Mine's got about 1500v output, I replaced the cap with a 1µF 3kV (I think it was) and changed the resistor to 10Mohm, now it kills wasps with a nice loud bang...
How long does that cap take to charge? I stuck a 1uF microwave oven cap on the end of mine and it takes several seconds to reach full bug zapping potential with it.
I had a wasp on the ceiling I brought the bat up to it and fried it through its antennae no damage (crushing) so no pheromone attracting other little strippy b#$7@€£s
Canadian here. They definitely sell this model in our dollar stores. It was preceded about ten years ago by the single layer, higher voltage version that Clive alluded to as a powered spanking bat. Those ones were able to burn wasps and etch fingers, they don't make them like that anymore.
I had an early version with the parallel sets of wires and no discharge resistor. It made for some interesting times. One night we were plagued by little flying specks clustering around a hallway light. Held it up next to the light, and it sounded like somebody was making popcorn.
For those who are curious, I stuck my finger between the outer grid and the inner grid one time. It's a very distinct sensation. More like a hard, blunt impact to the finger than the sensation of an electric shock. Hurts pretty good.
**picks up notepad, starts scribbling** ...lack of reply hours later suggests licking zapper causes prolonged loss of consciousness or worse. Results inconclusive, further study required.
Easily the best bang for the buck I've received from Harbor Freight in recent years. Mine cost $3, uses D cells and has seen duty in the US, Japan and Korea. I love the smell of toasted mosquito in the mornings. The blood-filled ones give an especially satisfying zap....
Mosquitos are getting bad. I smashes one a few weeks ago, and it had so much blood in it that the blood actually splashed. He probably had like 100 μL of blood in him.
I like older type you described, those things could really light someone up.I took a measurement with a fast acting Klein meter and it was reading very close to 1500V at the grid
I used to 'tune' these with a lithium cell (550mAh from vape) and a 1µF cap minus the discharge resistor..don't do it kids, but I gotta say it rips the insects apart pretty spectacularly
I need to buy one of these to make a static grass applicator. It's used for model railroads and dioramas and stuff. You apply glue to a modeled landscape surface, you touch a probe to the glue, and the other end is a cup with a metal grill. The cup is filled with dyed fibers. They are attracted between the grill and the glue, and stand on end, mimicking the appearance of standing grass. Some people make super cheap ones by hacking these swatters.
Great video and btw, I loved all of your behind the scenes videos at the Tattoo. Thank you so much for letting this old "Roady" live on the road some more through your videos. After 45 years on the road I finally called it time to pass it on to the younger ones, but I thank you my friend.
I bought one of these from Harbor Freight and measured it at just a little over 1000V while holding the button. I did have the earlier variety as well with the simple alternating parallel wire arrangement, (which I fried while swatting a wasp), and it produced over 1500V.
Mine always failed by cracking their capacitor. Also fun to watch in utter darkness: the faint carbon traces on the plastic gave a glow like a distant star.
I think his career just brings to all sorts of people doing electrical work in the entertainment industry. Britain and Europe are also more sexually free than America.
we have a pile of these in Finland at our summer cottage, we spend the first hour or so killing giant flies and mosquitos inside and around the cottage with them, wonderful invention
630V capacitor just means it did not break down when 630V was applied for 30 seconds to a test sample of the metallised foil. The actual breakdown is generally around 800V, though many of them will actually survive 1000V for a few seconds, with only the occasional self healing internal flashover. Using on the mains however, instead of here in a very energy limited circuit, means that, during the flash over period, you get a very high current flow, and thus large areas of the foil vapourised. While on AC the self healing does isolate that particular area, as the arc does extinguish every half cycle, on DC you get a current flow, which in turn heats up more of the capacitor, and this arc area grows till it melts, catches fire and does a very bad imitation of a tea candle. There is a reason why proper mains rated Class X and Y capacitors are so much larger, as they both have a thicker foil, which has to be rated for 2.5kV, but also there are 2 larger value capacitors in series inside the foil wrap, so each half is 4 times the volume of the cheapie. Adds to the cost, along with those pesky certifications of samples of each batch by a testing lab, and in process testing. Rather different to the cheap one of "we tested one, so the next million or so should be fine" the dipped versions.
I heard of people replacing the AA's with a 9 volt. You should try that and see what happens...that is if you haven't already done it in some other video I haven't seen.
I tried a fly swatter circuit with 5V , I fried the transistor in 1 minute because it had too much current 😂 so with 9V, you kill the circuitry instantly 😅
@@xenonram To safely use a higher voltage, you'll need to adjust the base current on the transistor by changing the value of the resistor driving it. If you just slap a higher voltage on it, you'll over drive the base and likely kill the transistor.
To think there are deluded buffoons that think film is going to be reborn from the ashes and have a comeback to reign over digital soon. Not that im against film, just find silly what many film aficionados claim.
The early ones used to hold their charge (I assume no discharge resistor on the output) which was actually a lot more helpful for zapping the little winged buggers... I’ve also noticed a phenomenon where they appear to get really freaked out by the noise of them when the transformer circuitry is energised... doesn’t appear to happen when it’s held near them uncharged or charged but not energised
Harbor Freight Tools in the USA sell a very, VERY nearly identical (on the outside anyway) version of these, for around $3. They've even had a "free with purchase" coupon on them in the past. I have one, but sadly, it uses the horrible "D" cell batteries, which cost a lot more than AAs, and many people don't keep on hand. Perhaps the makers chose to because of their large size, and ability thereby to move a lot of current quickly? Unfortunately, those D cells are heavy, and the battery chamber was so loose that swinging the swatter around (as one must do to strike a flying insect) often induced enough centrifugal force to compress the negative-contact spring, and make the positive tip of the D cell to come off the contact point. It would therefore interrupt the current, meaning if you swing it too hard [basically at all] then the damn thing gets no juice and doesn't work. I solved this in mine by making a conductive washer with an insulated ring around it, to take up the slack, but it makes it a real pain in the ass to change the batteries. That complaint aside, the darn thing killed dozens of yellowjackets for me last year. It does work, so long as the batteries stay in contact with their terminals. I've thought about clipping the connections to the D cells and putting an 18650 cell in there instead. Slightly higher voltage, and rechargeable. .
The D-Cell ones work so much better then the AA-cell versions. I have one of each and i use the D-cell one all the time since it can actually Kill flies. The AA-cell one just stuns them for a few seconds. Got them both at Harbor Freight also, but anymore they just sell the AA version. I'd love to get a new D sized one. I've dropped mine a few times so now there's tape holding the battery cover on, But it still works!
@@jameslmorehead Yup. I get all my batteries there. For what i use them in they work just fine. Low demand things.. IE keyboards, mice, they even last plenty long enough in LED flashlights.
