A quick experiment on capacitors I've been wanting to try for a while. Might as well share it here! It was a challenge to get enough current through the larger caps to make them explode without tripping my breaker. I ended up winding my own transformer combined with a high current full bridge rectifier.
If you want to destroy things on mains voltage use a kettle or heater in a series circuit as a ballast depending on how much maximum power you want. That way you can destroy stuff and even under short circuit conditions you won't blow your breaker. You still need a pretty large bridge rectifier if you want more than a couple of amps. I have a heater with 1kW and 2kW settings, usually 1kW is sufficient to destroy most things and those caps pop nicely on mains voltage without the need for a rectifier. I have a chunky 10A bridge bolted to a computer CPU fan heatsink for blowing stuff up when DC is needed
I tried using a 2.2kW heater in series with a rectifier connected in reverse on the largest cap. Waited for ~10mins and the cap just got hot... However, the cap broke down enough to let me step down the voltage and feed way more amps into it. Without the mains voltage treatment they didn't conduct any current at all with 40V reverse DC
@@Cskirt Yay! Now I hear your voice! Because I haven’t even heard your voice And now I have. Thanks for sharing your voice. And I love “The Magic Smoke” coming out of toys which had many seizures. Heck, I even loved how the smoke came out of the capacitors! Epoxy making the big resistors explode super fast… good one!
@@inventor237yes, why waste so much life time. Hate it, when they make bullshit around a video. RUclips was made for short clips and now they make 10 min videos to show 20s of action and waste so much lifetime. I just scroll through their clickbait videos and watch where the most people watch.
This took me back to an incident I had with audio amplifier capacitors hat explodes right in front of my face, scattering some fluid. The explosion was so powerful that it knocked me unconscious. Afterwards, I was hospitalized for 2 weeks for burn injury and poisoning from the fluid
There are big bucket electrolytic capacitors in an amplifier. When building a home made amplifier, U may found there are capacitors only printed with a black dot at one of the connection copper lead. If U connected the wrong way, those cap will exploded.
@@KoolFace. You will cause harm to your body. Lung damage is a possibility, if any of the liquid comes into contact with your skin it causes an acid burn. Can't stress this enough that you need to get away from a ruptured battery as quick as possible.
Back in the late 80s when my friend and I were in HS we worked in an electronics store (like actually parts, not like Radio shack) and we'd get large "computer" caps all the time. We would annoy the teacher by blowing up little caps in the back of the electronics class , so we decided we needed to go bigger and were going to blow up one of the big caps we had. We buried it in the back yard, connected some twisted alarm wire to it and decided the best power supply would be to connect it directly to the outlet. Needless to say we had not got to the chapter in electronics class about how caps are shorts to AC. But the wire was so long (and a lot of it still on the spool) that it didn't pop the breaker but heated the whole plastic spool until it started to melt. No explosion. at least not that day... A few months ago I had a starting cap that was clearly not rated what it said on the box vent right at me when working on a homebrew 20HP phase converter. Fun.
I remember, when I was a kid... Me and my friend found an old soviet hermetically sealed electrolytic capacitor (type ЭГЦ - electrolytic hermetic cylindric). They were highly valued to to it's extreme stability over time (they didn't dry out), but we've just imagined how it can blow up. It was 1000uF 20V capacitor, pretty big... So, it completely destroyed half-inch plywood box leaving us with huge amount of smoke, foil, paper were everywhere... and tinnitus for the next half an hour.
Nice, loved how you got the larger capacitors to explode! They really had quite a lot of force with them, with one breaking the plastic enclosure, so I'm glad you took precautions by doing the tests of the larger ones outdoors!
I''ve noticed lower voltage caps often blow better than higher voltage ones. Might be worth a try. Some have 100,000 uF and are big cans. 16, 25, 35V all seem to be in a sweet spot, even the smaller 100-1000 uf caps. You need a high enough voltage for a good bit of energy, but low enough or it just goes "snick" rather than blowing up.
larger caps have an X or Y shape on their top, where the material is weakened. when the pressure increases, these parts will fail, and release the pressure instead of exploding
I used to gut open old toys and electronics as a kid to look at the cool-looking circuits, now I'm 23 and watching people overvolt toys and exploding capacitors. Man, the Internet is neat.
