Hello...I exaggerated little. Not really killed, however a capacitor exploded on me, shooting me in the hand with EXTREME FORCE!  I am mostly a mechanical experimenter so electrical circuits are new to me and I would like to know if some of the electrical oriented folks here can help me understand capacitors better so I don't hurt myself.

What I was trying to do was to test how much voltage was stored in two capacitors connected in parallel.

I hooked up a 12V  ac>dc power supply to a VERY SIMPLE circuit with two capacitors in parallel. One cap was 220V and the other was 16V (They are both in the trash now so I don't know the uf rating? small though...) The smaller 16V cap is the one that exploded...the casing flew straight up into my hand, leaving a nasty mark. I had a multi meter hooked up to both ends of the wire coming from the caps and was tapping the positive of the power supply to the "input"? of the circuit when the cap exploded.

What did I do wrong? Is it not wise to hook up two different voltage capacitors? Will a single capacitor charge HIGHER that the supplied input voltage? How does a 16V cap explode from 12V input!?!?  I would think you could even short out a 12V cap and it wouldn't explode like that?!?

Thanks in advance for any help with this.

 First check the open voltage of your power supply. I have a 12v that is actually 18v.

 Second, the cap may have been faulty and did an internal short.

  Or, it was connected backwards which will definately blow them up. We used to
do that in tek school for fun. Some go off like a shotgun.

Make sure you do not breathe the fumes from them, really bad for you. Be very sure
of the hook ups to them. Hopefully you had your safety glasses on too, right?

thaelin

Okay...that helps a little...and no....didn't have any safety glasses on!    The outside casing blew off straight up into my hand thankfully only leaving a welt. The voltage is actually a little lower than 12V...11.88 on the multimeter.

I think I've been hooking them up backwards the whole time by the sound of it.  Is the side with the dashes on it the negative side?  I didn't think they were so much polarized as they were in and out.

Hello...I exaggerated little. Not really killed, however a capacitor exploded on me, shooting me in the hand with EXTREME FORCE!  I am mostly a mechanical experimenter so electrical circuits are new to me and I would like to know if some of the electrical oriented folks here can help me understand capacitors better so I don't hurt myself.

What I was trying to do was to test how much voltage was stored in two capacitors connected in parallel.

I hooked up a 12V  ac>dc power supply to a VERY SIMPLE circuit with two capacitors in parallel. One cap was 220V and the other was 16V (They are both in the trash now so I don't know the uf rating? small though...) The smaller 16V cap is the one that exploded...the casing flew straight up into my hand, leaving a nasty mark. I had a multi meter hooked up to both ends of the wire coming from the caps and was tapping the positive of the power supply to the "input"? of the circuit when the cap exploded.

What did I do wrong? Is it not wise to hook up two different voltage capacitors? Will a single capacitor charge HIGHER that the supplied input voltage? How does a 16V cap explode from 12V input!?!?  I would think you could even short out a 12V cap and it wouldn't explode like that?!?

Thanks in advance for any help with this.

an 12 volt AC source (usually from an transformer) will produce after rectifieying this 16 volt DC.!

1. you have give no attention to the polarities of the electrolydt condensor


OR

2. te voltages (12VAC) and 16VDC) was higher.
an 16V Electrolydt Condensor that receive mor than 18/19 volts
will beginn to cooking insige - e liquids inside produce an gas pressure,
so it explode.

This small condensors are not so dangerosly.
You must not be so angry
G.P.

Work out the quantity of energy in the cap, and the current flowing
if it discharges in a VERY SHORT TIME. (That is crucial). It can
be staggering, which is why I am very luke warm about electric
cars running off supercapacitors. A nasty car crash could be
catastrophic.
Paul.

