Unlisted video. Blaster One

[displayfireworks1]

This is an unlisted video that can only be viewed on the forums. You will see me testing a piece of equipment normally used in the blasting business. I was optimistic of it shooting a large number of electric match but as you will see in the video it failed. I am going to attempt to make another video with it. I will tell you what direction I am going with it and would welcome comments from some of the members of the forums that have some electrical knowledge.
My new move will be to run a standard fireworks wire out to a distance of 100 feet and add less than 50 electric matches and go down from there. I have to connect them in parallel to make it as simple as possible. In my assessment to use a device like this, the connections need to be quick and simple.
You can see some of the technical specifications on the device in the video. I will also list them here.
Energy average 10.49 joules at 325 VDC (Max. 11.02 joules @ 332 VDC; Min 9.86 joules @ 314 VDC)
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_aO4F6wQVE

[PennPyro70]

i kno it would take some work but how about hooking the entire bundle up in series? less currant needed but still would need a good bit lol

[PennPyro70]

i kno it would take some work but how about hooking the entire bundle up in series? less currant needed but still would need a good bit lol

ok scratch the end part lol but either way i think u would still get a better connection of all the wires instead of how they are bunched up like they are but u did hav continuity so i could be full of it crap lol. i tried to look into the total resistance of ur test but brain is starting to hurt lol it sucks cuz the specs on the system give joules (which im not too good with) instead of amps. could still figure it out if they gave joules/sec but it doesnt i even looked on the website.

[PyroMonkey]

You would have better results if you connected the e-matches in series. I'm not an electronics whiz, so somebody correct me if I'm wrong here.

I have some e-match here that are rated at .50 amps firing current. That's for a single e-match. In series, they are rated for .80 amps firing current. That would be regardless of number — could be two, ten, or one hundred — the current required remains .8 amps. The voltage required would be quite a bit: 100-200 volts, depending on manufacturer spec. The BlasterOne would have no problem providing the voltage, since it's rated at 325V. I can't convert joules to amps, so I don't know how much current this device can provide.

Now, in parallel, the amperage required (current) increases with each ignitor you connect. The car battery can probably provide enough current to fire 50 or 100 e-match, but not enough voltage. On the other hand, the BlasterOne can provide the voltage to fire this many in parallel, but not the current... the capacitor would have to be pretty substantial to pull this off. In series, however, it becomes a much easier task — 100 e-match should require between 100 and 200 volts, and only ~1 amp. That would be the way to test this unit effectively. It could probably pop a couple hundred e-match in series.

The length of wire would incur an almost negligible voltage drop, as would the small gauge of wire, at the short run Dave is using in this test.

Again, somebody please correct me if I'm wrong...

[Pyro Nation]

Series is the way to go, I would like to see the video with them that way to see the difference it did make

[fountman]

Yes Dave the real issue here is the wire gauge. Just look at your car battery cable. They don't put that heavy gauge wire there for nothing! It takes an incredible amount of current to crank over that engine. If you put 22 gauge wire there, it would just pop the wire like a talon ignitor. Remember current can be compared to the force of water in a pipe. Only a tiny bit of water is going to come out a tiny diameter pipe, same deal with current.

Bottom line is I would try some 16 gauge two conductor wire (lamp cord) next and see what happens and go down gauges from there.

Have fun with this! I love doing electrical firing experiments myself and have almost completed a homebuilt 75 cue wired firing system running on 12 or 24 volts, haven't decided yet:-)

[Pyro Nation]

I have seen lamp wire used for firing displays but never thought about actually attaching it to ematch....

