I think the reason the spring fuse worked well is because you don't need the wire to completely disconnect or melt for it to work. All you need is the wire to sublimate enough for the tension of the spring to be able to tear the wire apart. You won't get much arching because the wire goes in a split second from a short to a significant gap. I think the spring just retracted in the flash as opposed to completely disappearing. That's also probably why there's no residue where the spring used to be. Only where the wire used to be.
If you go through frame by frame, you can see the wire just glowing a dull red before the flash as (presumably) the heat just weakened it enough for the spring to pull it apart
Could be that the fuse is also pressurised, given the arcing behaviour in the vacuum chamber. A small glass cylinder like that should be able to withstand several bars of overpressure.
Normaly the metal used for those whires creates the gas that's needed to stop the arc, combined with the tiny chamber it's enough to play his fuse role. For the fuses tjat are filled with sand it creates a different gas that has not worked has well as those, but because it was filled with a solid it was enough too. The only problem with the last ones was that it could get wet so they wasent that effiscient and precise has the first ones was. NB: my english can be aproximative, that's normal ^^'
6:22 sulfur hexafluoride is what is used in a lot of high-voltage electrical equipment as an arc suppressant. its also like the opposite of helium (if you breathe it in, it stays there and makes your voice a lot deeper, but don't try this since it stays there and can asphyxiate you if you are not careful). ive seen warnings about it on the doors of some rooms with electrical equipment around where i live.
@@PostTraumaticChessDisorderCO2 actively poisons you by dissolving in blood from your lungs. SF6 just suffocates you because it’s not oxygen, so you don’t get what you need to live
In the power industry they use sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) gas in special arc quenching circuit breakers. Often there's a special mechanism, to open a gas valve as the breaker opens up, to basically blow the arc out. I remember seeing one in action, in "power lab", back in school, when getting my EE degree (1980s). Power lab was scary, as much of the gear was the size of van, with high power resistors that actually glowed under normal operation. Syncing up the large synchronous machine (could work as both generator or motor) just before connecting it to the 3 phase grid, was always a tad sphincter puckering !
Are you sure you're not confusing things? As far as I know, there is arc extinction with compressed air, which blows air onto the contacts, blowing the arc away, therefore cooling it down and extinguishing it. SF6 Breakers by itself are different because of the good isolating properties of the gas, but these curcuit breakers are enclosed inside gas-tight housings which are filled with SF6 Gas. It's really fascinating to see the size difference between air-isolated and SF6-isolated switchgear. SF6 gear is wayyyy smaller.
The industry is transitioning away from SF6 as there are probably environmental regulations on the horizon. Some companies now use a mixture of pure oxygen and nitrogen.
Gases for arc suppression: Aircraft piston engine magnetos were pressurized with air to a few tens of PSI for better performance at high altitude. Portable industrial x-ray tubes are pressurized with SF6 to around 50 PSI to suppress arcing from tens of kilovolts of potential. Happy holidays, Mehdi.
regular fuses dont use any special gas and arent actually sealed. sf6 would improve performance (increasing the rating of a small fuse), but it is expensive and adds complexity of sealing the fuse. the lack of a seal also helps release pressure in a overcurrent event.
High voltage circuit breakers at substations often have the contacts in SF6 (sulfur hexafluoride) which quenches arcs. High voltage fuses usually use sand or likely similar gas to quench the arc. There are sophisticated gas monitoring systems to ensure warnings if the gas runs low as if it get critical, the breaker will open while there is still gas available to quench.
Regarding gas inside the 5kV fuse, you could try and excite the gas inside this 5kV fuse with one of your coils and see if it is a noble gas by colour.
Video Idea: Build a deadman foot switch that you have to keep pressed in order to get mains voltage whenever you are doing something with the MW transformer. In case of an accident like with the Jacobs ladder it could safe your life :)
@@MichaelRBaron Actually, the worst shock I've had was through insulation. My other hand was in my back pocket, not on the grounded work bench. I was only 14 and very lucky.
That's probably Way Cheaper than getting Married and Having Children. In that home, there is always someone within arms reach of the Breaker Box, guaranteed.
Many power companies in the US used spiral shaped copper fuses, encased in glass, filled with carbon tetrachloride to extinguish the arc. Im talking about fuses on the high side of 345KV - 169KV transformers. They were engineered before we realized carbon tet was so hazardous. They switched to solid boric acid fuses encased in ceramic after that.
Ive been your subscriber since 2018 and im proud to say you showed me what i liked, your videos connected me to electrical engineering which is now my profession. Im currently working at the Gas Compression Site as an Electrical Engineer. Thank you Mehdi! I was enjoying your videos so much and im still enjoying it! KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK. You are the reason of who i am right now!
@@sclearDevelopment The whole point of Mehdi's mishaps is for safety education. I mean if you don't get it, you probably have no business being in this profession anyway.
Some cars have a small ignitor, like in an airbag, on the main battery cable. BMW does it often. If a crash is severe enough, the airbag module will open the main battery circuit.
Well that explains when the power company came out to diagnose our street power line (underground), the fuses would blow up sounding like fireworks. A bad pad mounted transformer was the cause, but the techs went through 3 fuses just trying everything before getting the new transformer. One of the transfer boxes was in my backyard. Was pretty cool to help the dude dig in the ground and help alleviate his work.
I'm a substation Electrician for the power company in PA. There is absolutely no explosives that I am aware of. You are hearing the arc as the fuse burns open and a spring pulls the bottom of the fuse wire out of the tube.
I just realized why I love ElectroBOOM so much. It is the perfect intersection of two loves: the 90's sitcom Home Improvement, and engineering. Medhi is just a much smarter, Iranian-Canadian Tim Allen. "More power!"