This caps (as battery cells) will not explode
if you directly short them.
Pese

   Tesla did exactly what you did.  He built up 40,000 volts using the entire capacitance of the distribution system supplying his resonator.  Then he shorted this capacitor into another capacitor.  This second capacitor he shorted into a special inductor which appears again as a dead short to the second capacitor but is really a magnetic capacitor.  This circuit would then oscillate at whatever frequency he designed into it.  The trick is in the shorting device.  The faster you short the primary capacitor the better.  Tesla would use a plasma as the shorting device.  Plasmas are the best conductors around.  Latter on with the creation of the vacuumtube rectfier the plasma was contained without the pesky air problem.

     After a few input cycles there was way more amperage surging in the secondary tank than in the primary.  At this point the only energy input needed was to overcome resistive losses.  Latter on he designed the whole secondary resonator so it happened all in one device and inductively coupled the input to excite the resonator.   No resistive damping of the secondary resonator at all.  Just emwave after emwave energy within his circuit.  Below is his quote about one of his earlier experiments.

Yes; I charged the condenser with 40,000 volts.  When it was charged full, I discharged it suddenly, through a short circuit which gave me a very rapid rate of oscillation.  Let us suppose that I had stored in the condenser 10 watts.  Then, for such a wave there is a flux of energy of (4 x 104)2, and this is multiplied by the frequency of 100,000.  You see, it may go into thousands or millions of horsepower.

    40,000 volts discharged into a .1ohm resistance will give you an amperage of 400,000.  Then ring it 100,000 times.

You can short the caps thru the coil--what you don't want is for the power to be reflected back into the capacitor during the discharge cycle. A cap can discharge into an inductance over time--this discharge will have a characteristic frequency and it will also have a "damping" constant--how many cycles before all power is dissipated. The cycles are AC, so if you have a high frequency and no damping,  when the first cycle comes quickly back into the cap, it has reversed polarity and will likely blow a cheap electrolytic. So the key to discharging caps into coils is to avoid this reflection of power, by choosing lower frequencies and "critical damping" which means that all the power in the very first cycle is dissipated in the coil, and doesn't come back to blow your cap.
So it's a matter of matching inductances and resistances to your caps.

Next problem is switching.

Okay. Both of those replies are a great help to me.  I have read a lot of the tpu/resonant coil posts without knowing much about it however I am a musician/engineer and have done a lot of research into frequency, math, ratios, etc...so I understand the principles behind the devices, but not the physical designs.
I have no experience outside of putting batteries in something. I like the fast available discharge of capacitors though.

So you understand what I'm trying to do. I've simply started testing a crude Flynn Parallel Path apparatus. I've built one large, chunky, probably inefficient stator...which requires a fair amount of current to properly "fire". It's a monster...using thick steel and strong magnets and rather thick solid copper wire on the coils,,.not magnet wire.  I haven't made much progress because I have no idea how to control the input current needed.

I can get the volts, but not the amps...I went from no power to a 12V battery jump start cell...which is way too much amperage...probably 300 Amps? What I've got now is an AC>AC transformer that outputs around 12V and 2500 mA running to what I believe is a 15 amp rectifier out of an old RC battery charger. That's roughly enough to test further...BUT...when I short the coil...the transformer buzzes and the current to the coils reverts to AC? How can I fire the coil without blowing something up? I thought about a load to "soak" up the juice after the coil but I think that would take away from the coil power? I know I should educate myself better but it makes more sense coming from fellow experimenters. The stator has a tremendous magnetic output using the parallel path. I believe that the path to actual overunity with it may a simple oscillator type setup or ... imagine Paul Sprain's device with a flynn parallel kicker coil at the end? That's as open source as I can put it...just so ya know! 

Once I'm comfortable with these caps and coils...I'll start digging into the sacred math and music frequencies a la Tesla.... Thanks again guys.

//Fun tidbit of info...one of my family members actually represented Edison as one of his lawyers back in the days of the heated electricity distribution "wars".

I would bet the power source was AC and the capacitor was an electrolytic, the P/S output would pop the cap, especially if it was close to a harmonic of the resonant point of the cap.