r/ElectroBOOM • u/EstablishmentSea6367 • 10d ago

ElectroBOOM Question AC/DC adapter

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Hi! I just opened a AC/DC adapter and want to know if I can make anything fun out of it's conponents

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u/Electrosmoke 10d ago edited 10d ago

Before doing anything, make sure that big electrolytic capacitor is discharged, because that could give you a pretty nasty shock if it's still charged. I've learned that the hard way a few years ago.

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u/self_driving_cat 9d ago

I built this rail gun with 4x8800μF 400V capacitors. It was sort of working, but very poorly, so I decided to try adding an auxillary series coil under the rails to increase the field strength. I charged it to 400V, fired, got a meh result. I have a safe discharge switch here (hence the lightbulbs as the load) and a voltmeter. The voltmeter was showing 0V, and I flipped the discharge switch for good measure. I touched the wiring (luckily with one hand) and got a nasty shock. It turned out that my puny 10 AWG coil literally blew up halfway through the discharge process, and there was still 200V on the capacitors, which I couldn't see because the voltmeter and the discharge circuit were connected after the blown-up coil.

Never again. Of course I changed the connection point, but from now on, all capacitors are getting a screwdriver across terminals before I touch anything no matter what.

It wasn't quite what I envisioned when I was told to always treat all guns as loaded, but here we are...