Flash Capacitor Bank

This is a project I've added to and developed since high school. Ever since I first took apart a disposable camera and got shocked by accidentally touching the flash capacitor, I've wondered what else I could do with the stored energy. Hence, I made a capacitor bank to perform various high voltage discharge experiments.

I bought a bag of flash capacitors off of Digikey and got to work soldering them in parallel.

The completed capacitor bank.

The entire system at a glance.

Closeup of the charging circuit with AA battery holder (the original disposable camera that I first shocked myself with).

The discharge tips, harvested off of a cheap voltmeter.

The charging switch, which does not touch the capacitor bank circuit. The capacitors remain charged until they are discharged through the discharge tips.

The entire system is built into an acrylic box for safety. When stored, the capacitors are discharged and the AA batteries removed.

To test the system, I decided to discharge it into a penny. Here is the penny before discharging.

Penny after discharging. Note that the spark from the discharge vaporizes two small craters into the copper surface of the penny, exposing the zinc and throwing it everywhere.