Chief Delphi - Are Capacitors Legal?

Quote:

Originally Posted by sciguy125

The datasheet for the 58F cap said it has a short circuit current of 1500A. The 430F said 5000A. I'm tempted to make a rail gun now. Or maybe one of those coin smashing things.

Not with these you won't. To make acheive the energy discharge rates and rise times needed for these sorts of devices, you need voltages at least two orders of magnitude greater than what you will get out of one of these things. You could hook a bunchload of them in series but this is not a good idea either. The 5000A is an indication of that will happen when you short the terminals, not what kind of current they are designed to source. If you put enough of these in series, to get a high enough voltage, you would run into a number of problems. Firstly, there is a good chance they would implode internally due to the flux that would be generated by the high current spikes generated if they were used for a HV Pulse supply. Secondly, its not safe. If the dialectic on a single cell were to break down, it cold cause a catatrophic cascade that might cause the whole thing to explode! This is warned about in the data sheet. These caps simply arn't meant for HV or high frequency use. Maxwell makes a number of caps designed for these applications