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Harvesting Capacitors for Backyard Munitions
Diabolus writes "This is the tale of a man, a bunch of disposable cameras, and his techniques for harvesting lots of capacitors to build a gauss gun. Insane..." A basic capacitor tutorial is probably in order.
I think a Gauss Gun is overrated, as i remember a research team built it in the early 90's, with little fanfair. It sucked.
About time they started back to lasers, methinks.
Think nothing is impossible? Try slamming a revolving door.
I remember taking apart the Data Checker system that was manufactured by National Semiconductor in 1979 which I acquired from my highschool. It had some of the largest capaciters I've ever seen. The largest one was probably around 4 inches in diameter. If only I had had this guy's idea first.... :)
The Moo went "Cow!"
No, you get them used from a photo lab. They're "recycled" but in practice the lab gets next to nothing for them. Then Kodak puts a new roll of film in them, slides them in a new cardboard box, and sells them again for full price. Sweet deal.
Make friends with the lab tech and you'll have all the disposable cameras you can handle.
Mechanical Engineers build can crushers with moving parts.
Electrical Engineers build can crushers with no moving parts.
However, whatever the discipline, no mad science lab is complete without a Furby Testing Program.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
fry a diode, for example
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Yeah, so he's got a bunch of "basically" free caps. Now what? Solder a bunch together?
Seems like a lot of work for a huge mess of solder and wires for what would amount to a fraction of what a single car-audio capacitor would put out.
Am I missing something, or is his time worth nothing?
Karma: Excellent
WTF?
isn't it cheaper to just buy caps insted of disposible cams
This place has a great supply of large high-voltage oil-filled capacitors salvaged from all sorts of stuff.
High voltage capacitors can be tough to get - Radio Shack doesn't stock many of them, and sometimes you have to buy them in bulk, which puts them out of range of most experimenters.
Microwave ovens are a great source of parts if you want to play with stuff like this, but it's worth noting that there's stuff inside microwave ovens which can kill you if you look at it the wrong way.
A full-wave rectifier made of microwave oven diodes, or a voltage doubler made with microwave oven diodes and capacitors, can be connected to an old microwave oven transformer for all sorts of fun, but can provide more voltage and current (ie. more power) than an electric chair. Be careful.
This sort of setup is great for charging up those 1uF 10kV oil-filled plastic capacitors (or doorknob capacitors) you might be able to scrounge up by looking in the right places. Oil filled caps are great because they tend to be self-healing. Blow a hole in the oil dielectric, and more just flows into place to fill it.
They're great for spot-welding.
Please don't do this if you don't known what you're doing, and I can't take responsibility for telling the wrong people stuff they can figure out from reading an electronics textbook.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
while this is cool and geeky as f*king heck... it's a bit over done.
1) you can buy capacitors for less trouble. true, large 330V caps does cost money and he is getting this for next to nothing, but i think it's better to shell out a couple hundred bux for components for that gauss gun instead of subjecting myself to hours upon hours of de-soldering and discharging capacitors and getting flashed.
2) if you *really wanted*, you can also pull caps off old TVs, or any CRT in general; and they can go up to 20kV! heck man... for self-mutilation fun, doesn't 20kV sound better than 0.3kV? (erm... becareful when you do this. those caps can hold charge for like 20 years)
3) you can achieve the same with a large (i mean gigantic) low voltage capacitor, which would actually handle more current anyhow. (car) Audiophiles probabbly know what i am talking about. there are 10-15V capacitors for your huge woofers that carry up to 10 FARADS. nope you did not read this wrong... 10F, no m,u,n,p; straight up 10F. if you wanted the high voltage, either build yourself a HV transformer (easy) or salvage one from a junkyard (you know, ignition system).
but otherwise, rock on. i would like to see the 5kJ gauss gun in action someday, preferably tested on a furby or something
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Nah, it's not my page - it is a guy that I know from Adelaide Uni though and I let him know in advance that he was in for a /.ing :)
I remember my friend and I in 1992 to sitting around and playing with capacitors. We were even getting paid. We were hooking them up reversed polarity on a small DC power supply. They EXPLODE. We were doing small caps. Big caps would be too scary. We were putting them in the McDonalds quarter pounder with cheese styrofoam boxlets that were sold back then. Remember those? They add to the effect. I will always have that mental image of DC power leads running out of a closed McDonalds QPw/C container.
Back in high school, a friend and I made a Marx Generator from about 7 of these capacitors. The flash tubes in these cameras make wonderful spark gaps, BTW. It took about 30 seconds to charge up the thing, and the output from it lasted for mere picoseconds, but dang was it cool.
P.S.: Word to the wise: just the task of putting a load across the output terminals can set one of these things off. I was moving one of the terminals with a metal screwdriver and I accidently touched the other contact with my other hand. To this day I do not know how I managed to survive that one.
--- "...And everybody died!!! Except for me, of course...you know why? Because I had my tray table up...and my seat ba
Yep, those early MiGs that outperformed our own fighters were still using vacuum tubes, a technology ten years out of date; our fighter electronics had long been transistor based.