Back when they first appeared on the market in my state (NH-USA) they had D-cells. Had the horizontal lines vs the screen and the batteries made it feel substantial and was of higher quality (they were $20 or so then). Wasps & hornets would literally explode with the sound of a small caliber gunshot. Yes, you can find these in every junk...err... ChinaMart...errr... dollar/discount store still.
I have one of the older D-cell versions, They definitely have a bigger pop than the newer AA-cell ones. I'm glad it still works since you can actually Kill flies and wasps with it, while the newer ones just piss them off after stunning them for a second.
I have one of the early AA cell ones, of which I have ‘tuned’ the circuit to produce the highest output I could squeeze out of it. According to a crude measurement, it now goes well beyond 2 kV. I feared the capacitors would die, but they hold. Mosquitoes usually explode, which is tremendously satisfying. Only the very fattest flies tend to recover from a single hit, so the trick is to fry them on the grid for a while.
@Neil Siebenthal As it's a closed circuit, the metal screwdriver shorted it out at the grid, there was no other path through Clive back to ground for the electricity to take.
Yes, but if he touched it with his finger, he'd get a shock as his finger would be bridging the connections. He used a screwdriver to bridge the gap hence he didn't get a shock.
about 15 years ago they were just vertical bars with alternating polarity...much more effective and allowed some decent cooking of insects. also a guaranteed shock with the residual charge
Very like what Harbor Freight here in the States used to occasionally have on sale for $2. Never took one of theirs apart, though, and I think that the meshes were more rudimentary.
Strewth! I remember your first video with one of these, years ago - it inspired me to have a dig into one of my own that was broken - I kept the circuit board for years! Eventually I had a go at building my own contraptions...
Big Clive knows electronics like Ralphy knows whisky ☺️ the best breakdown of a circuit ☺️ your fun with the “ water purifier “ is also a winner ☺️☺️ great informative videos Clive ..Regards Peter
Years ago my friend and I got a couple of these and had some fun inserting bigger capacitors into the circuit. With one large one, when the racket hit a fly the fly exploded.
@@K-o-R pretty much and if you add 2 nails or something to wrap the wires around then you can drive it into people's skin better! Ofcourse you shouldnt do this. Also the disposable cameras with a flash can also make a pretty violent taser, by using the flash circuit to charge up the cap and have 2 wires coming off that will discharge it and cause someone to contract once lol
I might orn might not have done that. I also might or might not have zapped myself with the residual charge. Edit: Mine is not intended for zapping people. I built it to be able to charge up model railway grass so it sticks up.
I've seen the mains powered version of those, it's basically a capacitive dropper with a rechargeable battery, however it doesn’t have a charging lead, instead it has europlug prongs that pop out of the back and you use a deathdapter to plug it into the wall, I’d love to see one of those as well
I've got two of these around in the house, one of this new finger zapping safe design and an older one. I must say I strongly prefer the "less safe" option as well, it'll zap the bugs more reliably. Also for some reason it actually works on small things like fruit flies while the new construction seems to leave them untouched most of the time (although maybe that could be adressed with a higher voltage?)
You once presented a chinese high voltage "stun gun" module. I watched that video and immediately thought of these bug zapper rackets. I always felt they could use a bit more oomph and the show factor could be more spectacular... Now figure what i did... Just replace the original module with that ebay-stun-module, you need to cut away some plastic ribs inside the grip panels for it to fit inside, use hot glue to hold it in place, resolder the battery box wires so that it can accept a single 14500 lithium battery to power the whole thing and voilà! "Stunning" results!
Fun fact, modelrailroader as myself modify these to make static grass applicators, the static charge makes the grass stand up to make it more realistic! There is build videos on youtube.
Its a 3 coil version of a "Blocking Oscillator". Goes back to the tube days. I've built my own bug zapper powered off AC line voltage thru a voltage multiplier to ~2200V DC. The key is charging a 0.1uf (100nf) 3KV film cap. That works out to roughly a 1/4 Joule of energy stored. That energy gets dumped thru the bug. The resulting "steam explosion" (bugs innards are instantly boiled) totally vaporizes the bug. It wouldn't surprise me that the makers of these "dollar store" zappers are seriously exceeding the voltage rating of the caps. I've found that film caps can usually survive over twice their rated voltage for some time. Plenty good enough, for cheap toys like these. The caps will die eventually. But that maybe weeks, if not months, of intermittent use. A good experiment for those wanting to get into electrical engineering, is to hook up a film cap to 5x its rated voltage, and measure its leakage current. If doesn't fail in short order, keep the setup going for an extended period, (measuring at a regular interval) and see when the leakage finally climbs.
Mine looks exactly the same outside, but it doesn't have a discharge resistor across the cap. I've witnessed flies randomly landing on the grid, hours after the last button-press, and they still get blown in half.
Bought a Zero In Bug Bat version of this from Aldi earlier this summer and dealing with fruit flies has never been easier or more fun. Different design electrically and the discharge resistor hadn't been fitted so on a low-humidity day you could get zapped a couple of minutes after use if you picked it up by the business end. Aldi didn't seem concerned and the manufacturers response was it was being redesigned so that made it OK.
I replaced the circuitry in mine with one of those high voltage generators/stun gun modules that you did a video on and replaced the batteries with an 18650 and micro USB charger😁 Let's just say the sparks are a little more interesting now lol.
I measured the voltage of mine a while back and it reached just over 900 volts. It has sent on their way, two tiny annoying fly's and one huge bluebottle. The bluebottle was a one hit kill. (marks kills on the side of the racket)
At 1:12 "It is held together with 5 screws ... which must have broken their hearts at the accounts dept" ... that cracked me up. I needed a good laugh. Cheers Clive :-).
I have that for a few years from Harbor Freight and it does a great job except the damn thing is yellow so the bugs see it coming due to their IR/NIR vision.
I have an idea, rather than pumping the transformer, could it be pulsed, using an even faster electromagnet from a multivibrator, getting way way higher current?
I've got an older version of one of these. Not sure where it came from. The circuit uses different values of components, but otherwise seems to be the same. It has a X2 330nF cap on the output rated at 275V. I measured the voltage across the grids at 840V!
I measured the voltage of a similar zapper. The voltage was approx 1400 volt, but it varied quite a bit between each try (between 900 and more than 1500). That may have something to do with the fact that the output capacitor was only rated for 250 volt AC.
I have the earlier (voltage multiplier) version of the unit here. A rating sticker on its handle claims it's 1.5KV, 1.5W. So unless the newer design has dropped the output a lot, that output capacitor is badly underated. Also the discharge resistor is probably rated at only 250V, so could well go open-circuit eventually.
Mine charges directly from the wall socket & has rechargeable battery inside. And it’ll fry any insects instantly that get stuck between the mesh. UK ones seems to be quite tame.
It's missing the snubber, so the transistor is subjected to some pretty high-voltage pulses and might fail earlier, but they obviously don't care about that in a product that costs a pound.
