Hello, I am making a capacitor bank for a project I am doing. I have seen the potential of the Arduino and decieded to give it a try. My question is, How can I use the Arduino to charge the capacitors on button push. (Capacitor is 10v 2200uF). I have about 12 In a bank (Positives and Negatives Aligned). I hope to make a electromagnetic launcher. Like in Chapter 1: Magnetism -- Build a Gauss Rifle magnetic linear accelerator . I dont have a charger at hand but I can by parts. Just give me what I need to Be able to Press the button, They Charge, And a Discharge Button. Any Comment Helps! Thanks!!
2 mosfets (one of which must be extra beefy to handle the high peak current), a power supply, and a resistor (to slow the charge so it doesn't anger the power supply).
The link you provided does not describe making an electromagnetic launcher, but just the old trick with magnet cubes hitting eachother - which has no electrical component. Did you mean a different link?
That cap bank sounds really wimpy to me, frankly - but maybe my expectations are off base.
What Do You recommed I use? (As A Capacitor Bank) https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=video&cd=6&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjVyvu-8czJAhUE54MKHY0fBTIQtwIILDAF&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D5etWUFz8UnI&usg=AFQjCNH8qdmag3r7RJeuIXlb53Hco5wFEg&bvm=bv.109332125,d.amc is the link I inteneded
(Capacitor is 10v 2200uF).
The amount of energy you're storing is proportional to the capacitance and the voltage. (That's the voltage-charge on the capacitor, not the capacitor's rating.)
The voltage rating on a capacitor is the maximum, and you should leave some safety margin. So, 5 or 6V applied to a 10V capacitor is OK. If you go up to 12V, use capacitors rated at 16V or more.
10V seems low... Up to a point, it's more cost-effective to increase the voltage than to increase the capacitance. For example, doubling the voltage doesn't usually cost any more and higher voltage capacitors don't cost much more, so that's usually cheaper than doubling the number of capacitors. Or, if you don't need any more energy, you can double the voltage and cut the number of capacitors in half (or otherwise the total capacitance in half).
I didn't watch the video (I don't watch video).
Video description states 149 joule energy source. That's 149 watt seconds
Formula for joules in a capacitor is 1/2(CV^2)
Your cap bank (10v, ~25000uf) can store about 1.25? Something like that? While you don't have to make something as big as they did, you might want something a bit beefier than that...
Honestly, I think you lack some basic background about the project you intend to make - find a writeup on building such a device; that will give you some numbers to compare against, as well as warning you about the areas that present danger. A projectile flinger will always present some hazards, and working with large caps charged to a high voltage can present electrical hazards too. Certainly the one in that video would cause injury if the caps discharged into your body - not sure how severe.
Can I hook the Positives to the Negatives and Increase voltage?
If you connect two equal capacitors in series, the caps can be charged to twice the voltage of one - but the effective capacitance will be halved, so the amount of energy stored remains the same.
I reiterate that you should do some basic reading on electrical design basics, specifically capacitor basics, before proceeding with this project. That is a basic question (and in fact, it's one that you could derive yourself from the equation above for energy stored in a capacitor, the physical definition of a capacitor, and physical laws like conservation of charge and energy), and this is not a project to charge into unprepared.