Blowing up BIG capacitors! 

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.

It was fun to see the big ones actually explode instead of just vent.

I miss when people like photonicinduction did stuff like this. Well done!

I'm glad that the bigger capacitors were done outside in a big open area.

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

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.

0:10 dude literally fears nothing 💀

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.

Alternative title:how to do a smoke grenade:

Thank you for your sacrifice- the smell always fills the room.

2:01 Did you see that bubble growing on the capacitor loll

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

Mom : we have smoke maker at home The smoke maker :

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.

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!

2:48 That green flame is interesting! Maybe a boron compound inside the capacitor or something?

Don’t Try This At Home

0:51 i died of laughter when instead of exploding or letting out the magic smoke it just became fat

It's the smell that gets to me , it lingers for ages.

Я даже через дисплей почувствовал этот запах 😂

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…

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"

I can't imagine the many smells ... Great video!

2:48 is that green fire falling!

I love how big capacitors can act as either smoke or fragmentation grenade

No way voice reveal!!!

that was some sweet plasma

Excellent video, why is so good to see electronics and components blowing😂😂😂

green fire was awesome. great vid

What happens if you "replace" the caps in toys with those caps?

I did a 440 volt 47,000 uF Elna one many years ago with an electrical engineer . It was loud .

0:08 Welp, that was unexpected… 🤣

The tantalum would make a good cigarette lighter. Does AC work better than DC?

Some capacitor are like smoke granades😂

This looks fun

2:46 green fire that's awesome

Oh thank you, I was little afraid of those big ones. Now I don't :)

All electronics work on a magic smoke: when the smoke comes out, the electronics fail💀🔫

I can smell this through the screen

Wow, that was violent! lol

How do they fit all that magic smoke in them?

Should I in stall a some detector over my work bench? Or not

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!

0:50 its adorably cute !

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.

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.

could the smaller ones explode more violently if suddenly connected to a fully charged huge 450V capacitor?

Wow. There really is magic smoke in the capacitors. (2:51) 👍

That looks like fun!😂😂😂😂

What reverse voltage was used for big caps ? Still about 30V or did you have to go higher ?

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.

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.

I'm watching this thinking I can smell the burned caps. LOL

Thats a good smoke granade

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

The capacitors slowly became smoke bomb😂😂😂

Why are 50v caps failing at 30v ? Are they connected reverse polarity?

POV the inside of my amplifier when my cheap speaker wire melted the jacket and the wires touched 😬

I like the green fire

Bro them trees getting the best high of their lives😂😂😂😂

Get some of the really rare, no longer manufactured guitar amp caps, the ones audiophile types say sound soooo good and do it to them. Make the video title "What rare guitar amp capacitors sound like" Watch the anger, despair and hatred flow in.

✨Firecrackers✨

Nice explosions from those caps. Maybe you could take all the non-exploded caps out of the things you overvolted and pop them in another video or just at the end of the overvolting video.

"How to make a bomb from a few parts you can get off amazon"

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

Kaboom? Yes Rico, Kaboom

Why are all the caps blowing up at 31.4V, even those rated at 50V?

Cap that have hole for explosion (idk what the name, i can't hear what he's said) act like smoke grenade. Interesting. Anyway, @electroboom would love this

How big is a single farad?

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

Unlike most storage devices, capacitors shrink as the voltage goes up…. At least until the dielectric fails.

2:47 Why is there green flames?

Most of them seem to be safe (if not use a glue)🤗🤗🤗

0:52 THIS IS THE BEST XDDD

omg so nice

Spicy!

Me watching this while holding 2 coke can sized capacitors.

forbidden smoke bomb

Got 2 of the big ones in my technics amp

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.

Requests for overvolting toys #9: Hip hop goose, Fisher Price Beatbelle, Furby Boom, a random dancing doll.

2:50 That was not magic smoke, it was magic fire! green and yellow fire, seems very healthy and safe lol

2:02 how to make a smoke bomb

Expensive Smoke Grenade 😂

ElectroBOOM would be proud.

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.

Boys, we have a new Smoke Grenade.

And the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects goes to ..... the 400V / 2400µF electrolytic capacitor. Congratulations!

I want to try this at home

I've been curious about making a bullet from a capacitor. Charge the cap just before firing...2 farads at 5 volts sounds right. (Don't make that face! Multi-farad, low voltage caps have been on the market for years) It won't carry much energy, but on impact, that energy will be released in microseconds. Not much use against soft targets, but it make a 'mini EMP' on striking metal. Anti-Robot rounds...for the Revolution...

Average college electrical engineering undergrad lab experience:

Just give those to me I need them 😭

This video smells so good I could pass out right now

I like this smoke grenade

ALTERNATE TITLE: HOW TO MAKE SMOKE GRENADES

Now you know why they put vents on the bigger caps.

Overvolting toys #8? We’ll wait for it

Oh goody - - something to do with my old capacitors... 😅😂❤