Videos of exploding capacitors

Video of exploding capacitors shot at 300 frames per second. The real fun starts at around 2:30.

MAKE: Exploding capacitors in high speed

• [Mitch]

  It’s nice to see videos of people blowin’ shit up, so I don’t have to blow shit up myself.

• [Allegra]

  When I first started with the last high tech company I worked for, every Friday afternoon for weeks one of the technicians would blow up caps during ‘testing’.

  There’d be a hell of a bang, slow clapping, and then the stench would permeate the building. There’s nothing like the smell of burning capacitors, a gritty, choking, toxic fug.

• [cowtown]

  I skipped right to the “real fun.” Thereby bereft of any context, cultural or otherwise, I couldn’t help but think that this guy should be in Chris Lilley’s next project.

• [Giraffe]

  @Deamon hahahahahahaha i was just about to say the same

• [robcat2075]

  Isn’t this the guy who got knocked off by a stingray a couple years ago?

• [hisdevineshadow]

  Is he saying “Al” as in Al Bundy, “Foil”?

  • [A New Challenger]

    That took me a moment as well, but it’s “Al” as in the chemical symbol for aluminum. I’d never heard that shorthand before either, but I like it.

• [Roy Trumbull]

  Most consumer and pro-sumer electronics is built with capacitors in the form of a surface mount chip. These are also electrolytic capacitors. Their life is rated in terms of hours and degrees C. If something gets daily use the combination of temperature and time will be met from 3 to 5 years into the life of the product and it will start to have failures. Caps may short but going leaky is the usual failure mode. Shot gunning the caps is time consuming and tedious. No matter what the brand name of the product the circuit boards are all produced and part stuffed by the same companies. Our Asian buddies learned all about planned obsolescence from Detroit.

• [Chinpokomon]

  I used to work as a repair technician on monitors… nothing like soldering up an electrolytic capacitor backwards when it’s hooked up to the flyback transformer. :-D

• [Daemon]

  This guy’s like the electronics equivalent of Steve Irwin.

• [technogeek]

  A co-worker of mine, some years ago, liked to tell the story of one of his first homebrew amplifier attempts. At the first power-up, it blew a capacitor. Then another before he could get it turned off. At that point, he said “this is more fun than if it worked properly”, and just sat back to watch the rest of the fireworks.

  I do approve of the reminder to treat these with respect, though I wish it had come a bit earlier in the video.

• [Anonymous]

  Aussie Lamer. Why would you record an explosion with no sound? BTW, model rocket guys have been using these to light off sugar motors for years. Do it better by dipping them in PVC pipe cement and a quick roll in black powder.

• [0rac1e]

  I don’t think it’s really high speed… Just regular speed slowed down, so you don’t get any additional frames.

  As for Al foil… I never considered that Al was the chemical symbol. Here in Australia we use the term all the time for aluminium foil… and yes it’s pronounced Al as in Al Bundy. “Just wrap it in al foil, mate!”

• [phisrow]

  I hope, when he went for older electrolytics to get the ones without the pre-scored vent points, that he didn’t get any that were too old.

  Modern electrolyte formulations may or may not be especially good for you; but older ones sometimes included, or were, good old fashioned PCBs. Polychlorinated biphenyl, possibly with a side of mixed dioxins if you piss them off.

• [ackpht]

  This is every electronic repair tech I’ve ever dealt with.

• [Anonymous]

  eevblog is the best…

  :)

• [readbot42]

  Wow! This takes me back to my community college days in the old electrical engineering lab. Of course, we didn’t bother with a wimpy 15 volts DC (reversed); we just stuck the leads into a wall socket (de-energized of course), flipped on the breaker and the 120VAC would blow the cap like a shotgun shell. Pretty stupid in retrospect, but it was fun… and yes, the old ones had lots of nasty chemicals in them. :-)

  • [dole]

    My pop told me tales from his days in US Air Force tech school (circa 1968) where he trained in ground radio, people would stick caps in the switched wall sockets in the dorms as practical jokes. They had beer in the vending machines back then, too.

• [Anonymous]

  Band meeting!

• [pixleshifter]

  back in my electronics days we used to pop these babies up an aluminium pipe before reverse powering them and they’d launch off many tens of metres

• [Anonymous]

  CRIKEY!

• [amuderick]

  Ummm…@phisrow, the dose makes the poison. I wouldn’t be too concerned.

• [Anonymous]

  reminds me of physics class in high school

• [Anonymous]

  It was absolutly NO fun when this happened during my final exam in E-Tech..:-(