SpudFiles

Your post jimmy made me get out my volt meter . I took a reading of the screws that I used and got a reading of about .2-.3 ohm, if that helps my case.

Now so that you guys can be satisfied the stun gun works fine its brand new, and my friend found that out the hard way . I also built a small prototype to test the setup and it only occasionally transfers through the screws and jumps the gap.

If it's only jumping occasionally, then your screws are too far apart. If they're close together, then you have one weird-ass stungun. Or mabye your wires aren't making good contact with the screws...but I doubt that.

Remember that when connected in series for multiple gaps, the gap length will have to be lower for each gap.

Besides, I suspect a 330V 120MFD cap stepped up to tens of KV is probably potentially lethal. Probably not a good thing for a beginner to be dicking with.

Well of course it's potentially lethal... But what fun is anything if it isn't potentially lethal?

A piezo is obviously better for the beginner, but I was referring more to the (relatively) high voltage ignition systems. I've never had very good experiences with piezos; it seems that all of mine get weaker and weaker on every subsequent click, which isn't a very good property if you're trying to ignite a spray'n'pray combustion.

I just got my stungun in the mail today, and I can't imagine one having trouble jumping due to weak connections - there's quite a bit of voltage there. I still think that there must be a problem with your stungun.

I'll let you know im not a beginner im just new to spudfiles...if you count all my friends spudguns this is about my sixth im just starting with the 4 spark stun gun way. However I have a cheetah stun gun brand spanking new off ebay . I think ill make this easier, before I was just using any wire and such I could find but ill go buy some 10gauge tomorrow and solder all my connections and ill let you all know how it turns out.

spudmatic wrote:Your post jimmy made me get out my volt meter . I took a reading of the screws that I used and got a reading of about .2-.3 ohm, if that helps my case.

That's a bit higher than I would expect but is probably the limit of accuracy of your meter. The circuit shouldn't care about a couple ohms total resistance. The air gap's resistance is probably in the mega (million) or giga (billion) ohm range.

Are all your wires well separated? Does the default gap spark when you fire? If the default gap still works when you disconnect from the gun but there is no spark in the gun or across the default gap when everything is hooked up then you've got a short somewhere. Try the ignition system in a dark room and see if you can find where the spark is jumping. Also, measure the resistance across the stungun electrodes with everything hooked up (but don't trigger the stungun ). The resistance should be off-scale on you meter.

When I fire it jumps the default gap instead of going through the setup my guess was that my connection to the gun electrodes was to blame because its very hard to attach anything to them because of how small they are. Im off to get my quality materials....

Nope, still nothing . This is really frustrating, the only thing it does is jump the default gap I'll try posting pictures soon so you guys can have a better idea what im dealing with.