"Leave me alone" box

[pocket-rocket]

I've wanted to build a Tesla coil for probably about 16 years but never got around to it.

[60dgrzbelow0]

Speaking of getting "Zapped"... I discovered something that is of consequence to any of us who park their cars inside their garages or have their engines idling nearby and have to deal with the following problem...

Being down in Florida... Everybody and their Brother has fruit trees in their back yards and little time to either take care of them properly or harvest what eventually ripens and falls off of them... Oranges...Grapefruits ..Ponderosa Lemons the size of Soft Balls...all around on the ground and attracting all the critter things that like to eat them. Two varieties of these vermin also enjoy living in close proximity to Man...and will do whatever they can to live indoors down here with us: Suspect (1) Rattus Muroidea (The Common Rat) and Suspect (2) Periplaneta Americana (The Brown Cockroach).

As it happened...one eveing while working on some damned mechanical thing or another.. I had the garage door open and I caught sight in my peripheral vision of Suspect (1) quickly darting inside the edge of the garage and disappearing behind mountains of disorganized car parts, device pieces and boxes inside. Well... being so Effing Clever...I thought I would find some better way to put and end to this rodent's miserable, disease infested life... without using a messy spring trap. So I found a device that kills these varmints by charging up an enoromous capacitor ...and by dabbing a glob of Peanut Butter on the interior tray inside this little Death Chamber...when the beast gets far enough inside and settles down to his snack...the contacts are made and the device fires a very powerful pulse of electricity worthy of being alongside our Old Sparky Electric Chair...now in an upstate Stark Penitentiary Museum. Result? One Rat: DRT (Dead... Right There...)

So I set the trap... and waited for that incredibly loud snapping sound it made when I tested it out. Sure enough...not more than an hour after placing it out in the middle of the garage floor (a bad idea... because I found out much later that rats never move into an open room... only along the walls whenever possible) I heard the device go "POP!" at the same time I was working on an old IBM A22M Pentium III Laptop... that suddenly when as dead as a door nail after the sound faded.

At first... I thought this was just a mere coincidence...that is until I opened the garage door to investigate the results of this execution...only to find that my light switch was inoperative. I scratched my noggin' for just a moment...and then it hit me like a small bolt of lightning... the two lights I had in place at the time this happened were of the mini-swirl Flourescent screw-in bulbs and both the lights and the laptop were within 15-20 feet of this device as the radiant energy Crow flies when it went off... which happened by the way...not because the rat was caught...but rather Suspect (2) had crawled up inside the metal box and inadvertantly touched the side...setting off the trap and instantly killing that huge bug.

So what else could this have been? ...but a smaller version of the very rocket launched EMP bombs that the Chinese will try to use to electronically blind us all with bigger versions of this circuit killer...using EMP. You would not think such a small item like this would be capable of developing such a strong Electro-Magnetic Pulse field and wind up frying the circuitry of other items nearby ...but it did. And so I got rid of it... on the spot... lest I be tempted to conduct one of my crazy experiments on it and accidentally fry the microprocessor/circuitry in any of our ECMs in our running vehicles. I was already out two pricey lights and $10.00 Intel Mobile PIII Microprocessor and that was enough for me. Anybody else ever have this happen to them?

[IsaacHayes]

lmao

[Superdave]

i might have to bring my jacobs ladder to this years meet... we're also working on a tesla coil in the shop here at work...


I wish i had pics but we build a supersized bug zapper out of some UV bug lights, metal screen and a few neon transformers. The Mayflies are a bitch on the banks of the Mississippi river.

[60dgrzbelow0]

My GrandFather would put both hands on the old SparkPlug rods (very old school) and stall it out,
My Dads favorite was to grab a hold of a plug wire and ask me for a wrench, soon as I handed it to him, finger in wire and Zap! I would get it. lol

"Here Grand Dad...Now just hold on to these ..just like this..."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=novn4CjyWss&feature=related

And as for making the most of capacitance... Nothing beats an Electromagnetic Rail Gun... First a huge one...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OqlTXwLG40&feature=related

then one built on a smaller scale...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMUErwcuBf8&NR=1&feature=fvwp

[ForcedFirebird]

Meet this year?


I'm thinking frying a turkey will be a winner

[IsaacHayes]

Brad, I think you should electrify it....

[pocket-rocket]

Was wrong in my post above, it was the 2004 meet...

The same meet that my spare battery (since I was having charging system issues) became a ramp for the above posted truck. So far every meet has been good times, even the Canada meet that we got rained out on track day.

EDIT: Also, check out induction heating

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_-Iv9FddOU&feature=related

[bszopi]

Was wrong in my post above, it was the 2004 meet...

[pocket-rocket]

Perhaps this use of the idea would less vicious ...and be closer to something that would work with John's OP Useless Box Idea...and REALLY open the lid quickly!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2M3rzx6jtnk&NR=1

How about a defibrillator cap vs a potato?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egOda1dKNKU&feature=related

Half a million volt arc when contacts are opened:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GiIVze2Tac&NR=1

How to cook a sausage in 10 seconds:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvS6bOKLhFs&NR=1

And, the reason I want a SSD to replace my standard HDD in my laptop...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt6VbOY3xE0&feature=related

(sorry to thread-jack, John)

[Weatheralls Auto]

My GrandFather would put both hands on the old SparkPlug rods (very old school) and stall it out,
My Dads favorite was to grab a hold of a plug wire and ask me for a wrench, soon as I handed it to him, finger in wire and Zap! I would get it. lol

[bszopi]

I have to build one of those boxes. SO many people at my work would play with it. I have a miniature Craftsman jack (see the 2003? 60V6 pics) on my desk and it never fails, that 50% of people will play with it when they are at my desk. A box with a switch? Oh yeah... I'll post pics when I finish it.

[ForcedFirebird]

That's nothing!

Ever take a plug wire off a running 60* coil pack? It will arc about 1.5-2" easily and make you feel like you were hit with a sledge hammer.

Best part is if you grab someone else at the same time, they feel like you hit them with a hammer ROFL.

[60dgrzbelow0]

Use to love charging of a condenser out of an Ol GM Distributor, leave it on the parts counter just waiting for some fool to come in and pck it up to check it out

Ouch...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZA25ghMAyak&feature=related

Perhaps this use of the idea would less vicious ...and be closer to something that would work with John's OP Useless Box Idea...and REALLY open the lid quickly!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2M3rzx6jtnk&NR=1

[60dgrzbelow0]

I had a coffin box wind up bank that did that. Only you'd lay the coin flat and when you did it pressed a switch and a hand just like that came out and pulled the coin in the casket and as it went in a skull head jumped up and fell back down.

Absolutely nerve-wracking to watch too... especially if you decide to take back the coin...