Used to work in car stereo back in the early 80's- loved doing this with just 12 volts hooked up backwards. Added bonus was the wait on the bigger ones- we'd break in the newbies by wiring one up and putting it under the seat of the car they were working on, then sit back and wait.
In the O days, there are new capacitor poor manufactured with electrical leakage. In mid autumn festival, I used wooden clothes clip to hold a bad capacitor in place, use a candle to fire the aluminium shell. Great firing "bang" sound with smoking flying aluminium shell. Lots of fun. Like fireworks !!!
you should try blowing up the hv capacitor from a microwave oven. those are big electrolytic caps, made in a big metallic can, and weirdly enough most of them don’t have a designed relief point if pressure builds up in it. ive seen them blow up like a legit grenade in some tesla coils made by clueless people who didn’t know that those caps handle high frequency in a pretty explosive way…
I was 2 to 3 meters away from a 1980 "microtronic" washing machine when the large mains filter decoronated in it, it felt like I'd been slapped across the side of my face extremely hard by a massive hand. I was stone deaf for a minute or two, then could only hear a whistling sound until my hearing mostly recovered and it filled the room with a mist and the machine with shredded aluminized foil. The mains filter contained a large AC electrolytic capacitor with inductors and I think a resistor, all sealed in a large aluminium can that bolted to the back of the machine and had blown the thick plastic/resin plug with the connectors out the front of it, I'd looked at it when I'd previously repaired the machine and I don't believe it had a safety vent!
I connected up a very large capacitor the size of a garden bucket for the emergency lighting system. I accidently reversed the connections, a bit later we could smell something burning. I disconnected it. I hate to think that it would have done to the MDF.
Nice video! One thing I've always been curious about is high capacity low voltage caps (or even super capacitors in that case). I've got 2x 100,000uF caps @ 25V that act as battery substitutes for our dirt bikes and am very curious about failure conditions with over-voltage and a dead short discharge. At almost $40 a pop I'm gonna pass on experimenting on those myself haha. Guessing over-voltage will just do the normal "boring" vent. Dead short could be interesting though.
I've tried a 10F 2,5V supercap, but it was really bad... No pop and almost no smoke. I'd like to try a larger one with higher voltage rating tho, when I come across one with a decent price I'll upload it :)
Crumbs. The tantalum is like an electric match! If the ratings are in top right I'm wondering why in many cases lower actual power shown on left is enough to blow them.
Overvoltage will be more violent. UL has a "breakdown of components " test that involvesa 2S cap bank at high voltage (700vdc at 480vac rectified. " Caps charged, one half is shorted, other side is quickly overcharged to 700vdc while it is rated for 400wvdc. Weakest cap breaksdown and all caps on that side discharge through the one. Fun times!
that was the first I'd seen a larger cap in the process of venting or blowing up... but i've certainly seen the aftermath of it enough times when repairing AC motor drives
I have a couple of General Atomics 10uF at 4000V capacitors. They are the size and shape of an automotive battery. They have no vents and if they were to go off... I would not want to be anywhere near them.
Been thinking about this, if you take a cap bank of 2x voltage, charged through a resistor to limit max current from the mains, through a transformer and full wave rectifier. Have DUT cap of 1x voltage conected via magnetic contactor to dump energy into it quickly while the dc continues to pump up the voltage, the DUT will fail violently with all caps discharging through it. Proceed with caution though, arcflash is no joke.
Satisfying to see. Even though it’s a crime against electronic devices and components😂 The bigger ones (with epoxy) remind me of smoke grenades and Chinese fire/nitrate crackers
Before this video, I was looking at caps like at small grenades, and always avoided using them in my circuits out of explosions fear. Not anymore. They are not that nuclear! :))
Could you theoretically make an electronic musket with this where you shove a capacitor down the barrel and instead of a firing pin have some sort of plate in the barrel that would make the capacitor explode and then get pushed out by the gas and everything else being pushed backwards
You know I really like capacitors if I don't want to touch them, I think it's made out of smoke and the fire. I bet the fire's too hot, so I better be careful with the caution without burning the skin. Perhaps, I should be okay. I wish the capacitors has a big bang when it bangs like a firework.