Good demo, Most HV fuses in ring main units (RMU's) have fine sand in them. The fuse element(s) are wrapped around a ceramic former and an explosive discharge which operates a striker pin at the fuse cap and trips the tripping mechanism, after the fuse element has failed, so all three phases are de-energized when one fuse fails. DDO's drop out fuses, the fuse element is held under tension by a spring which aids the separation of the melted fuse element. Also the tube vents out and blows out the remains of the failed fuse when the very loud explosion occurs under fault conditions.
How these high voltage fuses work, is remarkable. Mechanical combined with destructive. Nice video boomsie. So, you say you want a stronger transformer huh? 😉
Arc quenching is a fascinating topic. One of those british or australian electronics youtubers did a teardown of circuit breakers and showed some of the purely geometrical design elements used to encourage arcs to die quickly. Interesting stuff!
7:27 this is why in higher amp glass tube fuses they would commonly use a crimped metal piece, or even an actual spring, so when it failed, spring tension would cause the pieces to move away from each other.
Fuses for 50-500vac, in France at least but I think it's the same all over Europe, contain sand, which helps dissipate the arc energy and then the glass created adds insulation to the fuse. On the other hand, you're right about one thing: manufacturers use argon gas, or others depending on the patents I imagine, to create their "cutting chamber" in high-voltage and high-current circuit-breakers, and probably in "big" fuses too. Great video as usual!
Also some glass fuses for purely hobby purposes can be repaired - using super fine wire - they are usually soldered to the end caps - they blow just as fast - the ceramic fuses are more robust and filled with silica like mentioned on this post before - using the wrong fuse is very interesting - and the reason for protective heat-Shrink or a plastic enclosure is probably protection against fragmentation of the case - I had a non - repaired standard fuse I used on a HV project that literally exploded into pieces…
I wonder how SF6 could get into the atmosphere to cause green house effect being so heavy? I think it would rather sink into the ground… In fact it is used in high voltage installations as an arc quenching agent, especially in fuses
@@SimilasGasses don't quite work the same way liquids do. Since the gas molecules are bouncing around more or less freely without any sort of intermolecular forces holding the particles together they can readily diffuse into each other and even really heavy gasses can go fairly high up into the atmosphere. This is a good thing for us, since otherwise the bottom few hundred feet of the atmosphere would be relatively pure argon with the oxygen floating on top of it and we would have nothing to breathe.
@@awareqwx they do behave pretty similar to each other in fluid dynamics. Since gas molecular forces are so much weaker wind simply moves them around far greater
In France, we have sand in some fuses because when the wires melt, they're hot so the sand melt into glass and glass isolates the circuit. And if there is more arcs, then more heat is created so more sans is melted to glass that results in more insulation.
The same in the UK. All British Standard compliant mains voltage cartridge fuses have sand. Sadly there days there are a lot of dodgy products coming from other countries that don;t have the sand and don't properly blow.
@@phobos1963 No tons of things are less conductive than air, mostly because fire is a thing that y'know can happen with air and fire is a plasma so it's extremely conductive.
I am currently doing a thesis on discharges and more specifically on Paschen's law. This empirical law makes it possible to predict the breakdown voltage (the minimum voltage to trigger a discharge) of a gas as a function of different parameters. We usually express the breakdown voltage as a function of the product of the pressure and the distance between the electrodes (p.d). Observations show that the breakdown voltage admits a minimum for a certain value p.d, it is therefore "easy" to trigger arcs. Thus, to maintain this optimal value, when the pressure decreases, the gap must increase, which is why it is possible to make large arcs in partial vacuum.
Some fuses actually have gases inside them, I got a couple of those old screw type fuses that were blown and I wanted to test it if since they have that view port they would make a good mini arc bulb, and the arc actually jumped and gave off different colors depending on the fuse, one had a yellow arc in it, I think another had a purplish red, so that was interesting
@@MrClean-ep7uc argon could Be a part of the mixture of gases in it, but it’s not pure argon if it has that in them, because argon glows a purplish color under high voltage/low pressure
So true about springs in HV fuses. Fuses used in the transmission lines *are* spring loaded, inside a cylinder filled with glass-sand, which melts during a short.
This guy lives in Vancouver and I saw him once not far from my house, he was busy so I didn’t ask him to photo with him. Im from Russia and live in Canada, for me seeing the western youtuber is quite rare event, plus he is the only one who Id like to take photos with and respect for bringing knowledge and joy
5:02 The relationship between pressure, gap length and breakdown voltage for electric arc is actually quite interesting and it's formulated in Paschen's law (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paschen%27s_law ). When the pressure is too low, there are not enough gas molecules to ionize and make an arc. On the other hand, when pressure is too high, electrons have too many collisions with molecules and they're losing too much energy to maintain an arc. So partial air vacuum was an optimal condition, as we have seen on the video. Thanks @ElectroBOOM for showing that!
Are you sure that the spring vaporized? It may have retracted fully inside the end-cap. I would expect the spring to have a higher current capacity than the fusible element. Also, many high amperage industrial fuses pack sand around the fusible element for arc quenching. I'm not sure if that would also work for high voltage. Sounds like another experiment. (Though the sand will block the view of the camera so it might not be as visually interesting.)
Bigclive did a video tearing apart some high voltage fuses including some that used sand, didn't blow them iirc but interesting to see the construction regardless
@@bosstowndynamics5488 I resisted saying "high voltage" when talking about these fuses. There are many flavors of high voltage. The fuses that I'm familiar with are several hundred volts. Definitely "high voltage" compared to Arduinos. (Or normal US residential wall voltage...) But not the "high voltage" in the kV range that Medhi is playing with. I don't recall what flavor of "high voltage" BigClive's fuses were. All I'm saying is be careful of your terminology...
