Measuring The ~10 Kiloamp Output Of A Large Capacitor Bank

[Norman] put together a rather impressive 22,500 uF capacitor bank. In addition to find things to torture with the strong magnetic field generated by a sudden discharge, he’d like to measure the current pushed from the device. He’s found a way to do this using a digital storage oscilloscope. To protect the oscilloscope [Norman] built his own interface box that includes a 50x voltage divider, and interfaces a current sensor called a Rogowski coil. When it comes time to run the experiment, he turns the safety lock-out key on the bank charger, then discharges the stored potential with the flip of a switch.

Take a look at the video after the break to see soda cans and hard drive platters mangled by the device. The oscilloscope measures the output near 10 kA, giving [Norman] the data he set out to capture. He’s entered this project into the Tektronix contest where it’ll compete with the piano tuner and laser light show tester just to name a few.

22 thoughts on “Measuring The ~10 Kiloamp Output Of A Large Capacitor Bank

  1. he’d probably have better results with the can-crushing if he built an actual coil rather than just halfassedly looping it around and holding it in place with what looks like duct tape.

  2. @andrew of course you can, that’s what is causing the cans to buckle inwards. If you put that coil next to a television and fired it you’d see all kinds of crazy distortion.

  3. this is the basis for all of Tesla work!

    the high voltage capacitor with spark discharge.

    for his :rail gun, free electron gun, world based communication and radiant energy system, and for the force field of course. just Great!

  4. that is not to mention his cosmic/solar ray collector and electric air plane, and a disc that can draw energy and be manipulated in the atmosphere with high voltage electro-magnetic forces… that God for the spark gap! ja ja ja

    this is just to name a few of his conclusions

  5. If I were him I’d be a trifle more safety conscious, like putting a whacking big DANGER label on his capacitor bank box to remind me every time I put my hands in it.
    And what’s with that annoying background music? It’d be nice to hear the guy talking without needing to resort to having that there, after all it’s interesting enough (for geeks) to not need it.

  6. I have one of those scopes at work. They can do alot, but when you try an export screen captures to a USB stick, if the drives bigger than 2GB, it doesn’t want to know.

    might have something to do with its based on Windows XP Embedded.

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