wire/contact and thus maintain the connection. Also make sure that if you were to jump or fall, that would break the contact rather than reinforce it.
@@gloverelaxis It also helps that the circuit he tested was not referenced to ground, meaning the only way the circuit could be completed was directly through one finger and one finger alone. No path through the heart, no path through the brain
Lol those cats moved pretty quick at the end
dot and comma on a paused video
+dumle29
Dot and comma don't seem obvious choices for the task, until you realize what symbols _also_ appear on those keys: < and >.
I just did a quick test and < and > also do things, but not the same things as dot and comma.
Even though I was expecting it to go off, I just about flew off my chair when it did. I know how those cats must have felt.
@@ThatsMrMaxHeadroomToYou Good!
I chuckled way too hard
HA! How did I miss this one so many years ago. I think you had another splody box somewhere.
Cat herding with our friend Big Clive.
That was awesome and even better that you made things right again with our little quadruped friends.
Thanks Big Clive.
I still have my retro Polish splody box.
clive , years ago i used one of these in my role as a shotfirer for british coal. as i remember the output was about 1200 volts but this was an earlier version my recollection is that i turned the key until the neon light came on and then pressed the button to fire the shots. the resistance of a detonator was 1 - 2 ohms i think. because we were in an explosive environment the output was limited to a pulse of about 4 ms so there was obvious some logic in the unit. the big p on the unit means that it was a permitted device for use underground. all the explosives we used were marked with a p and a number to say what there permitted use was. i think p1 was hard rock, p3 i cant remember and p5 was for use in coal seams.
bill
Thank you for your input
Same as the type I used
there was a tale about the shotty who used shotwire as bootlaces and coupled them up to the exploder - Having decades down the Pit I can quite believe it
My dad was an explosives engineer with Cementation for many years after working initially down the mine (like all the men at that time), he has some wonderful mining equipment failure stories including lit gas pockets behind shaft rings being ignited by a newbie welder, idiots running charges down to the face what were on effectively stacks of batteries with wheels, men doing full back somersault holding stupidly heavy gear and landing on their feet to great applause. Ah the mine, Where Health and Safety was a decent snap and a good pair of braces.
My dad worked in a mine for awhile before he met my mom, and from the sounds of things, he's lucky he didn't get his head blown off from setting off charges with a detonator that wasn't as secure or well built as this one. Glad they make safer models of these things.
From the looks of things, that black and white cat at the end really wanted to help with the demonstration, too.
AvE has damaged me. I can't hear someone say "focus!" without going "you faak" in my head.
Talking about uncle Bumblefuck, i wonder if it's his detonator. It's skookum, it's been opened already and it's used in mining.
Gameboygenius My friends and I use that phrase quite commonly since his influence forever "damaged" us. Among a few select other words and phrases he has inspired. :-)
JCGver
It's his Q36 Illudium Explosive Space Modulator
anyone know some more channels like ave and clive? i like watching mechanically inclined people disassemble things and explain internals using their area of expertise.
ash G. Most of these you will likely have but. Julian Ilett, Ben Heck, Cody's Lab, The Post Apocalyptic Inventor, This Old Tony, Tinkernut, HandTool Rescue, Photoinduction, EEVblog, Techmoan.
Stuff like this what RUclips was made for. Get to see things you'd never see in normal life. Just found this channel recently I love all the random stuff. I'm an auto mechanic and it's super cool to see someone do stuff like this. I'd like to make videos myself with some of the rare work I do that comes in every now and then
I loved the excitement in Big Clive's voice when he cracked the device open and saw all the goodies inside. Brilliant stuff as always.
I love this channel so much. I'm one of those people who have a very limited knowledge about technology and circuitry but I love how he takes things to bits and explains how everything works. Just really cool. Keep doing what you're doing bud!
Thee and me, too. Cheers.
I've used low value resistors as ignitors on my pyro for years. it's crazy cheap, and it's reproducible, quite easy to plan for complex series-parallel strings. Flash pots that have to go off precisely on the beat are another story. Isolated 110ac through steel wool, with a thyristor driven from a mic'd sound meter circuit. Right on time.