My problem with this newer product from Harbor Freight is that the bugs do not get inside the mesh in order to get zapped. The older version works very well but is definitely not as safe to use.
not questioning other's capability of distinguishing colors but 22ohms is like a short at that low current, it's just a random made resistor, maybe a stock of wrongly coded ones sold for less but at who needs a 2M2.... not weird at all EDIT: nevermind
Clive, how about taking one of the older style zappers with the horizontal grid, and swapping the electronics for the internals of one of those arc lighters? It would continuously arc at random places, which would already be cool on its own, but it should also be effective against pretty much any insect, including the fat flies that are at best stunned by the normal zappers for a few seconds only. Once an insect is near the grid, it should become the preferred path for electricity and be annihilated. Safety would obviously not be the number one concern…
Was wondering similar; we have a $4 AliExpress gas lighter, USB rechargeable, works great, the guts of which could be transplanted. Also one of those skin-tag zappers (which Big Clive reviewed), which also works well. But if I was going to make that much effort, I'd get one of the AliExpress high-voltage modules (also cheap), chunky HV caps, an 18650 and a charger PCB...
Shocking! Makes me want dig my coil out of the doomed project pile... That reminds me - if you're ever worried about if the laquer on a winding is damaged you can test by dipping the whole thing in salt water and testing for continuity with the ends.
I opened mine today to repair it, it has much more components than this one, both 220Vac wires were disconnected, due to cold solder connection. Now it works well.
When I was at school I made a people zapper by winding a billion turn transformer for the HT and a smaller winding for the primary. I wound it all on an iron core. At one end I made a metal slug on a bit of old clock spring that would snap to the core when current flowed in the primary. I used a 4½v cycle lamp battery. I hooked up the primary winding supply in series with a pair of contacts driven by the metal slug and hey presto! a buzzer with an HT winding. The whole thing fitted into a small wooden box that amplified the buzzing sound. So satisfying. Much fun and pranks to be had. Rings of people in the playground holding hands zapped. Coins in the bottom of the toilet sink filled with water. Brave souls could just about stand the electricity through their hands in the water but the instant they touched the metal coins double zap! I kept the gubbins inside the box a secret for more mystery.
I had one when they first came out, instead of a grid the wires were all run in parallel... like a tennis racket with the cross strings removed. It seemed to be a bit easier to use because the bugs didn't have to go inside the grid.
Hello Mr Clive Sir. Can we get a video of you ramping the fly zapper up to a more significant level, like to make fly's explode? For science of coarse.
Bought one of these. Definitely worth the £1 I paid for it. Mosquitoes are so much easier to catch and kill with these as the racket is quite large. However my unit doesn't seem to kill them, it just stuns them.
Would this design be moddable with a longer CW mulitplier on the output? My friend Jack has a two of these swatters but most flies that have an unfortunate run-in with the operational end of the device tend to fly away again after about five minutes after doing their little break-dance, I believe the dutch flies are militarising, so we must too. Jack tried the 9v battery hack on one of the zappers, but that was too much of a hot supper for this poundland flyspanker and a slight smell of transischar filled the room for the remainder of the evening. We decided to keep the broken one around; the handle still proves to be a great on-the-fly-hammer and rest assured using a flyswatter the wrong way around is a consistently amusing party-trick. When we do inevitably miss, we obviously replace the batteries. Now that I write this, I am astonished at what nonsense can bring an inebriated man the giggles. Sorry about the tangent, I enjoy your channel and especially appreciate this video for it inspired me to crack Jack's other flycrowave open for some upgrades. (Do you reckon you could measure the output voltage with a resistor network and perhaps a little capacitor to hold the potential for easier measuring? It'd hardly be scientific but it'd be a good enough approximation for my personal peace of mind.)
A chap upthread put two 1kV ful-scale meters in series, and saw about 500V on each. Alternatively, you could lift one end of the discharge resistor, and put a [micro]ammeter in series with it; 1500V across 22M will drive around 68uA, per R*I = V :-)
A couple of years ago I bought a few of them at Harbor Freight in the US for about $2 each. They work great and give off such a nice satisfying snap and flash when I finally zap one of those annoying pesky house flies. Sometimes a few extras zaps to make sure I got it gives off a bit of smoke and the odor of toasted insect.
I made some very strong ones in school back in the 80s we used can transistors and big . Real big transformers. Massive discharge and they ran on d batteries.
When I used to play with hydrogen / oxygen made from water, I used a modified bug zapper to ignite the gases in whatever container I was about to blow up. I had taken out the mesh and soldered longer wires to the high voltage wires so that I could stand behind cover. I had also replaced the AA batteries with a 9 V battery to up the voltage. The 9V battery even fit perfectly into the original housing after a bit of sanding.
Many years ago I built a mains powered negative ion generator using a capacitor- diode string. I later found that by bypassing the protection resistor on the output it made an extremely effective electric fence unit for keeping cats away from my fish pond. I'd love to know what the output voltage of that was.
Full mains voltage if you removed all the resistors. It would have been a row of diodes straight to one leg of the mains. It would still have worked as a deterrent with the resistors as it would impart a sting.
I have one those I bought in Brazil but mine has an internal battery. At the end of the handle you pull out this thing and it exposes the pins for European power sockets which you connect directly to the wall and it charges the battery. Surprisingly it’s also multi volt. One thing I noticed is that current will run through the mesh for as long as you hold down the button. That leads to a very disturbing situation where as I’m trying to hit the flies if one gets stuck in the mesh it will keep getting fried until I release the button. Luckily they seem to die at first contact.
I opened mine up. It is a Harbor Freight item 62540. [Harbor Freight has 2 or more suppliers for almost every item. Usually, if the item number is different, so is the design.] Mine uses 1kOhm resistors instead of 560. In mine there was a sixth screw holding in the circuit board, the power button was soldered to the board, but the battery compartment was connected with yellow wires. Same 22 megaohm bleeder resistor. The capacitor is labeled 334K X2 and probably 375 volts. Although the ink is not clear, and it might say 275 volts. 334K is 330 nF. X2 means it can handle 2.5kvolt surges, and it is rated to be connected to the mains.
These things have been modified to hold a metal tea strainer. One terminal is connected to the strainer, the other to a fly lead. It’s used to spread model grass in the form of nylon fibres. The fly lead is grounded to the job. You put a pinch of fibres in the strainer, turn it on and shake the strainer so charged fibres drop onto a glued surface and hopefully stand up due to their electrical charge when dropped. As the thing is only 600 volts you have told me why it’s not very good. More oomph required!