I have a large number of 3000uF that I plan to make 6 groups of 3-4 in parallel 🎉then put the groups in series to get the voltage up. Then you charge each group to 300V. I want to make a geological test bed with dirt & clay mounted on a copper plate. Charge the caps and set up a small diameter trigger wire that will drop to the plate. The wire melts but leaves an ionized plasma channel to dump all the current. Then look at the test bed to see what the blast did to the dirt. Probably only he one shot as I don’t know what happens to the caps.
When I was a teenager I made a canon powered by exploding capacitors that would fire their aluminum shells. And once I accidentally overcharged a 480,000uf capacitor in my bedroom and it vented in a huge mushroom cloud.
A quick experiment on capacitors I've been wanting to try for a while. Might as well share it here!
It was a challenge to get enough current through the larger caps to make them explode without tripping my breaker. I ended up winding my own transformer combined with a high current full bridge rectifier.
If you want to destroy things on mains voltage use a kettle or heater in a series circuit as a ballast depending on how much maximum power you want. That way you can destroy stuff and even under short circuit conditions you won't blow your breaker. You still need a pretty large bridge rectifier if you want more than a couple of amps. I have a heater with 1kW and 2kW settings, usually 1kW is sufficient to destroy most things and those caps pop nicely on mains voltage without the need for a rectifier. I have a chunky 10A bridge bolted to a computer CPU fan heatsink for blowing stuff up when DC is needed
I tried using a 2.2kW heater in series with a rectifier connected in reverse on the largest cap. Waited for ~10mins and the cap just got hot... However, the cap broke down enough to let me step down the voltage and feed way more amps into it.
Without the mains voltage treatment they didn't conduct any current at all with 40V reverse DC
@@Cskirt Yay! Now I hear your voice!
Because I haven’t even heard your voice
And now I have. Thanks for sharing your voice.
And I love “The Magic Smoke” coming out of toys which had many seizures. Heck, I even loved how the smoke came out of the capacitors!
Epoxy making the big resistors explode super fast… good one!
more please!
yes a FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER
It was fun to see the big ones actually explode instead of just vent.
You are just from spioling the end of the video 🥲
the video is 3 minutes long@@inventor237
@@inventor237yes, why waste so much life time. Hate it, when they make bullshit around a video.
RUclips was made for short clips and now they make 10 min videos to show 20s of action and waste so much lifetime.
I just scroll through their clickbait videos and watch where the most people watch.
RUclips was not made for short form video , you..
@ youtube was made before you started to poo your papers
This took me back to an incident I had with audio amplifier capacitors hat explodes right in front of my face, scattering some fluid. The explosion was so powerful that it knocked me unconscious. Afterwards, I was hospitalized for 2 weeks for burn injury and poisoning from the fluid
And the smell...
At least you did it right.
Full recovery?
@@fifiwoof1969 Yes, I recovered
Dang also what kind of Amp
There are big bucket electrolytic capacitors in an amplifier.
When building a home made amplifier, U may found there are capacitors only printed with a black dot at one of the connection copper lead. If U connected the wrong way, those cap will exploded.
I miss when people like photonicinduction did stuff like this. Well done!
That guy from photonicinduction is really crazy,the channel is excellent!
Have you seen styropyro link 100 car batteries in parallel? Something like 85,000 amps - was trying to replicate a lightning bolt, lol.
I think everyone misses Photon, hope the man is safe since he just stopped uploading out of nowhere.
I'm glad that the bigger capacitors were done outside in a big open area.
Is it okey to breathe the smoke?
@@akif7699 No, it's not safe to breath in any kind smoke that comes from a fuming battery.
@@Arlock41 Thanks! It is good to know.
@@Arlock41 uhhhhh... what happens if you do...
@@KoolFace. You will cause harm to your body. Lung damage is a possibility, if any of the liquid comes into contact with your skin it causes an acid burn.