I'm sure you've seen the fuses they use on (at least in the US) power lines? They have gun powder in them and an expansion piston so as the fuse blows it ignites the gun powder pushing the contacts far apart to quench the arc! Seems right up your alley to build....
For my transformer (4,2kV capable of delivering 3,6A constant) i had homemade glass fuses, but was getting tired of them blowing often due to my experiments, so i made HV breakers. basically a spring loaded knife switch held in place by a piece of metal that gets pulled out of the way by an electromagnet. the trigger is a simple current transformer with some controls (on the primary to not have to work with HV current transformer stuff :) ) That is nice, since now i can just reset them with levers. I also made some risidual current transformers for the "human protection" on 4,2kV but that is a whole other story... By the way, i love your videos! Especially the ones featuring HV stuff
When you see a cookie box you get excited and open it, but, you find needles, that happens in grandma's house. But if you see a cookie box, IN ELECTROBOOMS house, you'll find oven parts. BTW you're the best electroboom
@@HerrJaeger64 Breaking a DC (Direct Current) is often considered more challenging than breaking an AC (Alternating Current) due to fundamental differences in the nature of these currents. Arc Formation: When a DC circuit is interrupted, it creates a sustained arc between the contacts due to the continuous flow of current. This arc can be very difficult to extinguish because the current remains at a constant level. This sustained arc can damage the switch contacts and other components involved in breaking the circuit. In AC circuits: AC naturally passes through zero volts 100 or 120 times per second (depending on the frequency - 50Hz or 60Hz). This zero crossing makes it easier to interrupt because the current naturally decreases to zero, allowing for the arc to extinguish more readily.
@@HerrJaeger64AC has a pulse of current in one direction, which then reduces to zero and then you get a pulse in the other direction. That change happens 100+ times per second for normal mains. Arcs often go out during that brief moment where the current falls to zero. Direct current leaves a relatively constant amount of voltage and current so the arc is less likely to go out.
@@cisarvialpando7412 here’s my video of how DC arcs behave vs AC. ruclips.net/video/4cvvdZGjPt4/видео.htmlsi=_BtDuH94KEaNvQAz I’d love it if Electroboom did one too since he’d 100% do a better job explaining it.
5:18 Not a faillure at all. You discovered a new light creation device. You should name it ; " the electric sun " . Or since it was so bright " the bright light " ... Or " the arc flash light "..
Thank u I learned alot from this always wonder why the fuse from my microwave had a spring to it and I dont know if it was just one of the microwaves but it had a separate fuse that ran from the transformer to the mains
8:58 if you use nitrogen to fill the fuse tube it will work because nitrogen act as noble gas under normal atmospheric condition, that's why nitrogen is used in the filament bulbs because it will prevent the oxidation
It's more accurate to say that dinitrogen is an inert gas, spliting it requires the Haber-Bosch process which is basically only done in huge industrial plants.
I love your techniques and anti-snootyness. Great to learn from. I hope you still teach at uni. EE nerd here. But i work in a less interesting space. automation. not as exciting as arc's and sparks. Love to weld.
High voltage glass fuses used in appliances like microwaves, also known as HV (high voltage) or MOV (Metal Oxide Varistor) fuses, typically contain an inert gas such as nitrogen or argon. These gases are chosen for their chemical stability and ability to prevent arcing inside the fuse during operation.
Creating a discharge between two electrodes at the lowest possible voltage requires that the paschen condition is satisfied. I believe you can look up paschen curve for air on the internet and set the electrode distance and pressure such that arcs are not produced (atleast until a high enough voltage is applied). Do the calculations according to your design and this might help make better fuses.
Yay! New video! You are always explaining so well while combining some humor and smart staged tricks for entertainment! Oh do i wish schools would make their lessons this exciting but they wont
The reason why the arc was bigger in partial vacuum is because air conductivity has a maximum at about 10mbar, to then drop below conductivity at standard pressure. In detector applications, we usually wait to pump out until 0.1-1mbar before biasing detectors because of this
Interestingly, this is something that RocketLab discovered a few months ago. At least, discovered how it applied to their electrically-powered rockets in some obscure circumstances. When the second stage started up, a large arc happened somewhere in the system, shutting it down. Maybe a switch enclosure that normally just happened to contain air developed a leak this time, and bled down to a low enough pressure for an arc to form. Their fix was to add a small nitrogen bottle to the second stage, and keep the electrical systems at a known pressure. Their return to flight earlier this week went off flawlessly.
We use fuses with wire of silver, and filled with sand. When there has been a shortcut, they will often crack open, and be black on the contact points. Also there will be a red tip poling out, marking it as broken. It is used on the power grid, 24KV
I have 1 issue with your springy design. If the load is not too big to break the wire, normal conducting is heating it up and it becames more soft and the rubber can pull it apart easier. Over time it will weaken your material. But that's just my theory, I'm a programmer and data engineer, not an electrical engineer or physicist. Hmm, it seems you were onto something with your design since the original fuse is something similar too. 9:05 - I like your mouse pad :D
Thermal fatigue is a issue in fuses. That is why you don't run the circuit at the rated amperage of the fuse. There is also a equation to tell how long the fuse will last at a given current, but the time goes up fast as the current comes down from the rated amperage.
@@LaserFur Yeah, fuses don't work the way people think. Decent fuses (& circuit breakers) come with a datasheet that tells you when it'll blow bases on load, time & ambient temperatures. There was a video put up recently about how those cheap packs of cars fuses are really really bad.