Usually, after such sheenanigans my cat is a bit more reluctant to feck around with wires.......for about 2 days
that wiring management in that device is oh so very pleasing. It is actually relaxing to watch. That gummy gel-potting is probably there for durability or maybe thermal protection. I imagine they are trying to protect some components from either being reverse engineered OR they are protecting them from external high temperatures of a strip-mine perhaps. You wouldn't want to combine thermal degradation of a circuit with high explosives.
Great video, I love hearing about how things work. Two of my favorite shows are "Modern Marvels" and "How it's Made" I just have a passion for learning how things work and how they are made. I may not remember it all but I still find it fascinating to hear.
The Bear That Herds Cats: A Big Clive Story
Could be a wonderful childrens book!^^
For some reason I could see Clive sitting in a library doing reading circle for the kiddies. He’s a likable figure!
Love how the cat had disappeared when the smoke had cleared, magic.
This thing is a piece of art, look at that wiring. Wired very neatly. Wish I could find one of these and make it into a mini portable generator with super caps.
At my high school which had a technical trades program, we had a bunch of old tech in the electrical dept., and one of the things we had were old crank telephone generators with the large horseshoe magnets. I was showing one off and turned the crank while holding it and got quite the shock across my hand. I measured it at 100vac later, but that was quite the surprise.
Clive, you always have interesting devices to tear apart. From "massagers" to explodey things, this channel is wonderfully random. Please keep it up!
Err, I can think of a link between... better not go there! :)
This looks very much like DIY off the shelf engineering, but I'm assuming they are incredibly expensive for what they are through lack of competition because of all the safety certification it would need.
Michael Parker they probably don't make very many do it's better suited to hand building. It just ends up looking rather simple.
Probably a bit of both, especially with the tight rules which are intended to control things which go "BANG!"
It's not just me that has to grow the catnip under a cage then.
They still manage to get the cage off from time to time.
Well, I underestimated those explosives greatly, I turned my headphones up to hear Clive, was too focused on him and the cats and then Bang! Damn near shat myself, made me spill curry everywhere as well... was worth it though. A very interesting device indeed, would definitely be a fun toy to have around
None of this happened.
and if it did then you are a styoopid since you had at least 3 seconds of warning after he started spinning it
We used those in the mines in Australia. Ours was old and 'leaked' current, so we used to press the button with a pencil to save frying ourselves. It was OK to fire series parallel circuits too. Just had to make sure you had exactly the same resistance in each parallel circuit, or one wouldn't fire. Making for a big expensive mess on the rock face
Always enjoy your videos. I must say the detonator is much more sophisticated then I expected. Love the demo at the end.
"Not with actual dynamite though because that would be REALLY antisocial."
LMAO
Ted M That's possible, too lol.
meanwhile his whole frontyard blew up and was covered in one giant cloud of smoke.. :D
I dont think that dynamite would've been that much worse...
Actual dynamite is fuckin cool yo
Edit: thought i should mention that i work in construction blasting
@@Fattts You can legally buy dynamite in Potosi,Bolivia.
@@mernok2001 I can legally buy it in Maine, USA as well. No permit required.
I worked for a restaurant equipment repair shop in the 1970's. The shop owner had repaired a large floor buffer by replacing a bad start capacitor. Unfortunately he wired the cap backwards. He turned the buffer on and BLAM!!!! My ears rang for five minutes afterwards and I was glad the cover was on the machine. Capacitors can do more than just shock you. They can make great firecrackers!
Are you sure it was a motor starting capacitor that exploded? If this was a typical single phase AC motor that needs the temporary extra boost from the starting capacitor, connecting the capacitor "backwards" should make no difference at all: The capacitors used for this are not electrolytic and hence not polarised at all. You can tell because they have a surprisingly low capacitance relative to their size - an electrolytic capacitor of the same capacitance and voltage rating would be a lot smaller.