Would have been nice to see a scope trace of the waveform at the transistor's collector and/or base. This looks like the same basic idea behind an automotive points-and-condenser ignition system with a transistor oscillator replacing the mechanically-driven points. Thus, the output voltage is generated when the transistor turns *off* and the transformer's magnetic field collapses. That's my theory, anyway -- I are not a 'lectricial engineerator. Also, in the US, Home Depot sells both the el-cheapo model like the one in the video and a somewhat beefier model that has a larger "bat" and uses 2 C cells. Both make a satisfying *pop* when they zap something small, like a fruit fly or a mosquito. Moths, however, tend to get stuck between the grates and sort of "sizzle" an emit a rather foul-smelling smoke as they get carbonized. The larger version really cooks 'em up a treat. ;)
Not quite. There is also a voltage produced in the secondary as the voltage across the primary rises, but it's nowhere near as intense as the "spike" produced when power is suddenly cut off and the magnetic field collapses all at once. This produces voltage spikes in *both* the primary *and* secondary (and any other windings the transformer may have), but in these applications, the spike from the primary is nowhere near as great as that from the secondary due to the ratio of the turn counts of the windings. In an automotive system, the condenser (capacitor) between the points and ground provides a reactive load to further reduce the intensity of that spike, and thus mitigate the strength and duration of the arc produced when contact is first broken, thus keeping the arc from ablating metal from the contacts. When the primary is fed by a pure sinusoidal waveform, the voltage produced by the secondary tracks the voltage applied to the primary in a linear fashion. In both the insect zapper and automotive ignition, the primary is being fed by a sawtooth waveform, not a sinusoidal one, hence the dramatically different behavior of the system. A similar technique is used in old CRT TVs and monitors, in which the amplified sawtooth-wave horizontal sweep signal is used to feed a "flyback" transformer to produce the extremely high voltage required by the CRT's anode. Note to Clive: As previously stated, I are not a 'lectrical engineerator, so please feel free to jump in and correct me if I am mis-stating any of this! :)
I remember trying to measure one of these in my teens with a cheap maplin multimeter. It killed the meter instantly, can't remember exactly what blew but it was a small black chip with very obvious damage so assumed these were in the kV range
Last one of those I took apart had at least a two stage VM on the output giving a grid voltage of 1.5kV, that one you have, I can see that actually going over the 630V rating of that cap
We don't have that exact model here, but I have played around with those quite a bit. We a similar type that looks quite like it, but it has a plastic lightning in the middle of the mesh. Try adding more batteries. The one with just one layer of vertical lines is hard to get b y now, but that one gives quite a a good zap. Don't have one of those, so I dunno the insides. I am a welder, so I don't mind too much feeling the zap. I have found a very good one for like 5 quid, it has a huge transistor, and seemed to work fine with 8 batteries, but the lightningbolt one I had became bad with 6 batteries after just a little while. The half good ones used to be red, and I had a red one for a few years, and now they come in green. Same components, but they break a lot due to poor manufactoring. That model has 2 layers of stripes in a diamond pattern
Mine's got about 1500v output, I replaced the cap with a 1µF 3kV (I think it was) and changed the resistor to 10Mohm, now it kills wasps with a nice loud bang...
How long does that cap take to charge? I stuck a 1uF microwave oven cap on the end of mine and it takes several seconds to reach full bug zapping potential with it.
MOT caps usually have an internal discharge resistor FYI.
I had a wasp on the ceiling I brought the bat up to it and fried it through its antennae no damage (crushing) so no pheromone attracting other little strippy b#$7@€£s
Oh nice, going to have to retrofit mine like that. Thanks for the suggestion
any chance of a link to the cap you used?
Canadian here. They definitely sell this model in our dollar stores. It was preceded about ten years ago by the single layer, higher voltage version that Clive alluded to as a powered spanking bat. Those ones were able to burn wasps and etch fingers, they don't make them like that anymore.
I had an early version with the parallel sets of wires and no discharge resistor. It made for some interesting times.
One night we were plagued by little flying specks clustering around a hallway light. Held it up next to the light, and it sounded like somebody was making popcorn.
For those who are curious, I stuck my finger between the outer grid and the inner grid one time. It's a very distinct sensation. More like a hard, blunt impact to the finger than the sensation of an electric shock. Hurts pretty good.
Lick it and report back
**picks up notepad, starts scribbling** ...lack of reply hours later suggests licking zapper causes prolonged loss of consciousness or worse. Results inconclusive, further study required.
@@AttilaAsztalos lol if you want something done do it yourself. 🥴🤯
My brother did it and there was a lightning bolt shaped mark on his finger.
@@Paul_The_Spaceman
so that annoying little wizard from the UK just got smacked in the head with a flyzapper, no voldemort interaction...
I usually replace the 2 AA with one 18650 and a TP4056 USB-C charging module.
It provides plenty of power and they are easy to charge.
Easily the best bang for the buck I've received from Harbor Freight in recent years. Mine cost $3, uses D cells and has seen duty in the US, Japan and Korea. I love the smell of toasted mosquito in the mornings. The blood-filled ones give an especially satisfying zap....
Mosquitos are getting bad. I smashes one a few weeks ago, and it had so much blood in it that the blood actually splashed. He probably had like 100 μL of blood in him.
Andrew Delashaw She probably had 100 µL of blood In her...Like It's the female Mosquito that's the bloodsucker you know.
@@jamesellis5445 The name for a female Mosquito is Mitch! Yeah, it is bad, it supposed to be Bitch with a M :P
Hmm sounds like people should be careful of blood contamination on these things
Yep, I don't think few particles of ozone and a high voltage spark can "kill" malaria.
I like older type you described, those things could really light someone up.I took a measurement with a fast acting Klein meter and it was reading very close to 1500V at the grid
Incredible explanation, amazing how a simple device is actually a bit complex...Great job...
I used to 'tune' these with a lithium cell (550mAh from vape) and a 1µF cap minus the discharge resistor..don't do it kids, but I gotta say it rips the insects apart pretty spectacularly
I need to buy one of these to make a static grass applicator. It's used for model railroads and dioramas and stuff. You apply glue to a modeled landscape surface, you touch a probe to the glue, and the other end is a cup with a metal grill. The cup is filled with dyed fibers. They are attracted between the grill and the glue, and stand on end, mimicking the appearance of standing grass. Some people make super cheap ones by hacking these swatters.
Got mine at home bargins mate £1:50. To do the same mod you mentioned.
You BAD bear, using those things as spanking paddles. I was in tears when you decided to enlighten us to the alternative use of the fly zapper! :)
Great video and btw, I loved all of your behind the scenes videos at the Tattoo. Thank you so much for letting this old "Roady" live on the road some more through your videos. After 45 years on the road I finally called it time to pass it on to the younger ones, but I thank you my friend.
I bought one of these from Harbor Freight and measured it at just a little over 1000V while holding the button. I did have the earlier variety as well with the simple alternating parallel wire arrangement, (which I fried while swatting a wasp), and it produced over 1500V.