I have used 32V automotive fuses for 120 V. It does tend to crack the glass when they blow. On the fuse wired that you had the did not burn immediately, if you cut the fuse wire and soldered it together, when the solder melted the wires would separate more quickly.
7:13 like, i know mehdi isn't *that* careless to not disconnect the power from the transformer but i cant help but think back to the jacob's ladder incident
9:06 Better fuses have sand on the inside that will fill in the space where the wire is once it melts, they are more effective than the glass fuses, although you need to pull them out and use a multimeter to tell if they've blown instead of inspecting them visually.
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Now if could please do how them resettable fuses work,I could google but I understand your explanation better lol
For future reference, you can buy argon in canisters as “wine preserver”. It comes in an aerosol can like whipped cream.
I hope he knows that he's basically doing are trying to build a light bulb 6:24
Make Farnsworth fusor 🗿
5:51 btw what a nice laugh
When i worked as electrician, we had fuses filled with sand, exactly for the purpose to avoid arcs.
i think he is doing the fail on purpose, he is smarter than this.
I've never seen that--makes sense though. Must have been extremely high voltage fuses...
@@nobody7817 All fuses that are used in UK plug's must have sand in them to be legal.
No
Yep, the ceramic fuses we see inside multimeters are a classic example.
I think the reason the spring fuse worked well is because you don't need the wire to completely disconnect or melt for it to work. All you need is the wire to sublimate enough for the tension of the spring to be able to tear the wire apart. You won't get much arching because the wire goes in a split second from a short to a significant gap.
I think the spring just retracted in the flash as opposed to completely disappearing. That's also probably why there's no residue where the spring used to be. Only where the wire used to be.
If you go through frame by frame, you can see the wire just glowing a dull red before the flash as (presumably) the heat just weakened it enough for the spring to pull it apart
Could be that the fuse is also pressurised, given the arcing behaviour in the vacuum chamber. A small glass cylinder like that should be able to withstand several bars of overpressure.
@@zuthalsoraniz6764 yes, exactly
Normaly the metal used for those whires creates the gas that's needed to stop the arc, combined with the tiny chamber it's enough to play his fuse role.
For the fuses tjat are filled with sand it creates a different gas that has not worked has well as those, but because it was filled with a solid it was enough too. The only problem with the last ones was that it could get wet so they wasent that effiscient and precise has the first ones was.
NB: my english can be aproximative, that's normal ^^'
I think Mehdi needs a high speed camera. Smarter every day has at least one. Mehdi, get a sponsorship from Phantom.
1:04 "One of them has killed me once before"
So he HAS died, gotta wonder how he keeps coming back to life
electric shocks ....
lol@@KT-pv3kl
Almost...
I think he dies and then is put into charging to bring him back to life
Full bridge Medhifier. 🤣
9:05 best mouspad ever
@AQI11A me too😂
The highest voltage mouse pad ever made
or High wattage
🤣 YOU'RE RIGHT IT IS SO FUNNY AND PERFECT FOR A MOUSE PAD 9:06
Microwave oven transformer mouse pad 399$ xD
6:22 sulfur hexafluoride is what is used in a lot of high-voltage electrical equipment as an arc suppressant. its also like the opposite of helium (if you breathe it in, it stays there and makes your voice a lot deeper, but don't try this since it stays there and can asphyxiate you if you are not careful). ive seen warnings about it on the doors of some rooms with electrical equipment around where i live.
I believe plain old CO2 does the job also
@@PostTraumaticChessDisorder It does, but worse than SF6. Not good for compact kv switches.
@@PostTraumaticChessDisorderCO2 actively poisons you by dissolving in blood from your lungs. SF6 just suffocates you because it’s not oxygen, so you don’t get what you need to live
Electroboom making a fuse seems oddly ironic
Giggity goo
The fuses were fused
Ionic
How did you comment 11 hours ago my fellow Canadian?
Edit: It's Patreon.
How did you comment before the video even came out??!! It shows video uploaded 22 min ago and you commented 11 hr ago
In the power industry they use sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) gas in special arc quenching circuit breakers. Often there's a special mechanism, to open a gas valve as the breaker opens up, to basically blow the arc out. I remember seeing one in action, in "power lab", back in school, when getting my EE degree (1980s). Power lab was scary, as much of the gear was the size of van, with high power resistors that actually glowed under normal operation. Syncing up the large synchronous machine (could work as both generator or motor) just before connecting it to the 3 phase grid, was always a tad sphincter puckering !
Very interesting !
Are you sure you're not confusing things? As far as I know, there is arc extinction with compressed air, which blows air onto the contacts, blowing the arc away, therefore cooling it down and extinguishing it.
SF6 Breakers by itself are different because of the good isolating properties of the gas, but these curcuit breakers are enclosed inside gas-tight housings which are filled with SF6 Gas. It's really fascinating to see the size difference between air-isolated and SF6-isolated switchgear. SF6 gear is wayyyy smaller.
So, deep voice gas stops electric fires? Very nice :-)
The industry is transitioning away from SF6 as there are probably environmental regulations on the horizon. Some companies now use a mixture of pure oxygen and nitrogen.
"sphincter puckering"! LOL
Gases for arc suppression: Aircraft piston engine magnetos were pressurized with air to a few tens of PSI for better performance at high altitude. Portable industrial x-ray tubes are pressurized with SF6 to around 50 PSI to suppress arcing from tens of kilovolts of potential.
Happy holidays, Mehdi.
regular fuses dont use any special gas and arent actually sealed. sf6 would improve performance (increasing the rating of a small fuse), but it is expensive and adds complexity of sealing the fuse. the lack of a seal also helps release pressure in a overcurrent event.