If it was the capacitor that exploded, the shop owner had probably made the error of connecting it directly across the mains AC supply. A capacitor wired up this way will act like a short circuit, so will get extremely hot, very quickly. There are two main types of construction for non-electrolytic capacitors like this:
If it had a plastic casing, it was probably a polypropylene film type - a couple of rolls of metal foil separated by thin polypropylene film, stuffed inside a casing made of the same plastic. Shorting out one of those across the mains would likely cause the plastic to melt, but not an immediate explosion.
If it had a metal casing, the rolls of metal foil inside were likely separated by waxed paper, immersed in some sort of oil and then sealed inside. If the case was cylindrical, the seal was probably soldered at one end, or maybe at both ends. Microwave oven capacitors are constructed this way, albeit rated for a much higher voltage.
Shorting out one of these and therefore rapidly heating it up would likely cause some of the oil inside to expand or even boil: This would equally rapidly cause a pressure increase inside the casing - the soldered end seals would be the weak point, the pressure blowing one of these off, which could easily be an explosive rupture.
As a regular watcher, I highly appreciate "and girls" when you commented about being made for us bad'uns :)
As for why two of each output component - same as the switches which will be in series. It's all about safety. You can roast one of them, and the other will be fine and still functioning, protecting against the fail-short issue. (and in the case of the switches, protecting against the contacts welding themselves shut)
Hi Clive. My dad was a blaster at the Louisa Colliery in Durham and used an older version of the Beethoven generator. There was none of this new fangled digital readout, just a neon that used to flicker when the capacitor had charged to 10000v. Then you had 3 seconds to press the buttons on each side of the box, yep that was the safety device - before the cap discharged and it needed winding again.
Bit of history and I hope you find it interesting.
Love the engineering in the box.For me though a pp3 on the little pro to ignite will always be a foolproof back up if the lematire fire unit goes duff.
Fascinating :) Looks like a capacitor discharge design - when capacitor hits the threshold voltage the SCR is triggered and discharges it through a transformer primary producing the brief high power impulse required.
you should attach a power drill to the crank
The things we used in the army had a spinny thing only IIRC, You just spun it really fast and one it was ready you got a loud boom. Those things probably were over 40 years old though
Best video yet. Great anticipation from the title, and totally lived up to it! Not sure it was cat-healthy though. The brown one and the floor departed company by at least 6 inches!
Today, all you need is a Supercap(acitor), 38 Gauge NiChrome, switcheS (for safety), 9V battery and jumper wires. This is good for rockets and explosives.
Seeing the twine lacing brings back memories - one of my early electronic tasks in assembly was lacing up many hundreds of yards of self-locking knots in twine used to bundle wire forms together for military prototypes. Tougher than Tie-Wraps!
First I thought you are gonna blow the poor cat up. Btw. the internals looks like they haven't changed since the 40s.
The internals look like a design from the 70s. Not too unusual for a device made in 1987.
Crank generator looks similar in design to the later telephone magnetos from the 40s that had the same smaller gears and were more enclosed compared to the older ones with exposed horseshoe magnets. (I've got examples of both)
It went poof! so the pavlovian lessons for the cats... Catnip...then a scary bang... maybe just maybe they hate catnip now?
they will be cautious for a while, but if nothing bad happens they will not hate it. for the Pavlov effect to trigger you need to do it a few times
@@DutchBrony Actually i noticed the pavlov effect myself. I always get schocked by metal stuff (metal railings, metal poles, metal signs) if i want to grab something like that my hand sometimes hesistates from grabbing it. I am not even thinking about it, it just happens automatic
Your profile image captures your actual look so well. Its very impressive.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to view the inside of this beautiful device
The noise it makes when you crank it is very satisfying for some reason
Clive: "Cat... No..!"
*wagga wagga wagga ka-bomf*
Clive:"That should do it..."
Indeed.. That did it..
You know, if RUclips showed me this as the 1st video from you that I had seen I would be happy.
This was informative and quite entertaining 👌🏻👌🏻
I when remember i get to Clive channel for the first time. It was LED connected to mains . I watched like 15 sec and wrote a stupid comment.