Can't stress this enough that you need to get away from a ruptured battery as quick as possible.
Back in the late 80s when my friend and I were in HS we worked in an electronics store (like actually parts, not like Radio shack) and we'd get large "computer" caps all the time. We would annoy the teacher by blowing up little caps in the back of the electronics class , so we decided we needed to go bigger and were going to blow up one of the big caps we had. We buried it in the back yard, connected some twisted alarm wire to it and decided the best power supply would be to connect it directly to the outlet. Needless to say we had not got to the chapter in electronics class about how caps are shorts to AC. But the wire was so long (and a lot of it still on the spool) that it didn't pop the breaker but heated the whole plastic spool until it started to melt. No explosion. at least not that day... A few months ago I had a starting cap that was clearly not rated what it said on the box vent right at me when working on a homebrew 20HP phase converter. Fun.
2:01 Did you see that bubble growing on the capacitor loll
I remember, when I was a kid... Me and my friend found an old soviet hermetically sealed electrolytic capacitor (type ЭГЦ - electrolytic hermetic cylindric). They were highly valued to to it's extreme stability over time (they didn't dry out), but we've just imagined how it can blow up. It was 1000uF 20V capacitor, pretty big... So, it completely destroyed half-inch plywood box leaving us with huge amount of smoke, foil, paper were everywhere... and tinnitus for the next half an hour.
2:48 That green flame is interesting! Maybe a boron compound inside the capacitor or something?
Boric acid is a common electrolyte chemical.
@@soundsparkyea
Nice, loved how you got the larger capacitors to explode! They really had quite a lot of force with them, with one breaking the plastic enclosure, so I'm glad you took precautions by doing the tests of the larger ones outdoors!
Electroboom's favorite activity
I''ve noticed lower voltage caps often blow better than higher voltage ones. Might be worth a try. Some have 100,000 uF and are big cans. 16, 25, 35V all seem to be in a sweet spot, even the smaller 100-1000 uf caps. You need a high enough voltage for a good bit of energy, but low enough or it just goes "snick" rather than blowing up.
Bigger caps usually have a way to let out the magic smoke so it doesn’t blow up spectacularly
larger caps have an X or Y shape on their top, where the material is weakened. when the pressure increases, these parts will fail, and release the pressure instead of exploding
Thank you for your sacrifice- the smell always fills the room.
Dont try this at home
"Try this at School"😂
I used to gut open old toys and electronics as a kid to look at the cool-looking circuits, now I'm 23 and watching people overvolt toys and exploding capacitors. Man, the Internet is neat.
Me watching this while holding 2 coke can sized capacitors.
You know what you have to do
0:10 dude literally fears nothing 💀
have you ever heard of electroboom
you don't see that thick glove?
@@LoganDark4357 yes I seen them, but I would never do that even with gloves on
@@iloveappleyoutube7198 good thinking
@@shadesoftime his videos are fake
Ah the magic smoke, I could smell it from here in Canada. Thanks for sharing
0:51 i died of laughter when instead of exploding or letting out the magic smoke it just became fat
Capacitor❌
Smoke bomb✔️
the small capacitors "we have lift off the tin can flew off and oil soaked paper and foil is spread all over inside the device"
2:48 is that green fire falling!
Yep, because the burning of copper just like how fireworks are in different colors.
@@chrisbailey7384 Likely more boron related.
Holy moly, that's a huge Firecracker 🧨
Edit: 2:47
Straight to the point, no babbling nonsense, 10/10.
Thank you
Dude, this was everything I was hoping for and _much,_ much more. Awesome!
Mom : we have smoke maker at home
The smoke maker :
Used to work in car stereo back in the early 80's- loved doing this with just 12 volts hooked up backwards. Added bonus was the wait on the bigger ones- we'd break in the newbies by wiring one up and putting it under the seat of the car they were working on, then sit back and wait.
Sounds like a fun place to work 😂
It was interesting to see those big caps vent, i had no idea how violent the safety is. Good video, thanks.