Use metric like the civilized world does. PSI is bullshit.
X-ray tubes are under a hard vacuum, not pressurized.
High voltage circuit breakers at substations often have the contacts in SF6 (sulfur hexafluoride) which quenches arcs. High voltage fuses usually use sand or likely similar gas to quench the arc. There are sophisticated gas monitoring systems to ensure warnings if the gas runs low as if it get critical, the breaker will open while there is still gas available to quench.
This felt like a fun old fashioned Electroboom video! More of these please!
Agreed 👍💯
👍
Regarding gas inside the 5kV fuse, you could try and excite the gas inside this 5kV fuse with one of your coils and see if it is a noble gas by colour.
I didn't think that a 5 kV fuse would blow at just 2 kV
@@coastersaga it blew because of the current. the voltage rating is just to stop arcing after it blows
It might be SF6.
Noble gases are easily turned into plasma. You need a heavy molecule like SF6 for insulation.
@@d4slaimless isn't SF⁶ solid? 🤨
Video Idea: Build a deadman foot switch that you have to keep pressed in order to get mains voltage whenever you are doing something with the MW transformer. In case of an accident like with the Jacobs ladder it could safe your life :)
That's a great idea 👍
The one hand rule is another lifesaver.
@@John-oo9bu yup but that doesn't always work when having to react to something quickly ( like a Jacob's ladder falling on you :D )
@@John-oo9buone hand is a good rule, but when dealing with over 600v it won't always save your bacon. Insulation has a breakdown point.
@@MichaelRBaron Actually, the worst shock I've had was through insulation. My other hand was in my back pocket, not on the grounded work bench. I was only 14 and very lucky.
That's probably Way Cheaper than getting Married and Having Children.
In that home, there is always someone within arms reach of the Breaker Box, guaranteed.
9:06 SF6 gas
Yep used in substation some time
And you can use SF6 to make your voice sound heavier, as opposed to He which makes your voice sound high pitched
Many power companies in the US used spiral shaped copper fuses, encased in glass, filled with carbon tetrachloride to extinguish the arc. Im talking about fuses on the high side of 345KV - 169KV transformers. They were engineered before we realized carbon tet was so hazardous. They switched to solid boric acid fuses encased in ceramic after that.
This is correct!
Holy cow i replied to my own comment a month later not realizing it was my own comment. Lol i was thinking “WOW somebody knows what i know!?”
Ive been your subscriber since 2018 and im proud to say you showed me what i liked, your videos connected me to electrical engineering which is now my profession. Im currently working at the Gas Compression Site as an Electrical Engineer. Thank you Mehdi! I was enjoying your videos so much and im still enjoying it! KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK. You are the reason of who i am right now!
Please find a safer mentor. Not all of us are immune to electricity.
@@sclearDevelopment The whole point of Mehdi's mishaps is for safety education. I mean if you don't get it, you probably have no business being in this profession anyway.
@@SirMo I am just joking dude
Some fuses use explosive charges to separate the conductors quickly. They're commonly used on pole transformer fuses...loud too.
I had one of them blow on the pole opposite my house once. Certainly when they blow they BLOW!
Some cars have a small ignitor, like in an airbag, on the main battery cable. BMW does it often. If a crash is severe enough, the airbag module will open the main battery circuit.
Well that explains when the power company came out to diagnose our street power line (underground), the fuses would blow up sounding like fireworks. A bad pad mounted transformer was the cause, but the techs went through 3 fuses just trying everything before getting the new transformer. One of the transfer boxes was in my backyard. Was pretty cool to help the dude dig in the ground and help alleviate his work.
I'm a substation Electrician for the power company in PA. There is absolutely no explosives that I am aware of. You are hearing the arc as the fuse burns open and a spring pulls the bottom of the fuse wire out of the tube.
@@oxichimaruxo1528 Big Clive dismantled an explosive disconnecting fuse, so they do exist. He also set it off, nearly deafening himself.
1:25 POV: you understand what you did wrong in your exam after getting it back (you still failed)
Subscribe my RUclips channel please
😂
I just realized why I love ElectroBOOM so much. It is the perfect intersection of two loves: the 90's sitcom Home Improvement, and engineering.
Medhi is just a much smarter, Iranian-Canadian Tim Allen. "More power!"
Good demo, Most HV fuses in ring main units (RMU's) have fine sand in them. The fuse element(s) are wrapped around a ceramic former and an explosive discharge which operates a striker pin at the fuse cap and trips the tripping mechanism, after the fuse element has failed, so all three phases are de-energized when one fuse fails. DDO's drop out fuses, the fuse element is held under tension by a spring which aids the separation of the melted fuse element. Also the tube vents out and blows out the remains of the failed fuse when the very loud explosion occurs under fault conditions.
I love this rediscovery of fusing and arc arresting from first principles by just trying stuff and then fixing each problem as it happens
How these high voltage fuses work, is remarkable. Mechanical combined with destructive. Nice video boomsie. So, you say you want a stronger transformer huh? 😉
Boomstie
Arc quenching is a fascinating topic. One of those british or australian electronics youtubers did a teardown of circuit breakers and showed some of the purely geometrical design elements used to encourage arcs to die quickly. Interesting stuff!
please link said video
@@mathias6369 Australian, I'm guessing would be EEVBlog. British, there's a few different ones.
@@mathias6369 I think it was photonicinduction's video: ruclips.net/video/WAhq_A4EbkE/видео.html
I feel like you might be talking about Big Clive but I believe he's Scottish, I could be mistaken though.