Now years later Clive become mine electrician guru, each time i think about that i nod my head and laught :)
I have a T-handle blasting machine/exploder from the 1950s. The way it works is when you pull the handle up, a rachet clicks so you're not operating anything. Then you push down HARD and don't stop. This spins up an alternator to high RPM and when the plunger hits the bottom it lands on a switch made of two pieces of heavy springy contact material screwed to the wooden case. This connects the alternator to the output resulting in your pleasing explosion. It puts out about 250V peak at 1 amp which ramps down as the alternator stops.
I made a video about that one based on pictures of the internals. Quite hard to find here.
I sprayed my drink when the device went off and scared the cats. I must be a bad person :p
quite nice seeing you take apart something that is well designed
27:40 love the cats reactions
Bought our house... and found a whole bucket of blasting wire with solid core. I use it for all my projects.
Nearly shat myself. Dam headphones
Me too, bluetooth speaker right under my face.
Not sure why I read "neatly shat myself", I guess it works as well.
@@Tomazack I mean, if you go that far, might as well be neat about it.
You just gotta love the stiff upper lip "shot exploder" being contrasted by the "BLST" part of the serial number. Shows the true nature of the beast...
This seems like something Mikeselectricstuff would take a look at as well :D
Thumbnail almost had me think Mike uploaded another FDR video :p
Love the video as always
I really enjoy watching these videos even though half the time I have no idea what's going on, no electrical background of kind, I have however learned a few things from Clive so that's nice
Exploding Kittens! This was a fascinating device to show!
Woah, Clive. you did a magnificent job with this one. Seeing how those devices work was really neat-o. You might say that the entire vid was (wait for it...) Mag-Neato!
Great video Clive, and a tutorial on cat herding too, thanks!
Big Clive has made the best cat video on the internet without even trying. Legend
“When triggering your dynamite, be sure to lure cats away with catnip” good advice anytime!
Wow, man you surely woke me up this morning. When that thing blew my heart jumped right out of my chest! Strange that, since I once worked with those theatrical boxes when I was in the US Army with The Old Guard during our Torchlight Tattoo performance of the History of the US Army, this back in 1976 the big bicentennial celebration i became used to the explosions during the show. I don't know if those explosive devices had yet to be invented back then or if the commander was just too tight to shell out for them. What we used were a sort of fuse box with the lid cut off. Fill the socket hole with black powder the place fuse wire across the top. Made wonderful very real sounding and appearing explosions, and a fellow didn't want to be too close to the thing I would guess. Ah for the good old days.. Thanks for the memories.
i loved the cats reactions when it exploded , they lifted off the ground like in tom and jerry.
My kitty is always with me when I'm doing something with my hands:) How you managed to make an explosion is amazing.
27:42, well, I guess it's 8 lives left for danger-cats.
Sweet.
Finally a review of the Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator
I knew it was coming, and I still nearly jumped out of my chair.
Thank you for sharing the moment, Clive!!
Appreciate it!
Big Clive the cat herder :D
His Catnip brings all the girls to his yard. What an enabler
Yeah, he has an ample 'purr supply'...:-D
Dynamite, beer and cats..... they do mix well. Though hosing them off the walls with a hangover is a bit of a bugger.
We found an earlier version of that exploder in a friends stuff, when we were clearing out for his widow. From their demolition work long ago. She was pleased to have it as a momento.
Then started finding cardboard tubes marked, submarine blasing gelatine. But when we cautiously opened them, there were just bottles of wine inside.
Video of the century. catnip catnip catnip
Oh man, this is going to be good. It would be so awesome to have one of these to add to my eclectic collection of random stuff. Probably hard to find though, doubt these are very common to find these days. I think AVE did an older style one as well which looked cool.
Wow those poor cats almost got a heart attack :'D
EpicLPer du mal wieder
FUCC I HAD MY VOLUME UP REAL HIGH CUS I COULD BARELY HEAR HIM
they will regenerate, they should have at least 8 regenerations left after this
good
Cool video, and I really like your cats! Naturally they can't resist one of their favorite sources of entertainment; the dangling wire lol. Cody's Lab did a teardown of a similar detonator, but I like yours MUCH better!
