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Why I remember when I was a kid we could celebrate halloween without Santa pokin his ass into it!
The best way to attach coils to that would be to not attach them to it. If you're asking if 3 amps is dangerous to work with you don't know enough about electricity to be playing with it.
Even less than 1 Amp is enough to knock you our or, possibly, kill you.
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- John
Dag, yo
Support Rob in the Great DDR Challenge!
*** This post was edited by Michael Darling on 1/20/2003. ***
One amp through you, sure. Unfortunately unless you're wet your body tends to be pretty high resistance.
The LSM model. What ended up happening is i ordered some Hall effect sensors from Allegro before i left (free samples) but they didn't arrive until I was back home for the holiday. And of course I ordered them to here.
I don't want to seem unduly unsafe, but a 3a power supply at 13v is certainly not going to kill you.
You'll need a multimeter that reads voltage and resistance to do this. Current to 10 amps would be nice, but not necessary unless you can get it cheaply. That'll cost you about $20.
Check the resistance of your coil. The resistance should be at least 5 ohms. If it's less, add more turns or more coils. Then just hook up one wire to one end of the coil and the other to the other end of the coils. The nice thing about low voltage AC is it doesn't much matter which way you hook it up.
Don't let the people on here scare you necessarily, as there are probably only a handful of people here who have ever built a circuit of moderate power. These people you should listen to. The rest you should take with a grain of salt. My personal power limit for circuits before i start being VERY careful is about 24 volts by about 50 amps. I'm not saying get careless with 14v 3A, certainly don't try sticking it to your tongue or genetals, but it won't cook you.
Just for the record your max level of power from that supply is just about what you'd get from eight D batteries.
*** This post was edited by Comatose on 1/20/2003. ***
I'll agree that that particular power supply isn't likely to hurt anybody too badly, but there are several people currently floating around The Buzz that don't know a lick about what they're doing (read: the kid who was going to plug two bar magnets into the wall) and are going to hurt themselves.
If you actually know what you're doing, play with making a LIM, it'll be a good challenge (I'm hoping to try making a mini-rail gun sometime this summer). But if your knowledge of electricity only comes from screwing in light bulbs and buying a new AC/DC converter for your Dreamcast, don't bother.
As for the tip about not sticking anything to your genitals, that's a very good tip and should be taken to heart.
-John, who actually is studying circuits for a second semester
Oh that's not so much true. Condoms are usually okay. M:TR might be fine if you're of that persuasion. It's jsut electricity I'm advising people avoid.
I really think it'd be helpful to have someone do a "How to build a model LIM" tutorial. That way the people who might be able to replicate it will read it and say "yeah I could probably do that" and the people whose best idea is "fork in socket" would be put off by the complexity.
Also we're going to need a non-trivial amount of power for a useful model LIM/LSM. At least an amp or two by six volts.
I still intend to do a brushless LSM model, so that should help. Just as a general question to anyone else wanting to build one, would it be more helpful to make the design microcontroller based or just logic gates, op amps and transistors? If it were jsut me I'd go with the micro but you can't do that exclusively from radio shack
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I know not to doing anyhitng stupid with electricity, i even know that if u touch a AA battery to your tongue you will feel it (even tho i havent tried it, and know not to)
One qestion i have is when connecting coils, do u just use one long piece of copper wire and continue on through the coils, or do you use one piece of copper wire per iron bar and connect them seperately, or do they all have to be connected to their own power supply to be turned off right when the train reaches it so it wont stop the train?
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Why I remember when I was a kid we could celebrate halloween without Santa pokin his ass into it!
*** This post was edited by aliensk8ter on 1/20/2003. ***
*** This post was edited by aliensk8ter on 1/20/2003. ***
That's a 9 volt battery that you touch your tongue with, I used to do that as a kid. It's virtually impossible to do with a AA battery.
There are a few things you need to know about electricity before you do any projects like this...
There are two ways that electricity can kill you. The more obvious one is it actully burns you to death. It takes hundreds to thousands or more of amps to actully do this. Household current simply can't. I've only heard of a few cases where this has happend, such as idiots climbing high tension power lines/transformers or executed. You don't have to worrie about this one.
The other way you do have to worry about, but it's easy to prevent. Your brain produces a very small amount of elecricity that is transmitted through your nerves. It controls all your muscles from your fingers to your heart and lungs. It makes your muscles contract, but when the signal stops, they relax. Outside electricity makes your muscles contract too. If you grab wires in a way that makes your muscles contract, the wires will keep your hand grasped very tightly to the wires. You can't physicly control your hand in that situation. That is a best case senerio if that does happen to you becuase you might be able to use your other hand to turn off the power or whatnot. What's likely going to happen, is the current will be going through one hand to the other. Not only are both your hands involved but your heart and lungs could be too. If that happens, your heart will stop beating and/or your lungs will stop working. If you do get into this situation, you can only hope that you somehow can get out of it. If you don't, you will die.
Just remember, 95 % of accidents like that are caused by carelessness. It's just like riding roller coasters, it's very rare that anything will happen, but if your very careless, you chances of an accident are much higher.
If your dealing with less than 20 volts, you'd have to be really trying to even get a small shock.
Having said that, playing around with electronics can be a lot of fun. :) There is a sense of accompishment if you get something to work... the more complex the circut, the better the feeling you get afterwards. It's better if you know Ohms law so your less likely to burn out circuts, but there cheap enough it doesn't burn you... well maybe it can if you touch a hot resistor or something. :)
I recommend to anyone that has any interest in this kind of stuff at least try one of those electical sets at radio shack. They are somewhat limited, but they give you a taste of some of the things you can do.
LIMs produce a magnetic feild. The power of the feild can get stronger two ways. If you add more windings to a particular streach, the total magnectic feild will increace. The other way to increase the magnetic feild is by pushing more current through the circut. Just remember, the wires can dissipate only so much heat. If you give it too much power, they can get VERY hot. Just give them long enough to cool before you touch them, and keep anything that is flammable away from them.
Also, if you make a working model... even if it doesn't work as good as you hoped, post pictures. :)
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Last 2002 public ride on MF's front row
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