Pretty sure it's Big Clive indeed
This guy is the only person on the planet who can die more than one time...🤣🤣🤣
he just has a totem of undying
"And one of these has killed me once before..." I absolutely and TOTALLY believe that. 😆😂😆
7:27 this is why in higher amp glass tube fuses they would commonly use a crimped metal piece, or even an actual spring, so when it failed, spring tension would cause the pieces to move away from each other.
4:22 best led I've ever seen
Even has fire coming out the end like a jet engine. Multipurpose device!
Yes
In the words of William Osman, "welcome to the world of high voltage, where everything is a wire and you're probably going to die."
Whats gonna get this guy first?
A: Radiation poisoning
B: Electricity
C: PTSD
electricity 100%
all of the above
probably
D: setting his shorts on fire and fusing himself with his shorts 😂😂💀
@@libbyb3006I agree 😂😂💀
D radiated electronic PTSD
I am convinced that this man has become immune to any type of electricity.
0:04 dude probably has more PTSD than a Vietnam war general
0:16
@@lonely_7891hairdryer vid
I mean the generals specifically did not do much fighting.
Wait, if he died from the Jacob's ladder video then who is this, unless.... Mecha-Mehdi!?! He must feed off of all the shocks!
Probably one of the other Mehdis took over.... maybe that was his plan all along.....
Clone.
He died and was immediately frankensteined back to life by the electricity
Its mehdi-clone-007
The eyebrow grows extra hair and he respawns stronger.
Fuses for 50-500vac, in France at least but I think it's the same all over Europe, contain sand, which helps dissipate the arc energy and then the glass created adds insulation to the fuse. On the other hand, you're right about one thing: manufacturers use argon gas, or others depending on the patents I imagine, to create their "cutting chamber" in high-voltage and high-current circuit-breakers, and probably in "big" fuses too. Great video as usual!
5:50 goofy is that you
Also some glass fuses for purely hobby purposes can be repaired - using super fine wire - they are usually soldered to the end caps - they blow just as fast - the ceramic fuses are more robust and filled with silica like mentioned on this post before - using the wrong fuse is very interesting - and the reason for protective heat-Shrink or a plastic enclosure is probably protection against fragmentation of the case - I had a non - repaired standard fuse I used on a HV project that literally exploded into pieces…
Sulfur hexafluoride is good for quenching arcs. And it would be hilarious to hear Mehdi's voice after inhaling it 😂
SF6 is also a reaaaaaalllyyyy bad greenhouse gas. Don't let it out into the atmosphere, seriously.
Yes but my SF6 gasss just escaped
I wonder how SF6 could get into the atmosphere to cause green house effect being so heavy? I think it would rather sink into the ground… In fact it is used in high voltage installations as an arc quenching agent, especially in fuses
@@SimilasGasses don't quite work the same way liquids do. Since the gas molecules are bouncing around more or less freely without any sort of intermolecular forces holding the particles together they can readily diffuse into each other and even really heavy gasses can go fairly high up into the atmosphere. This is a good thing for us, since otherwise the bottom few hundred feet of the atmosphere would be relatively pure argon with the oxygen floating on top of it and we would have nothing to breathe.
@@awareqwx they do behave pretty similar to each other in fluid dynamics. Since gas molecular forces are so much weaker wind simply moves them around far greater
In France, we have sand in some fuses because when the wires melt, they're hot so the sand melt into glass and glass isolates the circuit. And if there is more arcs, then more heat is created so more sans is melted to glass that results in more insulation.
The same in the UK. All British Standard compliant mains voltage cartridge fuses have sand. Sadly there days there are a lot of dodgy products coming from other countries that don;t have the sand and don't properly blow.
Yeah cuz they want to cut cost
Isnt anything more conductive than air ?
@@phobos1963 No tons of things are less conductive than air, mostly because fire is a thing that y'know can happen with air and fire is a plasma so it's extremely conductive.
3:48 mehdi trying to realize what just happened
I am currently doing a thesis on discharges and more specifically on Paschen's law. This empirical law makes it possible to predict the breakdown voltage (the minimum voltage to trigger a discharge) of a gas as a function of different parameters. We usually express the breakdown voltage as a function of the product of the pressure and the distance between the electrodes (p.d). Observations show that the breakdown voltage admits a minimum for a certain value p.d, it is therefore "easy" to trigger arcs. Thus, to maintain this optimal value, when the pressure decreases, the gap must increase, which is why it is possible to make large arcs in partial vacuum.
Thank you for funny and informative videos
Hero
Some fuses actually have gases inside them, I got a couple of those old screw type fuses that were blown and I wanted to test it if since they have that view port they would make a good mini arc bulb, and the arc actually jumped and gave off different colors depending on the fuse, one had a yellow arc in it, I think another had a purplish red, so that was interesting
Could be argon
@@MrClean-ep7uc argon could Be a part of the mixture of gases in it, but it’s not pure argon if it has that in them, because argon glows a purplish color under high voltage/low pressure
Surprised that sand-filled fuses did not make an appearance.
More exquisite ZAPs. Keep them coming!
Wonder if Mehdi will ever build something like his van de graaf generator or his high voltage wand?
how to hell did you get 14 hours HOW if the video on 5m but how
@@HorrorgameralexYThe's a premium member
@@kaurpajula2731 *Patreon Subscriber you can get early access to his videos before he releass them publicly
Bro barley started the intro and burned himself 😂
This is the RUclipsr that does dangerous electrical experiments so we don’t have to
So true about springs in HV fuses.
Fuses used in the transmission lines *are* spring loaded, inside a cylinder filled with glass-sand, which melts during a short.
