Comments on: Old school high voltage capacitance

By: mushroombrew

mushroombrew — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 20:10:49 +0000

I like this as it puts things in perspective. if you don’t know where you came from, you’ll never understand where you’re headed. Plus, it makes a nice project for somebody that doesn’t want to spend lots of time and money on something much more complex that is equally impractical.

By: Fremoin

Fremoin — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 12:47:19 +0000

As a non-hacker who is interested in technology old and new, this site is great fun and informative to view. I might not want want to learn how to run linux on a pic should such a thing ever become possible, but you must remember that this kind of article is inspiring for people like me. Keep up the good work Hackaday.

By: Marty

Marty — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 07:37:04 +0000

It’s wholly ironic that the trolls who come here to complain about the lack of ‘hacks’ are the ones that have never done anything original in their life. hack8tor, yoshi, pip: let’s see what you’ve contributed over the last 12 months.

By: Amos

Amos — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 03:32:58 +0000

I saw a show about some German students who made a Hydrogen fuel-cell powered go-kart and they used large (commercially made) caps to make up for the low current output capability of the F.C.

This and other homemade condensor designs (yeah, I’m old-skool ;) have great worth in DIY alternative energy/transportation applications (ie. “hacks”).

By: Ray

Ray — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 01:20:09 +0000

I just made one of these, and cut myself on the steel wool i used to make a brush for charging (sharp). Makes a pretty decent spark charging electrostatically.

By: strider_mt2k

strider_mt2k — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 01:11:06 +0000

I don’t know that!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

By: Louis II

Louis II — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 21:12:59 +0000

How is DIY not a hackish topic?
I mean… DIY is doing that with what is not contemporary of the present time period; hacks are in the same vein.
DIY is like… hacking nature… or… not relying on a corporate entity to big brother you through life.
A hack is like… hacking consumecr products… or… not relying on a corporate entity to tell you what is and is not possible to do with one of their products.
Seem similar to me… and this kind of diy project could even be used in a pic controlled hack project, charged by electrostatic energy, stored in these jars… or something.

I agree that it’s better than product placement ads of other sites.

An African Swallow or a European Swallow?

By: strider_mt2k

strider_mt2k — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 17:21:27 +0000

What is the airspeed of an unlayden swallow?

By: bancroft

bancroft — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 14:48:49 +0000

the only things annoying about h-a-d are the trolls. maybe they would prefer “hack a once in a while” or “hack whenever i get around to it” so that we can wait for the great hacks to come along.

By: will

will — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 12:02:37 +0000

also something that should be considered is th fact that there just aren’t that many hardcore hacks these days that aren’t on some ones private blog or dig or engadget.its hard to find deacent hacks so they have to use filler until the good stuff comes along

By: herbicide

herbicide — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 08:13:44 +0000

I think the reason for lots of Digg/Instructables/&c stuff getting posted is /that’s where the hacks are going!/

In the ‘good old days’ folks would use their college/uni.ac or .edu/~[name]/projects.html to host their stuff, then wait for it to be picked up on by (for example…) Hackaday!

Now, they’re hosted on instructables and/or dugg before hackaday gets to them.

I have to agree – at least in part – that the (subjective) quality of submitted hacks has dropped, but that’ll be mostly a function of sheer numbers due to accessibility, like working your way through the dross on deviantart.

[pithy conclusion here]

By: fer

fer — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 07:00:52 +0000

applications of this hack?

diy “cva electra” jk, dont try that at home.
insane?

By: Your Testicles

Your Testicles — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 03:18:50 +0000

So what will you do? Fire the guys who run Hack A Day? How about you run a site so we can all go and call it shit.

By: tantris

tantris — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 03:08:43 +0000

almost_there: You can use two layers of tin foil and ceran wrap in between. (paper clips for the hook up).

Don’t roll it up though, hang it up flat, the voltage will pull the layers tight.

And, to some extent it is self healing, a couple sparks through the ceran wrap won’t kill it but evaporate enough aluminum to keep it insulated.

Just as a warning: Capacitance goes up with surface but also with 1/distance of the plates. Since ceran wrap is very thin, the foil plates can hold quite a charge. It is not safe to touch!

By: ...

... — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 02:57:12 +0000

The rolled aluminum foil/waxed paper design is a good start, but it would work much better with a few improvements.

First, to keep it from arcing over on the edges at (relatively)low voltages, you need to stat by cutting down the aluminum foil. Just use hacksaw/bandsaw/etc on the bare role of foil. The next improvement would be to switch to some type of plastic over the waxed paper (its a much better dieletric, so you will store considerably more energy in your capacitor, and it is available in a much wider range of thickness so you can design a cap for any voltage you want). If you wanted to stick with kitchen supplies cling/plastic wrap, although your max voltage would be limited (but if you made a cap out of a whole role of Al foil/cling wrap you would probably have 100nf-1uf of capacitance!). Better would be painters plastic (made out of hdpe) sized for whatever voltage you want, 500v per mill of thickness (best to make the cap good for about 2x the voltage you plan to use so it will last a while). Over about 10kv you will run into corona problems, so you have to dunk the cap in oil to take care of that.