It's now official that now you can use capacitors as flares, firecracker, lighters, or even self defence devices, hell what not
I love how big capacitors can act as either smoke or fragmentation grenade
2:46 green fire that's awesome
It's the smell that gets to me , it lingers for ages.
0:08 Welp, that was unexpected… 🤣
Wow. There really is magic smoke in the capacitors. (2:51) 👍
More voltage more fun 😂
Especially polarized capacitor with reverse polarity 😂
_Ooga booga! Man sees capacitor explode, man gets happy!_
It’s weird I feel bad that the large high voltage ones got cooked. They’re kinda expensive and not many are available. The 5700uF one is like 80 usd
"in this video I will blow up some capacitors" is the most out of context thing I heard today
green flames at 2:48 look sicc
In the O days, there are new capacitor poor manufactured with electrical leakage.
In mid autumn festival, I used wooden clothes clip to hold a bad capacitor in place, use a candle to fire the aluminium shell.
Great firing "bang" sound with smoking flying aluminium shell.
Lots of fun.
Like fireworks !!!
Some capacitor are like smoke granades😂
The electrician's smoke granate 😂
you should try blowing up the hv capacitor from a microwave oven. those are big electrolytic caps, made in a big metallic can, and weirdly enough most of them don’t have a designed relief point if pressure builds up in it. ive seen them blow up like a legit grenade in some tesla coils made by clueless people who didn’t know that those caps handle high frequency in a pretty explosive way…
I can't imagine the many smells ... Great video!
I was 2 to 3 meters away from a 1980 "microtronic" washing machine when the large mains filter decoronated in it, it felt like I'd been slapped across the side of my face extremely hard by a massive hand. I was stone deaf for a minute or two, then could only hear a whistling sound until my hearing mostly recovered and it filled the room with a mist and the machine with shredded aluminized foil.
The mains filter contained a large AC electrolytic capacitor with inductors and I think a resistor, all sealed in a large aluminium can that bolted to the back of the machine and had blown the thick plastic/resin plug with the connectors out the front of it, I'd looked at it when I'd previously repaired the machine and I don't believe it had a safety vent!
No way voice reveal!!!
I connected up a very large capacitor the size of a garden bucket for the emergency lighting system. I accidently reversed the connections, a bit later we could smell something burning. I disconnected it. I hate to think that it would have done to the MDF.
1:39 GAS DEPLOYED!
1:51 SMOKE!
2:05 HELP!
2:22 SMOKE×PUSH
2:55 fire
2:43 NAPALM
Gun 3:02
Excellent video, why is so good to see electronics and components blowing😂😂😂
Я даже через дисплей почувствовал этот запах 😂
I'm watching this thinking I can smell the burned caps. LOL
Nice video! One thing I've always been curious about is high capacity low voltage caps (or even super capacitors in that case). I've got 2x 100,000uF caps @ 25V that act as battery substitutes for our dirt bikes and am very curious about failure conditions with over-voltage and a dead short discharge. At almost $40 a pop I'm gonna pass on experimenting on those myself haha. Guessing over-voltage will just do the normal "boring" vent. Dead short could be interesting though.
I've tried a 10F 2,5V supercap, but it was really bad... No pop and almost no smoke. I'd like to try a larger one with higher voltage rating tho, when I come across one with a decent price I'll upload it :)
This does put a smile on face
0:50 its adorably cute !
THIS IS EXACTLY THE VIDEO I NEEDED
Throwing smoke ❌❌
Throwing capacitor ✅✅
The tantalum would make a good cigarette lighter. Does AC work better than DC?
Wow that green flame
I heard that boric acid is used in aluminium electrolytic capacitors, and boron can make flames green
This new brand of petards seem fun, might give them a try next year.
why the smoke at 1:11 was so fluid like?
also did you use a tablet to film the close up shots on the outside?
Always wondered, but there was now way to see! Thanks!
Your source is amazing!
2:47 Why is there green flames?
Copper
Copper and sulfur dioxide gas
Boric acid electrolyte colors the flames.
Crumbs. The tantalum is like an electric match! If the ratings are in top right I'm wondering why in many cases lower actual power shown on left is enough to blow them.
