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electric firing box

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Author	Topic: electric firing box
catch22 Frequent Poster	posted February 06, 2000 11:42 PM Hey everyone, I have already built one electric firing box, it uses an arming switch, and a momentary firing switch, and 4 9v bateries. After going through 50 feet of 16 awg double cond wire the box is barely strong enough to set off one estes igniter. I'd like to make one with enough power to set off higher resistance homemade igniters and (or) several estes igniters at once. If anyone has any knowledge of this could you please tell me how to make one capable of doing what I mentioned. Or could someone please post any web sites that detail in their construction. Is there any way to make one using a capacitor, and what other components are required to quickly release the charge stored in a capacitor? Thanks Catch 22
Predator Frequent Poster	posted February 07, 2000 09:58 AM Use a bigger battery... more current should do the trick... the 4 9V batteries might have a higher voltage overall, but they don't come close to matching the current output of a car battery... If you don't want to lug around a heavy car battery, go to the hardware shop or security shop and buy a home alarm battery. I use one of these. It is a little smaller than the size of a brick, but it is 12V and 2AH ( amphere hours ) This I think you will find will more than be sufficent for your purposes
Dr-D Frequent Poster	posted February 07, 2000 06:52 PM If it works fine at short wire, but longer wires give it trouble then it's not a current related issue. Current stays the same through a series circuit (a circuit that only has one path for the electricity to go through, which the wire is the only place its going.) The only thing that is dropping is the voltage, you could find a small transformer to boost the electricity. You don't need to do it much, but I guess you could use a car ignition coil if you wanted, or better yet save that for a stun gun
VeHeMT Frequent Poster	posted February 07, 2000 11:29 PM Go down to your local camera photography store and ask them for a expended disposable camera. The most popular is the kodak max. This model will have either a 330v @ 120uf or 330v @ 160uf capacitor inside. Carefully disasemble the unit. They are normally constructed with snapping pieces with the labelling sticker keeping it held together. Look for the seam of the two sides and run a knife along it through the sticker then pull the two sides apart being careful to avoid touching any capacitor contacts. They will give you a nasty shock. Touch a screwdriver across the capacitor leads before handling the unit any further and take note of the explosive spark created if the capacitor had a charge (more then 75% likely it will still have a charge). There are two ways you can hook up your line to the unit. One is to attach two wires attached to either side of the flashlamp and attach a switch to the shutter switch contacts to initiate the unit. Or you can just directly attach the two wires to the capacitor leads and on one wire install a switch somewhere on the line. This is a very easy (and incredibly cheap) way to make a firng box. House the circuit in some cheap project box and insulate any bare the connections inside especially if using a metal box. Run the unit off the same battery the unit was using before. You can tell what battery it was using before by the size and shape of the battery compartment. The kodak max uses 1 AA cell battery and the kodak advantix uses 2 AAA cell batteries. ------------------ VeHeMT's Armoury

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