My 300V SuperAmp Stungun

Disclaimer: This page is for educational purposes only!!! This device makes use of very dangerous voltages and currents and thus poses a high risk to people and property. I am not responsible for you hurting or killing yourself or anyone else because you decided to recreate the project I present here especially if you feel the urge to increase the power of this device. If you do perhaps I'll see your name in the next Darwin Awards list.

Ok so this really isn't a stungun. A real stungun uses high voltage (10,000-400,000V) and low current. The juice is also alternating at high frequency. This gizmo charges a bank of photo flash capacitors in parallel up to ~300V using the flash circuit from a disposable camera. This thing won't stun you and leave you otherwise unharmed. This thing will kill you!!! The electrodes are direct extensions of the capacitor leads and therefore supply super high currents. I've never measured how high it gets because I have no equipment to try with. I could keep blowing fuses or tripping breakers to see how high it will go but that would get expensive.

So where would I get such an idea? Well I was browsing Karl Williams site (see below) one day and he had a little circuit for charging capacitors up to 400V with parts you can get for free. I was intreged so I read on. Basically if you know how to be nice and come up with a convincing story you can probably get some empty disposable cameras from a photolab. If you don't want to do that but you do use disposable cameras, when you're done, rip open the camera and pillage the guts. When you get the camera, all of the film is outside of the roll and thus by the time your finished taking all of your pictures, the film is all rolled up safe from exposure. So rather than giving the photolab the whole camera, just give them the film roll and keep the toy. :)

Be absolutely, totally, and completely careful when disassembling the used cameras. The capacitor very likely might still have a leathal charge left in it. If you want to be safer you can let it sit for several days but this may not completely discharge it. If you don't know what you're doing try wearing thick rubber gloves the first time until you know what to expect. Never get complacent because the design of even the same model camera changes frequently. I've taken apart dozens of these things and not only do the board designs change, but so do the placement of the board in the camera. Once you find the capacitor, you should short the leads with a well insulated screw driver or other similar big chunk of metal with a well insulated handle. Make sure its not something you really care about because if there is a residual charge it will damage it. Its also wise to wear safety goggles or good sunglasses and earplugs. The discharge of just one of these capacitors is as loud as a gunshot and the bright flash will vaporize metal emmiting a bright flash of both visible and UV light. It also probably sends out an EMP (electro magnetic pulse) and could damage sensitive components (like your PC) so don't do this in the same room as your computer, especially if the case is open!!!

Before I built this device I was playing with one of the unaltered flash units. I would charge it up and using a plastic pen with a metal clip on it, short the electrodes. This produced the sparks and bangs I already spoke of. Eventually the metal clip had gotten so charred that it was all but destroyed so I began looking for other things to zap. I picked up a metal church-key (the thing you open your beer bottles with) and put it on the table. I had a hard time getting a good angle so I picked up the metal and put it across the leads. The next thing I knew, I had thrown the church-key and flash unit across the room and sat stunned on the couch. A minute or two later my roommate Ben came home and saw my dazed look and I told him what happened. I got away with making a very stupid mistake but next time someone making that mistake might wind up taking the eternal dirt nap. I managed to survive 300V (and almost 4J of energy) from one arm to the other through my heart and the only side effect was that all the nerves in my arms (especially inside my upper arms) kept tingling for 10-20 min afterwards. Had my heart not been young and healthy, it very well might have stopped. My second stroke of luck was that Ben came home shortly after and could have called for help if need be. Learn from this story and have respect for voltages and currents.

UPDATE: Ben has informed me that our other roommate Noah was sitting in the room with me and laughed his ass off after he knew I was okay. I'll have to confirm this with him. His memory of the episode is better than mine since he hadn't been jolted.

When my former roommate Ben and I were playing with the finished stungun, we blew two holes the diameter of pencils in a sheet of aluminum foil. The foil at the contact points just vaporized. Probably not good to inhale. We also applied the electrodes to a piece of 0.5mm pencil graphite about an inch apart; the graphite just exploded into dust!

Other experiments we conducted (basically zapping everything in the place) included zapping a bunch of Coke cans, a chicken breast, a pickle slice, and a spider. It blew 1mm holes in the cans, charred the chicken and pickle at the electrodes but didn't explode any tissue. When we found the spider that had invaded our place we decided to execute it. We simply expected a pop but all that happened was that any leg that conducted the current started to smoke and char. Of course the spider died instantly. Highly conductive materials like the foil and cans (basically thicker foil) discharge the caps completely in an instant most of the time. The chicken, pickle and spider acutally conducted the current for a few seconds as they charred.

Eventually I will rebuild this gadget. In the process I will strip down the charger to the bare essentials, provide for using more than one battery in parallel to increase the charging current and thus lowering the charging time, and using replaceable electrodes rather than just bare lengths of wire.

	This is the whole stungun from electrodes to handle. If you look closely at the upper electrode you'll notice the end looks pointy. Actually both of them are and that's because with every discharge there is a major arc that vaporizes some of the wire and they get continually shorter. I tried to alternate which wire closed the circuit so that they stayed the same length.
	This is the capacitor bank. The large one on the left is 160uF @ 350V. The middle ones are 160uF at 330V and the small one on the right is 330V and 120uF. All told they can be charged up to 330V for a total of 1240uF. That's over 67.5J!!! If I ever build a coilgun this might be the power supply.
	Not much to see here, but this is the bottom of the capacitor bank circuit board. I insulated the leads with electrical tape to prevent arc over between the capacitor leads.
	Here are the leads wired together in parallel. Originally I had the capacitors wired together with the copper traces on the board but during the first full powered discharge, I saw a bright flash under the board. The traces had been vaporized right off the board. From then on I used thicker copper wires and nice big solder balls to handle the current.
	Here is a picture of the charging circuit that I took with the flash. You have to watch out for both ends of that white wire. It's connected to the trigger transformer used to give a 4000V jolt to ignite the flash tube. Theoretically it won't fire because the trigger is on the other side of the PCB and not connected.
	Basically the same picture of the charger taken without the flash.

And now for some Links! They're not all about stunguns. Actually few of them are. Most are somehow related to high voltage experiments and devices.