Cat: "Here, lemme help ya with those wires!" *BANG!* "I'm outahere!" :D
When I with in the Royal Engineers in the early 80’s we used something called a Shrike exploder to set off the PE4 we used. Lots more portable than this Beethoven beast… and it ran 4 circuits rather than just 1 too. I wonder what they use these days?
"Where's the kaboom?!? There's supposed to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom !!!"
If you pause it just right you can see both cats pulling some very cool shapes
Well that's one way to clear cats out of the yard... :P
Today most commercial blasting is all non electric firing with shock tuning. Many blasters use an electric blasting cap to initiate the shock tube, in this case the use a small hand held device powered by a 9v battery.
"Here cats. I have cat drugs." :)
*_ßOOM_*
The most awesome jack in the box... you just never when its going to go off!
RIP Headphone users. 27:41
One might argue you should have seen it coming.
Well, I'm not constipated anymore!
I've learned to have normalization enabled when using headphones.
I was expecting a sharper bang, but I really enjoyed that show at the end
Deafness is probably why it's named Beethoven. 😄
It's a lovely piece of kit, and very nicely done, but it looks like it was built by a bloke in his shop. Professional work, hand-built all the way.
3:18 How to test for high voltage. Flick your fingers across the wire while uttering the magical phrase "mnya mnya safe".
Potential new Pet, in Pet Sop: "what did you say your name was?" - "Big Clive, see you jimmy, etc." - "Well you can fuck off, I'll wait for the next customer!"
NIce, professional wiring looms. A lot of care went into building that device!
I love how the cats react when the explosive goes off. China just jumps.
Fifty years ago I used to use a wind-up Megger resistance tester, which I think would have done duty also for setting off a bang. It certainly pumped out enough oomph to make anyone who fell for 'just hold these wires a sec' wince.
The hand cranked Meggers only put out about 1mA. Enough to shock, but not enough to trigger dynamite.
That moment when you said "we shall blow stuff up" and then cut to a shot of you next to a cat was f*ckin priceless. XD
Yes the wire is solid core, in finland we got wire that has 6ohms/100 metres and detonators are around 1,5ohms each
I believe the wire used is 20-24AWG solid wire, typically refered to as "bell" wire in the US, as it is what is normally used to wire door bells.
Yes, Germany has its Klingeldraht as well. :-)
+Patrik Samuel Tauchim yeah, that wire is used for door bells and phone lines for at least 50 years pretty much everywhere.
And smileys. Thousands of smileys.
Works like one of those Evershed ohm's testers, the old type, they had an analauge meter rather than digital. Some used batteries because I have seen Ever Ready exploder batteries, marked as such, D cell size with the ICI logo on, this firm also made exploders, have also seen the old battery type using the 1289 battery type 4 half volts, excellent video Clive as always.
Did you really started turning, while the cat was still biting into the wire?
Your black and white cat looks almost identical to mine. She also has a habit of trying to eat wires while I am working on a project.
27:40 gave me such a fright :(
My Dad was in the Army Corps of Engineers in Korea, 1950 or so...he showed my an operators manual for a hand-cranked detonator...not much to it back then...you cranked the handle to charge a capacitor, then pressed a button marked 'test' which illuminated a neon light if the circuit was complete...then pressed 'fire' to discharge the big capacitor, hopefully the charge would detonate. I assume the 'test' light wouldn't come on if the capacitor wasn't fully charged...
Only many years later did I understand how you used a neon light this way, a voltage detector, and current limiter...surely there was a resistor involved...but I was only about 5 years old when he showed me the manual.....I could read OK by then, but not yet an electronics engineer...
Perfect cat clearing device. I require one. 😏
7th iteration of that device and you still couldn't tell for sure when it was going to go off!
1 - *Set speed to .25*
2 - *Set time to **27:40*
3 - *Press play*
4 - *Watch cats squirm*
5 - *Laugh*
6 - *Goto step 2*
Thank you.
RogerWilco - It's funny to watch isn't it? Thank you for the "thank you" as I am watching it again in slow motion! The cat on the right is great! LOL.
Cheers mate
Sloww-mo Clive sounds drunk LOL
I love how robust old electronics are 😀