Mine always failed by cracking their capacitor. Also fun to watch in utter darkness: the faint carbon traces on the plastic gave a glow like a distant star.
I am starting to think Clive makes his big money modding adult toys.
He does say it gets hot on the job ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
He always seems to know a lot about S&M, sex toys, and BDSM stuff. LOL.
I think his career just brings to all sorts of people doing electrical work in the entertainment industry. Britain and Europe are also more sexually free than America.
Modding or Modeling?
Pyrotechnics and adult sex toys. What a mix.
we have a pile of these in Finland at our summer cottage, we spend the first hour or so killing giant flies and mosquitos inside and around the cottage with them, wonderful invention
630V capacitor just means it did not break down when 630V was applied for 30 seconds to a test sample of the metallised foil. The actual breakdown is generally around 800V, though many of them will actually survive 1000V for a few seconds, with only the occasional self healing internal flashover. Using on the mains however, instead of here in a very energy limited circuit, means that, during the flash over period, you get a very high current flow, and thus large areas of the foil vapourised. While on AC the self healing does isolate that particular area, as the arc does extinguish every half cycle, on DC you get a current flow, which in turn heats up more of the capacitor, and this arc area grows till it melts, catches fire and does a very bad imitation of a tea candle.
There is a reason why proper mains rated Class X and Y capacitors are so much larger, as they both have a thicker foil, which has to be rated for 2.5kV, but also there are 2 larger value capacitors in series inside the foil wrap, so each half is 4 times the volume of the cheapie. Adds to the cost, along with those pesky certifications of samples of each batch by a testing lab, and in process testing. Rather different to the cheap one of "we tested one, so the next million or so should be fine" the dipped versions.
Of course the other obvious problem with running it off the mains is that you'd need a fly to fly near your plug, making it a lot less useful.
I heard of people replacing the AA's with a 9 volt. You should try that and see what happens...that is if you haven't already done it in some other video I haven't seen.
I replaced with 1x18650 with charge module
I tried a fly swatter circuit with 5V , I fried the transistor in 1 minute because it had too much current 😂
so with 9V, you kill the circuitry instantly 😅
@@ElectroXa it depends, there are a dozen different variations of these, so there may be one that can handle 4.2-9V.
I would be interested in this as well, is there some way to tune it? Replacing caps? Especially large insects are not very impressed.
@@xenonram To safely use a higher voltage, you'll need to adjust the base current on the transistor by changing the value of the resistor driving it. If you just slap a higher voltage on it, you'll over drive the base and likely kill the transistor.
Kodak, once a photography powerhouse, now reduced to having its name slapped onto batteries in poundland fly swatters...
They paid the ultimate price (like Polaroid and Nokia) for absolute refusal to acknowledge the future.
They've allowed their name to be put on all sorts of tat, including a cryptocurrency
@@arenalife Kodak's definitely one of those 'you had everything right, then did silly things' types of companies.
To think there are deluded buffoons that think film is going to be reborn from the ashes and have a comeback to reign over digital soon. Not that im against film, just find silly what many film aficionados claim.
Jesus. All they had to do was invest in digital detection tech instead. Wow.
The early ones used to hold their charge (I assume no discharge resistor on the output) which was actually a lot more helpful for zapping the little winged buggers...
I’ve also noticed a phenomenon where they appear to get really freaked out by the noise of them when the transformer circuitry is energised... doesn’t appear to happen when it’s held near them uncharged or charged but not energised
Harbor Freight Tools in the USA sell a very, VERY nearly identical (on the outside anyway) version of these, for around $3. They've even had a "free with purchase" coupon on them in the past.
I have one, but sadly, it uses the horrible "D" cell batteries, which cost a lot more than AAs, and many people don't keep on hand. Perhaps the makers chose to because of their large size, and ability thereby to move a lot of current quickly?
Unfortunately, those D cells are heavy, and the battery chamber was so loose that swinging the swatter around (as one must do to strike a flying insect) often induced enough centrifugal force to compress the negative-contact spring, and make the positive tip of the D cell to come off the contact point. It would therefore interrupt the current, meaning if you swing it too hard [basically at all] then the damn thing gets no juice and doesn't work. I solved this in mine by making a conductive washer with an insulated ring around it, to take up the slack, but it makes it a real pain in the ass to change the batteries.
That complaint aside, the darn thing killed dozens of yellowjackets for me last year. It does work, so long as the batteries stay in contact with their terminals. I've thought about clipping the connections to the D cells and putting an 18650 cell in there instead. Slightly higher voltage, and rechargeable.
.
The D-Cell ones work so much better then the AA-cell versions. I have one of each and i use the D-cell one all the time since it can actually Kill flies. The AA-cell one just stuns them for a few seconds. Got them both at Harbor Freight also, but anymore they just sell the AA version. I'd love to get a new D sized one. I've dropped mine a few times so now there's tape holding the battery cover on, But it still works!
The d-cell ones do work better, and in Florida people have lots of d batteries for hurricane preparedness. Lots of hurricane items run on d-cells.
Harbor Freight sell cheap D cell batteries.
@@jameslmorehead Yup. I get all my batteries there. For what i use them in they work just fine. Low demand things.. IE keyboards, mice, they even last plenty long enough in LED flashlights.
floobertuber I remember seeing a tear down (Clive?) that mentioned the components were rated for higher input voltage.
As long as you're modding...
Back when they first appeared on the market in my state (NH-USA) they had D-cells. Had the horizontal lines vs the screen and the batteries made it feel substantial and was of higher quality (they were $20 or so then). Wasps & hornets would literally explode with the sound of a small caliber gunshot. Yes, you can find these in every junk...err... ChinaMart...errr... dollar/discount store still.
I have one of the older D-cell versions, They definitely have a bigger pop than the newer AA-cell ones. I'm glad it still works since you can actually Kill flies and wasps with it, while the newer ones just piss them off after stunning them for a second.
Wow, I want a D cell one!
Far as I know, the Harbor Freight version still uses D cells.
I have one of the early AA cell ones, of which I have ‘tuned’ the circuit to produce the highest output I could squeeze out of it. According to a crude measurement, it now goes well beyond 2 kV. I feared the capacitors would die, but they hold. Mosquitoes usually explode, which is tremendously satisfying. Only the very fattest flies tend to recover from a single hit, so the trick is to fry them on the grid for a while.
@@erikj.2066 Not the one around here anyways. I live in SW Washington and the one in Vancouver has the AA ones last time i was there :(
You did do one a couple of years ago. When I had a look inside the current crop I was also impressed by the low component count.
As soon as I saw the title I was preparing for the finger test. I was left disappointed Clive...
@Neil Siebenthal As it's a closed circuit, the metal screwdriver shorted it out at the grid, there was no other path through Clive back to ground for the electricity to take.
Yes, but if he touched it with his finger, he'd get a shock as his finger would be bridging the connections. He used a screwdriver to bridge the gap hence he didn't get a shock.
