Car ignition coil

Boom! The classic potato gun harnesses the combustion of flammable vapor.
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Schuyler
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Does anyone have any experience with using this to ignite your cannon? Are there any risks in using it in this fashion?
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mark.f
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Not remotely, unless you fry one like I did and ruin your ignition box.
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TurboSuper
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As long as you keep your tongue away from it, not really.
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mark.f
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Nah, sometimes you need to lick the electrodes to lower the resistance. This trick will only work if they're conducting current, as well.
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Hotwired
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Bad mark :P
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mark.f
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Hey, I've touched the leads of a 2kV neon sign transformer before. Burnt me more than anything...
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Hotwired
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I've touched both live pins of a plug missing its back cover before and dammed if I know how I got there but I ended up several metres further away from it after a very brief and painful zap. Had marks like burns where I'd touched it for a while after :o

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TurboSuper
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markfh11q wrote:Hey, I've touched the leads of a 2kV neon sign transformer before. Burnt me more than anything...
I have a 1kV transformer at home that kind of has the same effect- it doesn't hurt much, but it burns your skin a bit. Pretty cool stuff.
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mark.f
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That's high frequency AC for you...
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Fnord
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I have a 1kV transformer at home that kind of has the same effect- it doesn't hurt much, but it burns your skin a bit. Pretty cool stuff.
I've got a 12kv one sitting on a shelf that weighs like 20 pounds. It only cost me $5 but once shipping was included it ended up about $30. I don't plan on touching it as the current it puts out is still quite lethal (~30 mA).

This is getting slightly off topic.
Last edited by Fnord on Sat Oct 11, 2008 8:29 am, edited 1 time in total.
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mark.f
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Actually, I think it's still on topic. Now Schuyler knows what not to do with an ignition coil!
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starman
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You can use them, several have, I'm just not sure why, big, bulky, associated circuit required....

It's hard to beat a stun gun ($10-15) or BBQ ignitor ($10) for a no muss, no fuss, ready to roll spark source.
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mrbadexample
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using an ignition coil usually means carrying around a car battery. when i go spudding, i drive off to a quiet, non-used forest preserve (decommissioned, no parking, no maintenance) and i have to carry my gun, barrels, targets, fuel and spuds off a ways, i'd hate to carry a 12V battery on top of that!

i'm thinking of buying a folding shopping cart to carry all my spudding gear in, to make one trip for shooting. piezo and stun guns are smaller and cheaper. i have a 150KV stun gun lying around waiting to fire some spuds.
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DYI
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using an ignition coil usually means carrying around a car battery
Why would you go to all that trouble when you could accomplish the same thing by wiring two 6V lantern batteries in series? Seems like an awful lot of wasted effort to me :P
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jrrdw
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starman wrote:You can use them, several have, I'm just not sure why, big, bulky, associated circuit required....

It's hard to beat a stun gun ($10-15) or BBQ ignitor ($10) for a no muss, no fuss, ready to roll spark source.
Ditto!!!!..... :D
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