Hello
I am hooking up 4 solenoids, and I am trying to ad some big caps to
a. relieve the poor 500ma power supply
b. get more kick out of the solenoids
I have modified the tutorial solenoid pdf from the playground
http://fubbi.com/trans/solenoid.pdf
I got one cap connected, but when I want to connect the second i get a big spark.
I realize the first cap holds some current from my testing, but I still have a feeling I am doing something wrong...
thanks
fubbi
Add a Diode from V+ before the low value resistor you added. The diodes will keep the CAPS isolated to the Solenoid you want it to serve. The way you have it now... the caps are basically helping each other out because the cap charge on ANY added capacitor has a path back to other caps via the resistor to V+.
Make sense?
makes sense! thank you!
Your charging resistor looks a bit small to me given the size of the caps and the supply voltage.
You may find this set of calculators helpful: Charging a Capacitor