Lol electroboom did that
"fly zapper" you mean "little brother zapper"?
Big flies fly away when ya release the button ay it 😂
@@davey2k12 what?
@@pacman10182 it don't do shit to big flies lmao
Try scuffing your feet and touching a christmas light!
@@davey2k12 works fine on little brothers
The guys at the club were quite pleased to discover that they could fit a 9V battery in the one they were playing with. :-)
about 15 years ago they were just vertical bars with alternating polarity...much more effective and allowed some decent cooking of insects. also a guaranteed shock with the residual charge
You can still buy them.
I have a version with a bigger capacitor and more multiplier stages. I used it as a fluorescent tube battery operated ballast
Very like what Harbor Freight here in the States used to occasionally have on sale for $2. Never took one of theirs apart, though, and I think that the meshes were more rudimentary.
Strewth! I remember your first video with one of these, years ago - it inspired me to have a dig into one of my own that was broken - I kept the circuit board for years! Eventually I had a go at building my own contraptions...
Big Clive knows electronics like Ralphy knows whisky ☺️ the best breakdown of a circuit ☺️ your fun with the “ water purifier “ is also a winner ☺️☺️ great informative videos Clive ..Regards Peter
Years ago my friend and I got a couple of these and had some fun inserting bigger capacitors into the circuit. With one large one, when the racket hit a fly the fly exploded.
You can also remove the grid and frame and stick the wires out of the handle and zap people.
But that would be a silly thing to do.
That would be masochistic. Not silly -- stupid.
So a Poundland stun gun then?
@@K-o-R 'Poundland stun gun'. ha ha. brilliant.
Poundland's slogan should be 'more bang for buck'
@@K-o-R pretty much and if you add 2 nails or something to wrap the wires around then you can drive it into people's skin better! Ofcourse you shouldnt do this. Also the disposable cameras with a flash can also make a pretty violent taser, by using the flash circuit to charge up the cap and have 2 wires coming off that will discharge it and cause someone to contract once lol
I might orn might not have done that. I also might or might not have zapped myself with the residual charge.
Edit: Mine is not intended for zapping people. I built it to be able to charge up model railway grass so it sticks up.
I know little to nothing about physics but I still come back to your videos
I've seen the mains powered version of those, it's basically a capacitive dropper with a rechargeable battery, however it doesn’t have a charging lead, instead it has europlug prongs that pop out of the back and you use a deathdapter to plug it into the wall, I’d love to see one of those as well
I've got two of these around in the house, one of this new finger zapping safe design and an older one. I must say I strongly prefer the "less safe" option as well, it'll zap the bugs more reliably. Also for some reason it actually works on small things like fruit flies while the new construction seems to leave them untouched most of the time (although maybe that could be adressed with a higher voltage?)
You once presented a chinese high voltage "stun gun" module. I watched that video and immediately thought of these bug zapper rackets. I always felt they could use a bit more oomph and the show factor could be more spectacular... Now figure what i did... Just replace the original module with that ebay-stun-module, you need to cut away some plastic ribs inside the grip panels for it to fit inside, use hot glue to hold it in place, resolder the battery box wires so that it can accept a single 14500 lithium battery to power the whole thing and voilà! "Stunning" results!
Fun fact, modelrailroader as myself modify these to make static grass applicators, the static charge makes the grass stand up to make it more realistic! There is build videos on youtube.
Its a 3 coil version of a "Blocking Oscillator". Goes back to the tube days.
I've built my own bug zapper powered off AC line voltage thru a voltage multiplier to ~2200V DC. The key is charging a 0.1uf (100nf) 3KV film cap. That works out to roughly a 1/4 Joule of energy stored. That energy gets dumped thru the bug. The resulting "steam explosion" (bugs innards are instantly boiled) totally vaporizes the bug.
It wouldn't surprise me that the makers of these "dollar store" zappers are seriously exceeding the voltage rating of the caps. I've found that film caps can usually survive over twice their rated voltage for some time. Plenty good enough, for cheap toys like these. The caps will die eventually. But that maybe weeks, if not months, of intermittent use.
A good experiment for those wanting to get into electrical engineering, is to hook up a film cap to 5x its rated voltage, and measure its leakage current. If doesn't fail in short order, keep the setup going for an extended period, (measuring at a regular interval) and see when the leakage finally climbs.
Mine looks exactly the same outside, but it doesn't have a discharge resistor across the cap. I've witnessed flies randomly landing on the grid, hours after the last button-press, and they still get blown in half.
Bought a Zero In Bug Bat version of this from Aldi earlier this summer and dealing with fruit flies has never been easier or more fun.
Different design electrically and the discharge resistor hadn't been fitted so on a low-humidity day you could get zapped a couple of minutes after use if you picked it up by the business end. Aldi didn't seem concerned and the manufacturers response was it was being redesigned so that made it OK.
"Current exchange rate".
Would that be an electricians joke?
A great electricians' joke.
@@brandonmartin-moore5302 Oh mo it isn't....
I just recently bought one of these and they are quite good.
I still have one of the older version.
They are 1100v. We took one apart at work last year. It gives you quite a jolt.
I replaced the circuitry in mine with one of those high voltage generators/stun gun modules that you did a video on and replaced the batteries with an 18650 and micro USB charger😁 Let's just say the sparks are a little more interesting now lol.
I measured the voltage of mine a while back and it reached just over 900 volts. It has sent on their way, two tiny annoying fly's and one huge bluebottle. The bluebottle was a one hit kill. (marks kills on the side of the racket)
At 1:12 "It is held together with 5 screws ... which must have broken their hearts at the accounts dept" ... that cracked me up. I needed a good laugh. Cheers Clive :-).
I have that for a few years from Harbor Freight and it does a great job except the damn thing is yellow so the bugs see it coming due to their IR/NIR vision.
I have an idea, rather than pumping the transformer, could it be pulsed, using an even faster electromagnet from a multivibrator, getting way way higher current?
I've got an older version of one of these. Not sure where it came from. The circuit uses different values of components, but otherwise seems to be the same. It has a X2 330nF cap on the output rated at 275V. I measured the voltage across the grids at 840V!
I measured the voltage of a similar zapper. The voltage was approx 1400 volt, but it varied quite a bit between each try (between 900 and more than 1500). That may have something to do with the fact that the output capacitor was only rated for 250 volt AC.
I have the earlier (voltage multiplier) version of the unit here. A rating sticker on its handle claims it's 1.5KV, 1.5W. So unless the newer design has dropped the output a lot, that output capacitor is badly underated. Also the discharge resistor is probably rated at only 250V, so could well go open-circuit eventually.
Nice and simple design 👍
Nice walkthrou
Thanks for sharing 👍😀
I have been looking for a video like this for weeks... and there you are!
