Comments on: EEVblog #42 – Exploding Capacitors in High Speed

By: Tony P

Tony P — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 22:53:32 +0000

Great vids. And one hint, even we folks who are hobbyist electronics people should wear eye protection.

By: Lionel

Lionel — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:08:46 +0000

Ah. The blog software eats URLs.
Let’s try it another way:
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/04/videos-of-exploding.html

By: Lionel

Lionel — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:07:16 +0000

It’s a very popular website for cool stuff of a technical or artistic nature. Sorry, I thought that I included a URL, but it seems not to have shown up. I’ll try again:

If that didn’t work, try going to http://www.boingboing.net, & search for ‘capacitors’

Cheers! Lionel (AKA ‘Bob Larter’)

By: EEVblog

EEVblog — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 05:25:08 +0000

@Laszlo
Do you mean there isn’t much bottom end bass response in the audio?
I don’t do (and don’t want to do) any post processing on the audio, it’s raw as it comes out of the external shotgun microphone, I don’t even normalise the audio level.
Can you point to a particular example that is annoying?

By: László Monda

László Monda — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:01:46 +0000

When you record in your lab I can only hear high frequency sound which is slightly irritating.

Couldn’t it be made better?

By: EEVblog

EEVblog — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 22:05:41 +0000

I’ve had haters from Day 1, I love them, they crack me up!
Curiously, they never show me THEIR video blog to show me how it’s supposed to be done…

By: Michael L.

Michael L. — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 21:41:24 +0000

To David: You know you’re succsessful when you’ve got your first hater to post on your blog.

By: BoBoo

BoBoo — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 15:06:32 +0000

Dont you have anything more constructive than this trash ?

By: Ray Jones

Ray Jones — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:05:28 +0000

I’ve always wondered how good a tantalum cap would be for lighting a camp fire.

Reckon they’d be good value, stand back and throw the switch!

By: EEVblog

EEVblog — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 05:05:09 +0000

I’m obviously not with it, what’s BoingBoing?!

By: Eldon Brown

Eldon Brown — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 04:03:46 +0000

Dave,

My Grandson had a few old electric toys that were powered by 9 volt batteries. The toys were out-of-favour and not touched for several year. He was cleaning his room and decided to take the old batteries out to discard them. Not knowing better, he clip the snaps together on the two of the old dead batteries.

An hour or so later we heard a “snap” from the area of the trash can. We could not find anything to suggest a problem.

About 30 minutes later; the trash can jumped about a two feet (along with the rest of us) from the loud explosion. The second battery unfolded itself all over the inside of the can.

My Grandson and I now know better, and I watch what kids are doing with batteries and how batteries are disposed.

I enjoy your Blog -

Eldon

By: Lionel

Lionel — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 02:33:40 +0000

Hey Dave, your blog has hit the big time! Your exploding capacitor video has made it to BoingBoing!

By: EEVblog

EEVblog — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:22:15 +0000

Yeah, something happened to my eye between takes, it went all red, that ain’t the new camera!

By: David DLC

David DLC — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:47:12 +0000

It did a little bit, is like if somebody punch you in the eye.

By: Don Sauer

Don Sauer — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:05:46 +0000

Thanks…
This subject has always been a fun part of the lab experience.

By: Timothy Tee

Timothy Tee — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:32:16 +0000

OMG. Did your eye swell?
Amazingly the capacitor did not fly into your eye. Otherwise your doc will need to perform a surgery. Not to mention, you will lose 1 eye.

By: Kathy Quinlan

Kathy Quinlan — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:55:08 +0000

ROFLMAO I love this, when I was little around age 10, I used to run electros off the mains (with a 500w globe in serries to stop the 16A fuse from bowing), I would bury them in the ground about 6inches and it would shoot dirt up about 25 feet

I once spent a week building a relay box (20 odd relays, 555 and a couple of counter chips, it would step to the next relay after a second or so) then wire up all the caps in the front lawn and make it a war zone

Very dangerous, but I had fun, I am still alive and have most of my body in one piece

I used to do contract manufacture for a local company, I would solder up all the PCB’s, then after I had about 40 I would run them on the test jig to make sure the product worked. I mounted a low voltage large capacitance electro in backwards, when I applied power, there was a bit of a hum, then a huge explosion, foil and paper everywhere… The can was hanging out the gyprock ceiling livened up a Friday afternoon, I think it was beer o’clock after that.

Regards,

Kat.

By: Michael Thompson

Michael Thompson — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 04:04:44 +0000

Another bandage for our host please…

Dave you rock!

By: David DLC

David DLC — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 03:12:57 +0000

I was servicing an old cassette player (this was some decades ago) and the design had a zener in parallel to a capacitor, the zener burnt so the voltage on the cap was not protected anymore and it exploded hitting me on the eye, human body is amazing I didn’t see the cap coming, but my eye closed and it hit me on the skin and not inside the eye (lucky me). After a visit to the hospital and several days with big headaches and blurry vision everything turned out ok, now I’m more carefull than ever.

By: Sam

Sam — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 01:21:46 +0000

I remember my electronics teacher blowing up an electrolytic cap, shooting and cracking the perspex on the clock at the back of the classroom. He made a protective box not long after that for demonstrating to the students.