This thread has arisen from the dead. It’s about a turn of the 20th Century arcade game that delivers an electrical shock.
Are there any electrical hobbyists who would be willing to make me one? I have this diagram.
Only if I get to pick who plays with it.
You can do this with an old spark coil from a junkyard, and a doorbell.
You might need to tune it so the “zap” is not too bad.
I did this as a kid, aeons ago…
Different sort of thing. There’s no current at the start, and then it steadily builds until it reaches the ‘safe’ pint when it cuts off.
Itd be easy to set up to zap ya at about 30-60kv with a auto-coil at 12 volts the 1.5 dc battery will lower the output value though.
The sketch is pretty rough for a diagram But I think I can figure it out better. Where did the sketch come from originally.
In a wooden door you can as itll insulate the knob.
I don’t remember. It’s been sitting online for years. I probably uploaded it two or three computers ago.
It looks like what they are doing is vibrating one coil next to another coil to induce a current into it to create the higher voltage for the shock.
I’d be a little too concerned about the safety of it to make one for someone else (not that I have the time to make one at the moment anyway).
Safety, schmafety! Don’t make me stick wires into an electrical outlet!
This reminds me of the Shocking Machines we built in the 7th grade in 1960 in Fla. Kids built weird and pathetic attempts, some of them maybe too effective. Eventually a Doctor suggested that all this was not healthy, but we had been playing with them for a couple months already, and we were pretty well all shocked out, Jaded on EMF.
Time to revive the technology, to let kids shock each other, build with their own little paws things out of junk that can really WORK, shock you, light bulbs!
Any kid who takes one to school today would be kicked out of school for good and arrested as a ‘terrorist’. Political Correctness poisons everything.
These are the key items for a minimalist shock machine:
EMF source, AA, C or D cell or cells, up to 9 Volt transistor batt.
Transformer, harder to do now that tubes are no more, but any old 5 tube superhet table radio will give you a fine audio output transformer, the one that the speaker is wired to. The volts go in where the speaker was. these typically have a ratio of like 4 to 6,000, so they are near perfect, and not so rugged as to deliver harmful current. Trial and error can deliver all sorts of cleverly perverted technology. A microwave oven xformer can be rigged with V going in at the fat filament leads and the sparks come out the fine wire and ground. Way heavy.
Take apart a disposable flash camera and you have a near weapons grade unit. There are 2 usable xformers in each unit that deliver a LOT of bite for their size.
It MUST be AC or pulsing DC to go thru the xformer. again you can cannabalize the flash unit, but a purist might look at dragging a wire across a file or hacksaw blade or bit of screen. or switch on a tiny motor with bent shaft with rotor wiping staggered contacts.
Get a Neon lamp NE-2 with a 100K resistor in series and put it across the secondary to show when it is “on” it needs 90 V to light up.
Consider the Possible addition of capacitor across the battery or xformer primary. this can help to deliver a fatter and smoother spark. Careful here…
The Secondary of the coil must have solid hand grips for the Brave Fool to grip while they Prove Their Endurance. Ten inches of Half inch copper pipe polishes up nice and makes a fine “Electrode”. Use solder: make it pretty. do it nice.
Can make it adjustable with a rheostat or such in series, say 75 ohms.
I always thought the game industry missed the boat by not using shock feedback in their IO devices. The “Contact Points” are all to easy to imagine, and the Pleasure/Pain model is limitless in scope with vibrators and such as incentive. Technology has yet to deliver a retail aerosol narcotic that would be incorporated in the headpiece/goggles. Automated Wine enemas as rewards have reportedly been explored with mixed results, but Salvia divinorum, Salvinorin A in DMSO administered under the tongue, dictated by some game event; the very Wildest of Wild cards! Hang On!! But all this is for Later.
For Now we can amuse the Young Ones with a strange new toy; This Shock Project was Perfect for twelve year olds in the 1960s, tho now perhaps a precocious 6 year old of any sex might be up to the task. Would like to hear of any attempts to revive this Sport, will gladly advise any sincere attempt to degrade the evolving Social Order by the youthful aquisition of DIY “torture devices”. Because that is surely what the PC forces would label these homegrown toys. Kids need to do stuff like this to Grow… DSA
Reported (nates)
hey, glad to know about. Different thinking and different taste as well. I will surely keep an eye there. Thanks for let us know.
I built something like this as a kid. I think I used about four D cells, a buzzer, and a transformer that I scavenged from a box of old vacuum tube radio parts. It packed quite a wallop and scared me into never using it for the pranks I had in mind. The idea is simple enough that I understood how to do this with only a rudimentary understanding of electronics.
My best guess:
The vibrator switch is connected to an armature. (The armature is the long, vertical rectangle in the drawing. It’s probably a solid cylinder of iron.) The armature slides up and down in a brass sleeve. When the armature is in the “top” or “high” position, the vibrator switch is closed. When the armature is in the “bottom” or “low” position, the vibrator switch is open. A spring (not shown) keeps the armature in the high position when nothing is energized.
The armature starts off in the high position, and thus the vibrator switch starts off in the closed position.
Current flows through vibrator switch and transformer’s primary winding after a coin is dropped (knife switch closed).
A magnetic field starts to build up around the transformer’s primary winding.
The magnetic field pushes the iron armature down.
The vibrator switch opens.
Current through the transformer’s primary winding goes from a high value to a low value in a very short period of time, i.e. dI/dt is very high. This produces a high voltage across the transformer’s primary winding (V = L dI/dt).
A much higher voltage appears across the transformer’s secondary winding due to the high winding ratio between the secondary and primary windings.
Because current is no longer flowing through it, the magnetic field rapidly collapses around the transformer’s primary winding.
The magnetic field is no longer pushing on the iron armature, and thus the armature goes up to it’s normal position via spring force.
The vibrator switch closes.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
If this is correct, then it behaves much like a trembler coil.
Trembler coils are no longer used today. Today we use a transistor and oscillator to modulate the current through the transformer’s primary winding.
Yep. That sounds exactly right to me as well.