Mine charges directly from the wall socket & has rechargeable battery inside. And it’ll fry any insects instantly that get stuck between the mesh. UK ones seems to be quite tame.
Continuous usage not only overheats the transistor, it makes the flies smoke a bit, too!
Thanks for all your videos been the best find in quarantine
It's missing the snubber, so the transistor is subjected to some pretty high-voltage pulses and might fail earlier, but they obviously don't care about that in a product that costs a pound.
My problem with this newer product from Harbor Freight is that the bugs do not get inside the mesh in order to get zapped. The older version works very well but is definitely not as safe to use.
Pound land needs to put him on tv and make some fantastic advertisements!
I'm now thinking I could use something like this for some military triodes I bought to mess about with for the grid voltage.
That discharge resistor was 22 not 2.2 Mohm. Third band looks more blue than green to me.
not questioning other's capability of distinguishing colors but 22ohms is like a short at that low current, it's just a random made resistor, maybe a stock of wrongly coded ones sold for less but at who needs a 2M2.... not weird at all
EDIT:
nevermind
The 2 pound version has voltage multipliers and a 2kv rated capacitor.
Also rechargeable.
Clive, how about taking one of the older style zappers with the horizontal grid, and swapping the electronics for the internals of one of those arc lighters? It would continuously arc at random places, which would already be cool on its own, but it should also be effective against pretty much any insect, including the fat flies that are at best stunned by the normal zappers for a few seconds only. Once an insect is near the grid, it should become the preferred path for electricity and be annihilated. Safety would obviously not be the number one concern…
Was wondering similar; we have a $4 AliExpress gas lighter, USB rechargeable, works great, the guts of which could be transplanted.
Also one of those skin-tag zappers (which Big Clive reviewed), which also works well.
But if I was going to make that much effort, I'd get one of the AliExpress high-voltage modules (also cheap), chunky HV caps, an 18650 and a charger PCB...
Shocking! Makes me want dig my coil out of the doomed project pile...
That reminds me - if you're ever worried about if the laquer on a winding is damaged you can test by dipping the whole thing in salt water and testing for continuity with the ends.
Looks identical to last year's model. I took one apart and used it as the driver for a home made Tesla coil.
Make a video on it? I'm interested
Ha, I did that once. Arcs would actually jump from the power button to my finger when it was running.
I'd be willing to bet it'd work well as a base for a Cockroft-Walton multiplier. Get some high-voltage DC going. Surprise my friends.
@@heilhonkler6981 here are a few pages about it. There are a few videos.
www.ty-penguin.org.uk/~auj/blog/stories/tesla/
@@AlunJones thanks m8
Been watching your videos ages ago, congratulations on your subbs mate. Keep up the good work pal
I opened mine today to repair it, it has much more components than this one, both 220Vac wires were disconnected, due to cold solder connection.
Now it works well.
When I was at school I made a people zapper by winding a billion turn transformer for the HT and a smaller winding for the primary. I wound it all on an iron core. At one end I made a metal slug on a bit of old clock spring that would snap to the core when current flowed in the primary. I used a 4½v cycle lamp battery. I hooked up the primary winding supply in series with a pair of contacts driven by the metal slug and hey presto! a buzzer with an HT winding. The whole thing fitted into a small wooden box that amplified the buzzing sound. So satisfying.
Much fun and pranks to be had. Rings of people in the playground holding hands zapped. Coins in the bottom of the toilet sink filled with water. Brave souls could just about stand the electricity through their hands in the water but the instant they touched the metal coins double zap! I kept the gubbins inside the box a secret for more mystery.
@Dave Micolichek This one.
www.radios-tv.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/wpforo/attachments/654/79403=14664-lamp_battery_1289_1357235.jpg
I actually use this mosquitos are a big problem here, but my version has a internal battery which you charge directly from 110v AC
Probably have a shifty ac-dc converters though but anything goes if it's $3
A very popular item in the tropical areas of Asia for it's bug zapping qualities and may also be used on bar girls.
I wonder if you can cheaply beef one of these up by using the circuitry of a disposable camera flash. Longer charge time but should be a bigger bang.
Yup there are ones that break when you wqve them. The one here has better side supports. I ad glue to thrm.
You can buy them from Dollarama
I had one of those, but it was one that was even cheaper than that and it had one magor flaw: it was ALWAYS on, so you're never safe from a random zap
I had one when they first came out, instead of a grid the wires were all run in parallel... like a tennis racket with the cross strings removed. It seemed to be a bit easier to use because the bugs didn't have to go inside the grid.
Hello Mr Clive Sir. Can we get a video of you ramping the fly zapper up to a more significant level, like to make fly's explode? For science of coarse.
Bought one of these. Definitely worth the £1 I paid for it. Mosquitoes are so much easier to catch and kill with these as the racket is quite large.
However my unit doesn't seem to kill them, it just stuns them.
Would this design be moddable with a longer CW mulitplier on the output? My friend Jack has a two of these swatters but most flies that have an unfortunate run-in with the operational end of the device tend to fly away again after about five minutes after doing their little break-dance, I believe the dutch flies are militarising, so we must too. Jack tried the 9v battery hack on one of the zappers, but that was too much of a hot supper for this poundland flyspanker and a slight smell of transischar filled the room for the remainder of the evening. We decided to keep the broken one around; the handle still proves to be a great on-the-fly-hammer and rest assured using a flyswatter the wrong way around is a consistently amusing party-trick. When we do inevitably miss, we obviously replace the batteries. Now that I write this, I am astonished at what nonsense can bring an inebriated man the giggles.
Sorry about the tangent, I enjoy your channel and especially appreciate this video for it inspired me to crack Jack's other flycrowave open for some upgrades.
(Do you reckon you could measure the output voltage with a resistor network and perhaps a little capacitor to hold the potential for easier measuring? It'd hardly be scientific but it'd be a good enough approximation for my personal peace of mind.)
A chap upthread put two 1kV ful-scale meters in series, and saw about 500V on each.
Alternatively, you could lift one end of the discharge resistor, and put a [micro]ammeter in series with it; 1500V across 22M will drive around 68uA, per R*I = V :-)
@@theskett That volt meter in series thing just blew my mind.
i have the same one, i removed the resistor for louder sparks ^^
A couple of years ago I bought a few of them at Harbor Freight in the US for about $2 each. They work great and give off such a nice satisfying snap and flash when I finally zap one of those annoying pesky house flies. Sometimes a few extras zaps to make sure I got it gives off a bit of smoke and the odor of toasted insect.
I made some very strong ones in school back in the 80s we used can transistors and big . Real big transformers. Massive discharge and they ran on d batteries.
When I used to play with hydrogen / oxygen made from water, I used a modified bug zapper to ignite the gases in whatever container I was about to blow up. I had taken out the mesh and soldered longer wires to the high voltage wires so that I could stand behind cover. I had also replaced the AA batteries with a 9 V battery to up the voltage. The 9V battery even fit perfectly into the original housing after a bit of sanding.