This big one with this green flame was cool. Almost feel radioactive or something :)
Overvoltage will be more violent. UL has a "breakdown of components " test that involvesa 2S cap bank at high voltage (700vdc at 480vac rectified. " Caps charged, one half is shorted, other side is quickly overcharged to 700vdc while it is rated for 400wvdc. Weakest cap breaksdown and all caps on that side discharge through the one.
Fun times!
that was the first I'd seen a larger cap in the process of venting or blowing up... but i've certainly seen the aftermath of it enough times when repairing AC motor drives
Oh thank you, I was little afraid of those big ones. Now I don't :)
I love watching stuff explode
I did a 440 volt 47,000 uF Elna one many years ago with an electrical engineer . It was loud .
1:39 bruh its just a smoke grenade at this point
I have a couple of General Atomics 10uF at 4000V capacitors. They are the size and shape of an automotive battery. They have no vents and if they were to go off... I would not want to be anywhere near them.
What happens if you "replace" the caps in toys with those caps?
Bro them trees getting the best high of their lives😂😂😂😂
Blowing up capacitors: ❌
Smoke grenades: ✅
2:50 That was not magic smoke, it was magic fire! green and yellow fire, seems very healthy and safe lol
Been thinking about this, if you take a cap bank of 2x voltage, charged through a resistor to limit max current from the mains, through a transformer and full wave rectifier. Have DUT cap of 1x voltage conected via magnetic contactor to dump energy into it quickly while the dc continues to pump up the voltage, the DUT will fail violently with all caps discharging through it.
Proceed with caution though, arcflash is no joke.
All electronics work on a magic smoke: when the smoke comes out, the electronics fail💀🔫
I can smell this through the screen
2:02 how to make a smoke bomb
I can smell this video
1:21 when bro farts 💀
Im not sure why this video doesnt blow up
ElectroBOOM would be proud.
He's in the next room licking the terminals.
Satisfying to see. Even though it’s a crime against electronic devices and components😂
The bigger ones (with epoxy) remind me of smoke grenades and Chinese fire/nitrate crackers
Debes amar el olor a capacitor reventado para apreciar este video
Before this video, I was looking at caps like at small grenades, and always avoided using them in my circuits out of explosions fear. Not anymore. They are not that nuclear! :))
You can make a freaking bomb with that 400v 5700uf capacitor 😂
I dont even know why im watching this, ive seen this happen too many times with my major lab classes.
Still pretty funny watching cap go poof i guess
"How to make a bomb from a few parts you can get off amazon"
POV the inside of my amplifier when my cheap speaker wire melted the jacket and the wires touched 😬
The capacitors slowly became smoke bomb😂😂😂
2:02 a nuclear bubble 2:03 uhh
Could you theoretically make an electronic musket with this where you shove a capacitor down the barrel and instead of a firing pin have some sort of plate in the barrel that would make the capacitor explode and then get pushed out by the gas and everything else being pushed backwards
what was the green flame 2:47 ?
This is why the internet exists
You know I really like capacitors if I don't want to touch them, I think it's made out of smoke and the fire. I bet the fire's too hot, so I better be careful with the caution without burning the skin. Perhaps, I should be okay. I wish the capacitors has a big bang when it bangs like a firework.
I have a large number of 3000uF that I plan to make 6 groups of 3-4 in parallel 🎉then put the groups in series to get the voltage up. Then you charge each group to 300V. I want to make a geological test bed with dirt & clay mounted on a copper plate. Charge the caps and set up a small diameter trigger wire that will drop to the plate. The wire melts but leaves an ionized plasma channel to dump all the current. Then look at the test bed to see what the blast did to the dirt. Probably only he one shot as I don’t know what happens to the caps.
When I was a teenager I made a canon powered by exploding capacitors that would fire their aluminum shells. And once I accidentally overcharged a 480,000uf capacitor in my bedroom and it vented in a huge mushroom cloud.
hope your parents put you up for adoption after that
The house had to be covered under a 30,0000 ton sarcophage and is still closely monitored by the IAEC.
This video smells so good I could pass out right now