However, vacuum tubes are highly resistant to the effects of a nuclear EMP which would have been a big concern in the 60's. The irony is that had there been a nuclear exchange the tube-based MIGs would likely have still been flyable while the 'better' American planes would have had their electronics fried.
Using mostly stuff I have lying around in my garage workshop this weekend, I can fry most of the chips in the average server farm, telephone switching facility or the radios used by police, fire and emergency services. If I did it right, I can 86 all of the above at the same time.
... said someone would call me back. Not.
e p/2001/a u-221-e.html
>
h n/metalfor minghb/tabofcont/index.html ... and monitoring sales could be an early warning. If you can get the manufacturers to look for suspicious purchases it could be a good tripwire.e rovox.com// ppti2.htm lp erplast icity.htmlk er_Chronic les_II/pyro/miss2.txte mon.co.uk/anarchy/bomb/ bombs-1.html ....1 /a u-221-e.html
Indeed, I can zap all the control circuits in a modern fly-by-wire jumbo aircraft and make it do a ballistic imitation of a large brick. If I time things right, I can bring a fully fueled jet down right in the middle of San Francisco.
Can you say "9/11?" Sure you can. So here we are, nine months along, and those who are supposed to protect us are as clueless as ever.
I could create total electronic chaos and another 9/11 with a homemade, explosively pumped, flux compression generator, and I can do it with data I found on the Internet, including some very helpful stuff from the Los Alamos nuclear lab web site.
We're talking here about an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapon, the neutron bomb of electronic circuits. A garage EMP bomb is amazingly easy to build, especially with a 15-minute Google search.
Undoubtedly you have read about the EMP weapons we used in the Gulf War and Yugoslavia to take out air defense electronics. What you may not have read about is a 1995 incident when Chechnyan rebels used one to fry security circuits in 1995 to gain access to a Soviet facility.
Yeah, I've tried for months now to get anyone in power to care. Local law enforcement said it was not their table and to call the Feds. The FBI agent on duty in San Francisco was totally clueless
I used to work for U.S. Senator Thad Cochran. So I called one of the staffers I knew, and she referred me to the White House Liaison for Home Security. No call back there, either.
But maybe an EMP weapon sounds too much like anti-gravity boots and close encounters with Airstream trailer communities in the Mojave and that's why nobody returns calls and nothing gets done.
But realize this: the NATO document mentions the use of an EMP weapon by Chechnyan rebels. Al-Qaida includes many Chechnyans among the hard-core fighters, thus the usefulness of EMP weapons has surely been transferred to the bad guys still out there looking for an opportunity to make another big splash.
So, I couldn't just let the non-responses from the FBI and Homeland Defense be the end of the matter. With a little more digging on the Web, I located a DOE phone directory last week and called the folks who are head of security for the national nuclear labs. I actually got a call back and forwarded the information (below) via e-mail. I got a form e-mail reply, but the Los Alamos page (http://www.lanl.gov/dirac/) is still up there.
Why is the Los Alamos page important? Because it gives me a good look at an actual physical configuration of a real bomb that works. Taken together with the other web pages, it gives me an excellent chance to build a bomb that works.
Perhaps having the data out there for anyone is a victory for open info on the net, but then how easy DO we want to make it for terrorists? Where is the line between the free flow of information and discussion and giving folks easy access on how to build weapons?
EMAIL TO NATIONAL LABS SECURITY FOLLOWS
>Date: Mon, 04 Mar 2002 11:15:26 -0800
>To: marc.hollander@nnsa.doe.gov
>From: Lewis Perdue
>Subject: links
>
>Very nice chatting with you. Below are the major links I mentioned.
>
>Some detailed background on the threat can be found in a NATO Parliamentary Assembly report at:
>
>http://www.nato-pa.int/publications/comr
>
>I quoted from this report at the end of this e-mail. But particularly relevant is the following from that NATO report:
>
>"38.The possibility of terrorists using EMP weapons has been raising alarm for at least a decade among defence analysts. According to Winn Schwartau, an information warfare specialist, rudimentary EMP devices have been assembled by US Department of Defense consultants within two weeks at the cost of $500. Such devices, capable of disrupting computers, medical equipment and cars, could be placed in a van or even reduced to fit into a suitcase. Criminal organisations in Russia have been accused of using EMP devices to bypass alarm systems. According to the Russian Armed Forces, Chechen rebels might have used similar technology to disrupt Russian electronic communication equipment."
>
>As I mentioned to you, I can describe how such a device could be used to cause another 9/11-type disaster.
>
>links:
>
>THIS IS A KEY ONE: http://www.infowar.com/mil_c4i/mil_c4i8.html-ssi
>THE FOLLOWING may seem harmless, but the principles for forming metal, apply directly to an EMP weapon, both in learning how to acquire the capacitors for the construction, and because the electromagnetic pulse formation is very nearly the same.