Never tried sanding a battery down to fit ().
I've been meaning to get one of these to modify into a static grass applicator. This video will prove useful!
Many years ago I built a mains powered negative ion generator using a capacitor- diode string. I later found that by bypassing the protection resistor on the output it made an extremely effective electric fence unit for keeping cats away from my fish pond. I'd love to know what the output voltage of that was.
Full mains voltage if you removed all the resistors. It would have been a row of diodes straight to one leg of the mains. It would still have worked as a deterrent with the resistors as it would impart a sting.
@@bigclivedotcom A bit higher I think. This was a voltage multiplier setup with a 15 stages, from memory
Could you measure the length of the spark? (tells a bit about the voltage -though not precise at all)
I have one those I bought in Brazil but mine has an internal battery. At the end of the handle you pull out this thing and it exposes the pins for European power sockets which you connect directly to the wall and it charges the battery. Surprisingly it’s also multi volt. One thing I noticed is that current will run through the mesh for as long as you hold down the button. That leads to a very disturbing situation where as I’m trying to hit the flies if one gets stuck in the mesh it will keep getting fried until I release the button. Luckily they seem to die at first contact.
seems things have changed a little bit since we last saw this thing here.. see you in another 3 years little zapper!
thanks for the analysis good info,.i have seen those at HarborFreight for 4 $, now i want to take one apart,.lo.
I opened mine up. It is a Harbor Freight item 62540. [Harbor Freight has 2 or more suppliers for almost every item. Usually, if the item number is different, so is the design.]
Mine uses 1kOhm resistors instead of 560. In mine there was a sixth screw holding in the circuit board, the power button was soldered to the board, but the battery compartment was connected with yellow wires. Same 22 megaohm bleeder resistor. The capacitor is labeled 334K X2 and probably 375 volts. Although the ink is not clear, and it might say 275 volts. 334K is 330 nF. X2 means it can handle 2.5kvolt surges, and it is rated to be connected to the mains.
@@hamjudo thanks for the info, i love highvoltage circuits, they have so many applications,
Dear Clive,
I would like to ask you if you could show us your wonderful schematics also using "electron flow"?
Greetings!
Kurt
These things have been modified to hold a metal tea strainer. One terminal is connected to the strainer, the other to a fly lead. It’s used to spread model grass in the form of nylon fibres. The fly lead is grounded to the job. You put a pinch of fibres in the strainer, turn it on and shake the strainer so charged fibres drop onto a glued surface and hopefully stand up due to their electrical charge when dropped. As the thing is only 600 volts you have told me why it’s not very good. More oomph required!
Would have been nice to see a scope trace of the waveform at the transistor's collector and/or base. This looks like the same basic idea behind an automotive points-and-condenser ignition system with a transistor oscillator replacing the mechanically-driven points. Thus, the output voltage is generated when the transistor turns *off* and the transformer's magnetic field collapses. That's my theory, anyway -- I are not a 'lectricial engineerator.
Also, in the US, Home Depot sells both the el-cheapo model like the one in the video and a somewhat beefier model that has a larger "bat" and uses 2 C cells. Both make a satisfying *pop* when they zap something small, like a fruit fly or a mosquito. Moths, however, tend to get stuck between the grates and sort of "sizzle" an emit a rather foul-smelling smoke as they get carbonized. The larger version really cooks 'em up a treat. ;)
Not quite. There is also a voltage produced in the secondary as the voltage across the primary rises, but it's nowhere near as intense as the "spike" produced when power is suddenly cut off and the magnetic field collapses all at once. This produces voltage spikes in *both* the primary *and* secondary (and any other windings the transformer may have), but in these applications, the spike from the primary is nowhere near as great as that from the secondary due to the ratio of the turn counts of the windings.
In an automotive system, the condenser (capacitor) between the points and ground provides a reactive load to further reduce the intensity of that spike, and thus mitigate the strength and duration of the arc produced when contact is first broken, thus keeping the arc from ablating metal from the contacts.
When the primary is fed by a pure sinusoidal waveform, the voltage produced by the secondary tracks the voltage applied to the primary in a linear fashion. In both the insect zapper and automotive ignition, the primary is being fed by a sawtooth waveform, not a sinusoidal one, hence the dramatically different behavior of the system.
A similar technique is used in old CRT TVs and monitors, in which the amplified sawtooth-wave horizontal sweep signal is used to feed a "flyback" transformer to produce the extremely high voltage required by the CRT's anode.
Note to Clive: As previously stated, I are not a 'lectrical engineerator, so please feel free to jump in and correct me if I am mis-stating any of this! :)
I have one in my home as well but the bugs stink when they get zapped
I say lets power it with an MOT and a bank of HV caps. I want to see some bugs get turned into a free floating vapor.
Powerful enough that we can use them on a few buggers as well. Of course we'll need breathing equipment to avoid inhaling the odius vapour.
I think PhotonicInduction has a video on that... Just more stationary...
Don't be a pussy and build a portative tesla coil. If it sings the darth vader theme while killing mosquitos you win the internet
@@somanyfnbananas2774 What happened to Photonicinduction anyway?
@@josugambee3701 Post that very question in Google search (as I did) and you'll find out!
Please explain the parts you need to make this zap a little extra! I't just stunning wasps instead of killing them. Thanks!
I remember trying to measure one of these in my teens with a cheap maplin multimeter. It killed the meter instantly, can't remember exactly what blew but it was a small black chip with very obvious damage so assumed these were in the kV range
Not gonna lie Clive, probably one of your most terrifying thumbnails
Tut tut Clive, you know full well that Current doesn't flow at all. It's charge that flows and the current is a measure of that charge.
Last one of those I took apart had at least a two stage VM on the output giving a grid voltage of 1.5kV, that one you have, I can see that actually going over the 630V rating of that cap
We don't have that exact model here, but I have played around with those quite a bit. We a similar type that looks quite like it, but it has a plastic lightning in the middle of the mesh. Try adding more batteries. The one with just one layer of vertical lines is hard to get b y now, but that one gives quite a a good zap. Don't have one of those, so I dunno the insides. I am a welder, so I don't mind too much feeling the zap. I have found a very good one for like 5 quid, it has a huge transistor, and seemed to work fine with 8 batteries, but the lightningbolt one I had became bad with 6 batteries after just a little while. The half good ones used to be red, and I had a red one for a few years, and now they come in green. Same components, but they break a lot due to poor manufactoring. That model has 2 layers of stripes in a diamond pattern
I have one with a 22 nanofarad capacitor, it blows flies to pieces.does a bigger capacitor makes a bigger spark?wouldt be really interesting.
I've got a taser module that I bought specifically for a super bug zapper project. It'll be powered by an 18650.
One of these days I'll do it.