This guy lives in Vancouver and I saw him once not far from my house, he was busy so I didn’t ask him to photo with him.
Im from Russia and live in Canada, for me seeing the western youtuber is quite rare event, plus he is the only one who Id like to take photos with and respect for bringing knowledge and joy
3:53 that’s a premium eyebrow-tracking shot right there 😍
LMFAO
5:02 The relationship between pressure, gap length and breakdown voltage for electric arc is actually quite interesting and it's formulated in Paschen's law (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paschen%27s_law ). When the pressure is too low, there are not enough gas molecules to ionize and make an arc. On the other hand, when pressure is too high, electrons have too many collisions with molecules and they're losing too much energy to maintain an arc. So partial air vacuum was an optimal condition, as we have seen on the video. Thanks @ElectroBOOM for showing that!
7:55 Cookie box filled with tools and components and stuff you might need one day. That was a staple of any good homestead back in the 80s. 😅
Are you sure that the spring vaporized? It may have retracted fully inside the end-cap. I would expect the spring to have a higher current capacity than the fusible element. Also, many high amperage industrial fuses pack sand around the fusible element for arc quenching. I'm not sure if that would also work for high voltage. Sounds like another experiment. (Though the sand will block the view of the camera so it might not be as visually interesting.)
Bigclive did a video tearing apart some high voltage fuses including some that used sand, didn't blow them iirc but interesting to see the construction regardless
@@bosstowndynamics5488 I resisted saying "high voltage" when talking about these fuses. There are many flavors of high voltage. The fuses that I'm familiar with are several hundred volts. Definitely "high voltage" compared to Arduinos. (Or normal US residential wall voltage...) But not the "high voltage" in the kV range that Medhi is playing with. I don't recall what flavor of "high voltage" BigClive's fuses were. All I'm saying is be careful of your terminology...
Could you make a video explaining in-depth what admittance, immittance, susceptance and impedance is?
I'm sure you've seen the fuses they use on (at least in the US) power lines? They have gun powder in them and an expansion piston so as the fuse blows it ignites the gun powder pushing the contacts far apart to quench the arc! Seems right up your alley to build....
For my transformer (4,2kV capable of delivering 3,6A constant) i had homemade glass fuses, but was getting tired of them blowing often due to my experiments, so i made HV breakers. basically a spring loaded knife switch held in place by a piece of metal that gets pulled out of the way by an electromagnet. the trigger is a simple current transformer with some controls (on the primary to not have to work with HV current transformer stuff :) ) That is nice, since now i can just reset them with levers. I also made some risidual current transformers for the "human protection" on 4,2kV but that is a whole other story... By the way, i love your videos! Especially the ones featuring HV stuff
7:46 "I put my oven parts in my cookie box."
4:33 forbidden vape
vapes should already be forbidden. But yeah, this is a lot worse than vapes already are.
Hahahaha l😂
@4:29 should have been the thumbnail. 🤣
Medhi using his transformer as his mousepad is just genius😂
Funny as hell. He needs to declare that is dangerous asap.
Fr
When you see a cookie box you get excited and open it, but, you find needles, that happens in grandma's house. But if you see a cookie box, IN ELECTROBOOMS house, you'll find oven parts.
BTW you're the best electroboom
7:33 the trouble with elastic bands is they dry out and crack. So your product has a short shelf life.
And don't forget that AC and DC behave very different when using fuses and breakers. Breaking DC is a complete separate story.
How so?
@@HerrJaeger64 Breaking a DC (Direct Current) is often considered more challenging than breaking an AC (Alternating Current) due to fundamental differences in the nature of these currents.
Arc Formation: When a DC circuit is interrupted, it creates a sustained arc between the contacts due to the continuous flow of current. This arc can be very difficult to extinguish because the current remains at a constant level. This sustained arc can damage the switch contacts and other components involved in breaking the circuit.
In AC circuits: AC naturally passes through zero volts 100 or 120 times per second (depending on the frequency - 50Hz or 60Hz). This zero crossing makes it easier to interrupt because the current naturally decreases to zero, allowing for the arc to extinguish more readily.
@@HerrJaeger64AC has a pulse of current in one direction, which then reduces to zero and then you get a pulse in the other direction. That change happens 100+ times per second for normal mains.
Arcs often go out during that brief moment where the current falls to zero.
Direct current leaves a relatively constant amount of voltage and current so the arc is less likely to go out.
#Electroboom please tell us if this is correct or not
@@cisarvialpando7412 here’s my video of how DC arcs behave vs AC.
ruclips.net/video/4cvvdZGjPt4/видео.htmlsi=_BtDuH94KEaNvQAz
I’d love it if Electroboom did one too since he’d 100% do a better job explaining it.
9:10 nice mousepad…
so good youll never need to charge the mouse again
5:18
Not a faillure at all.
You discovered a new light creation device.
You should name it ; " the electric sun " . Or since it was so bright " the bright light " ...
Or " the arc flash light "..
He just invented the first "sun lamp" powered by plasma.
@@dogs-and-destruction-channelits just x rays
@@nzg5
IK
@@nzg5I think the voltage is too low to create x-rays
Thank u I learned alot from this always wonder why the fuse from my microwave had a spring to it and I dont know if it was just one of the microwaves but it had a separate fuse that ran from the transformer to the mains
I have my High school physics finals tomorrow and I am proud to say that you are the one who has taught me most of the concepts.
Thank you sir :)
8:58 if you use nitrogen to fill the fuse tube it will work because nitrogen act as noble gas under normal atmospheric condition, that's why nitrogen is used in the filament bulbs because it will prevent the oxidation
It's more accurate to say that dinitrogen is an inert gas, spliting it requires the Haber-Bosch process which is basically only done in huge industrial plants.