>
>http://www.mse.eng.ohio-state.edu/~dae
>
>THE FOLLOWING ARE SOURCES FOR THE PULSE POWER CAPACITORS NEEDED
>
>http://www.nwl.com/
>http://www.a
>http://wwwcsif.cs.ucdavis.edu/~wiley
>
>
>YOU'LL WANT TO FOLLOW LINKS FROM THIS PAGE:
>http://er6s1.eng.ohio-state.edu/~daehn/hy
>
>SOME OF THOSE LINKS INCLUDE:
>
>Manufacturers of Pulse Power Equipment
> Maxwell-Magneform
> IAP Research
> Elmag, Inc.
> Pulsar Technologies (welding / crimping)
> Manget-Physik (German Mfr. of Electromagnetic Forming Hardware & MagnetoPulS® Technology)
> Kharkov Polytechnic University, Ukraine (research and equipment)
>
>Other sites related to high velocity deformation and/or hardware
>Pulse Power Equipment
> Richardson Electric (ingitrons)
> Maxwell Technologies
> Pulsed Power Technologies, Inc.
> Pulse Power Switching Overview
> Fantastically Dangerous Cap. Bank Experiments
> Aerovox Corp. (capacitor mfgr. )
> Darrah Electronics (solid state switching)
> Contents of IEEE Pulsed Power Conferences
>
>High Velocity Forming and Pulse Power Applications
> EMF Industries, Inc. (assembly with EMF is highlighted)
> Sparktec Environ mental Corp (uses sparks for water purification)
> Dana Corporation Develops Improved Magnetic -Pulse Process
> Electroimpact Home Page (mfr. of electromagnetic dent removers etc.)
> CONTENTS PAGE - RESEARCH AT SSAU (1997) (Russian welding, etc.)
> Simple Analysis from J. Krauss Electromagnetics Book
> Robert Hahn at IWF, Technical Univ. of Berlin (in German)
>
>IF YOU WERE DESPERATE FOR C-4 or Semtex for your EMP device, and didn't have a source for the ready-made stuff, you could try here:
>
>http://www.phreak.org/archives/The_Hac
>http://www.strange-days.d
>
>FINALLY
>
>New material continues to be posted on the Web. If you do a search for "flux compression generator" you will find more listings than just the ones above.
>
>
>NATO Parliamentary Assembly
>http://www.nato-pa.int/publications/comrep/200
>
>37.Yet another threat seems more imminent. As Ehlers indicated in his report, computer systems and all electronic devices can be seriously damaged by weapons producing electro-magnetic pulses (EMP). High Power Microwaves (HPM) or EMP bombs and High Energy Radio Frequency (HERF) guns can radiate intense pulses of electro-magnetic energy capable of severely damaging computers, radar and all electronic equipment. They can even destroy circuits, microprocessors and other components. These weapons are well-known in Russia, where extensive studies were conducted during the Cold War. The US Air Force used EMP and HERF weapons successfully in 1991 against Iraqi radar installations, and in 1999 against Yugoslav electronic infrastructure.
>
>38.The possibility of terrorists using EMP weapons has been raising alarm for at least a decade among defence analysts. According to Winn Schwartau, an information warfare specialist, rudimentary EMP devices have been assembled by US Department of Defense consultants within two weeks at the cost of $500.
Such devices, capable of disrupting computers, medical equipment and cars, could be placed in a van or even reduced to fit into a suitcase. Criminal organisations in Russia have been accused of using EMP devices to bypass alarm systems. According to the Russian Armed Forces, Chechen rebels might have used similar technology to disrupt Russian electronic communication equipment.
>
> 39.In his book Cybershock, Schwartau considers some possible effects of a well-orchestrated EMP attack upon Western infrastructure:
>
> Wall Street or other banking systems can be attacked, causing repetitive failures resulting in financial losses. Also past records can be wiped out by onslaughts of electromagnetic pulses; aircraft avionics and guidance systems can be overloaded by targeted HERF, causing potentially deadly conditions; medical equipment can fail under the attack of intense energy spikes, putting human lives in danger; communication nodes can be burned out by intense microwave radiation; municipal emergency services can be made inoperable by debilitating wide-band microwave jamming; power lines and transformers may serve as efficient conductors to transmit huge current to victim businesses and sub-stations, causing regional black-outs.
>
>40.The ability to build EMP weapons is apparently quite widespread, yet there are no international controls over the import and export of the related technologies. Defensive techniques, although in some cases expensive, have been partially deployed in the public sector (especially to protect military assets), but remain extremely rare in the private sector.
If I had access to high explosives I'd just blow up the thing I wanted to destroy and save myself the trouble of screwing around with EMP. Hell, if I had a nuke and wanted an EMP bomb I'd put it on a rocket (if you can get/build a nuke you can get/build a rocket too) and detonate it in the ionosphere and generate one hell of an EMP pulse via nature! This actually happened once in a high altitude nuke test to Hawaii.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning