My Arc Flash / Exploding Bridgewire / Can Crusher

This page is the area where I explain some of my projects I am currently working on, as well as those that have been completed in the very recent past but are relevant still. Any questions about them are welcome and can be submitted by way of the feedback page and will be answered in some way or another... Basically, it's a 12,000V 35µF power factor correction capacitor that charges up, and then I discharge it down welding cables to whatever is at the end. The metal is turned to plasma faster than it can expand, making a ridiculously loud boom and spraying metal and metal oxides all over the floor and in the air.

This was the initial state of the Exploding Bridge-Wire / Arc Flash Machine. It was built by SummoningDark in her younger years and was eventually given to me as a gift. The original construction was wood and particle-board as shown, to spread the components out and prevent any possibility of arcing to metal parts. This was passable and worked fine, but made transportation difficult, and did not stand the test of time, as you can see the shelves sagging, and the frame had a scary amount of flex to it. This is the EBW / AFM after my first major round of improvements on it. I carefully planned the construction (meaning I just made it up as I went along) of a grounded metal cabinet on very durable casters to house it. In my opinion, it turned out structurally excellent with an even weight distribution, and functioned perfectly during the first test and every subsequent test since. Here is a slightly different angle of it, again just minutes after the completion of the first major rebuild. The two shelves are more visible here, with the NST on the bottom shelf and the relays and other transformers on the top shelf. Still lacking, at this point, is a lid for the assembly, and a more stable mounting for the ammeter and voltmeter, which simply sit on the plexiglas bar. This is after the second round of improvements. Now it sports a bar to prevent any flexing of the front sheet metal, a hinged plexiglas lid, and a permanent mounting of the gauges in a strategic spot in the corner, such that it physically prevents the user's trigger box wire from getting near any high voltage parts of the machine. Off to the side of the arc flash machine, you can see my spark gap Tesla coil

Here is a video frame of the machine firing through a longer segment of very thing wire, a single thread taken from a stripped length of stranded wire. The original video is here. Of course this time I was again being an idiot and not keeping the path out as close as possible to the path back to avoid losses due to self-inductance. Oops. Here is a closeup of the top shelf under the hood. The transformer (yellow-brown, straight down from the black screw-on terminal) powers both relays, which switches power on to the 12kV NST, and charges up the large capacitor. When power is cut to the small transformer, the HV relay (hard to see, mounted on the white board, bottom) swings shut, firing the capacitor down the welding cables. This is just a quick sketch of the how the arc flash machine works. The ignition plunger is the control box with a pull/push knob to charge/fire. This is what happens when you run the pulse through a CD. I expected it to burn a path straight across the CD, but it didn't. The welding cables were clamped on the left and right sides in of the CD in the picture, and I have no explanation yet as to why it has the jagged burn path perpendicular to the expected path.