@5:00 ElectroBOOM reinvents the incandescent light-bulb ;)
X-ray Light-bulb
Normal People: I’ll put my cookies in the oven
7:46 Mehdi: I put my oven parts in my cookie box
Absolute sigma🔥🗿
Do you mean almost kill you. 1:03
Nah he is verson 4
r/wooooosh
I love your techniques and anti-snootyness. Great to learn from. I hope you still teach at uni. EE nerd here. But i work in a less interesting space. automation. not as exciting as arc's and sparks. Love to weld.
Your warning that occurred around minute one; thank you. Your delivery and production of stuff is brilliant.
5:50 goofy ahh laugh
😂
High voltage glass fuses used in appliances like microwaves, also known as HV (high voltage) or MOV (Metal Oxide Varistor) fuses, typically contain an inert gas such as nitrogen or argon. These gases are chosen for their chemical stability and ability to prevent arcing inside the fuse during operation.
I use argon in my welder because it conducts and sustains arcs so well... You might want to double check that.
@@SkippiiKai You use argon in your welder not because it sustains arcs, but because it displaces the air which will contaminate the weld otherwise
4:22 SO BRIGHT
Creating a discharge between two electrodes at the lowest possible voltage requires that the paschen condition is satisfied. I believe you can look up paschen curve for air on the internet and set the electrode distance and pressure such that arcs are not produced (atleast until a high enough voltage is applied). Do the calculations according to your design and this might help make better fuses.
Yay! New video! You are always explaining so well while combining some humor and smart staged tricks for entertainment! Oh do i wish schools would make their lessons this exciting but they wont
@DontReadMyProfileverPicture.273 sigh..... Another npc comment
The reason why the arc was bigger in partial vacuum is because air conductivity has a maximum at about 10mbar, to then drop below conductivity at standard pressure. In detector applications, we usually wait to pump out until 0.1-1mbar before biasing detectors because of this
Interestingly, this is something that RocketLab discovered a few months ago. At least, discovered how it applied to their electrically-powered rockets in some obscure circumstances. When the second stage started up, a large arc happened somewhere in the system, shutting it down. Maybe a switch enclosure that normally just happened to contain air developed a leak this time, and bled down to a low enough pressure for an arc to form. Their fix was to add a small nitrogen bottle to the second stage, and keep the electrical systems at a known pressure. Their return to flight earlier this week went off flawlessly.
This is also why airplane electronics have very different isolation requirement than electonics on the ground.
he says that the transformer killed him once, so he's a ghost by lore
Don’t be fooled, that is not canonical 😂.
At least not in this portion of the multiverse 😂
Never change Electro, unless it is to become more resistant, then you might become unstoppable.
Thank you for this. I've designed a few 15kV and 27kV fuses. If you can film at 20k fps the arc formation an extinguish looks cool.
5:05 thats the most manic laugh ive ever heard XD
0:25 *sniffs for fire dammage*
Bro used soap water for demonstration 03:43
We use fuses with wire of silver, and filled with sand. When there has been a shortcut, they will often crack open, and be black on the contact points. Also there will be a red tip poling out, marking it as broken.
It is used on the power grid, 24KV
After two previous videos I've been waiting for the high voltage fuse. And finally it's here! Just use a spring to break an arc!
4:18 "And we turn it on oh SH**"
I have 1 issue with your springy design. If the load is not too big to break the wire, normal conducting is heating it up and it becames more soft and the rubber can pull it apart easier. Over time it will weaken your material. But that's just my theory, I'm a programmer and data engineer, not an electrical engineer or physicist.
Hmm, it seems you were onto something with your design since the original fuse is something similar too.
9:05 - I like your mouse pad :D
Thermal fatigue is a issue in fuses. That is why you don't run the circuit at the rated amperage of the fuse. There is also a equation to tell how long the fuse will last at a given current, but the time goes up fast as the current comes down from the rated amperage.
@@LaserFur Yeah, fuses don't work the way people think. Decent fuses (& circuit breakers) come with a datasheet that tells you when it'll blow bases on load, time & ambient temperatures.
There was a video put up recently about how those cheap packs of cars fuses are really really bad.
It was just a prototype, real fuses use springs instead of elastic.
I'm always so happy when he uploads.
14 hours ago.. WHAT?
Likely patreon early access.
I am seriously impressed by the breakapart method anti arc fuse
I have used 32V automotive fuses for 120 V. It does tend to crack the glass when they blow. On the fuse wired that you had the did not burn immediately, if you cut the fuse wire and soldered it together, when the solder melted the wires would separate more quickly.
7:13 like, i know mehdi isn't *that* careless to not disconnect the power from the transformer but i cant help but think back to the jacob's ladder incident
I was right about to say the same thing when your comment appeared!!! So glad I’m not the only one that noticed
4:24 bro just made a rocket
Integza would be proud
8:42 - Where are the Slomo Guys????
4:55 Making hard x-rays. Yay🎉🎉
This man makes me laugh and at the same he teaches me science
How do you manage to teach us things while being absolutely hilarious!? 😂
I'm just here for the thick Persian accent
As a 🇫🇮 this accent is easy to understand.
Some high-current fuses are filled with Silicasand, the sand melts and blocks the flow.
He got zapped so many times that now his muscle memory got good enough to get zapped on command without electricity lmao
9:06 Better fuses have sand on the inside that will fill in the space where the wire is once it melts, they are more effective than the glass fuses, although you need to pull them out and use a multimeter to tell if they've blown instead of inspecting them visually.