[PyroJoeNEPA]

First of all, 1 Joule is defined as "passing an electric current of one ampere through a resistance of one ohm for one second."
Now, there are several things to look at in this simulation:
The resistance of an ematch: this varies slightly from manufacturers. Martinez did not have tech specs listed on their web site but I checked the MJG site & found their ematches are listed at 1 ohm with a minimum current required to fire of 1.0 amps and a recommended current of 1.25 amps. I measures the 2 meter ematches I have & they were 1.4 ohms.
PyroMonkey gave a good explanation of current/voltage so I won't repeat what was already said.
The issue here is that [on average] an ematch of 1 ohm is not an issue. When you connect 50 in parallel--that drops the resistance down to .02 ohms, 100 in parallel is .01 ohms--{Total Resistance = Individual Resistance divided by the number of resistors}--basically a dead short at .01 or .02 ohms!!! Add to that the dc resistance of the shooting wire:
Typical 24 guage wire is 26 ohms per 1000 ft or 2.6 ohms per 100 ft. If you run a 50 foot piece of wire out it is 2.6 ohms--50 feet each way since it is 2 conductor wire...so, you have a 2.6 ohm resistor in series with a parallel load of .02 [100 matches] in series with a 2.6 ohm resistor. [a note on this "pyro-parallel" later]
Add that to the fact that a capacitive discharge device rapidly drops its voltage when fired, you see the results--not enough voltage or current to fire the ematches. You had 2.62 ohms draining down the discharge capacitor.
Cap Discharge systems are typically used to fire a large number of ematches at one time-like a front- but are typically wired in series--not parallel. This requires a larger voltage--the matches all see the same current & the speed of electricity in the wire i s just slower than the speed of light--the current hits them all at the same time & they ignite. This is where DB25 Series Slats are usually used between positions in a front.The last slat is terminated completing the series loop.

On a side note--there is series, parallel, & what we call "pyro--or trunk" parallel. Regular parallel wiring would have [I]each ematch connected to the voltage source. "pyro-parallel" uses a trunk or feeder wire from the voltage source to the ematches--like you did in the video. Using a larger gauge wire--like 18 or 16 helps in a long run to avoid excess voltage drop due to line resistance--but would not have made a difference with all those ematches in parallel.

A second side note--using matches in parallel does not allow for reliable continuity checking before the shoot--if one is good & all the others are bad, it will test "good".

I hope this wasn't too hard to understand. Boy, I never realized my college classes would be useful in the Pyro World decades later!!!

[displayfireworks1]

Thanks guys for sharing all your electrical knowledge. I am going to test this device again. I want to wire the electrical matches in parallel to really test the limits of this device. If you ever set up a large display you know how rushed things can get, you may also be assigning a task to person with little to no experience. You can always say just connect all these wires together and most people can understand that. I also want to run a length of standard fireworks wire out away from the device as opposed to just connecting the match to the device. Again more realistic to a real situation. Many hand fired displays sometimes need to fire one thing electrically. A single hit. I want to see if this device can pull it off. The first application for this device is the blasting industry and secondly pyrotechnics. I may have over estimated what the high voltage could do. The next move is to try 20 E-Match and go up or down from there.

[blown2bits]

Parallel firing may work if you get a bigger wire, sure it may work with series wiring but we all know what happens with christmas lights when one light is bad, the rest beyond that light will not light, this is something you don't want to have happen at a show although you can do it and it has been done many times. I would Have started from 10 and then go up instead of starting from 100, this way you know exactly how many will go, none the less thanks for the video Dave and trying to give us an honest review.

[indianahx]

A few things on this.

As Dave had originally stated, and now stated again....this machine has high specs so he wanted to test its limits by wiring in parallel 100 matches. That didn't work nor did half of that. As far as I see, the test is successful in that it shows exactly what it can't do even if you hope it can fire a boat load.

As blowntobits stated, to fire all those you're going to have to get bigger wire...probably too big for a practical application. This is sort of odd bc from an electricians stand point, when we want to send a large amperage to a destination we usually parallel sets of smaller wire. At any rate:

E(voltage)= I(amps) x R(resistance)

With this equation, your voltage is already set with the device, you can't change that. But by increasing the wire size you will reduce the resistance which will inversely make amperage increase to sustain the same predetermined voltage.

E = I (^) x R (v)


I also sort of agree with blowntobits on the test as well. I think it'd be cool to see the number escalate. For instance, set up your ematch with 1 match in black powder. Next to it 2 matches (one in bp). Then next to that 4, then 8, so on and so forth....or whatever incriment you see fit. That way we could see each segment fire up the bp until no bp fires. Might be easier to explain visually. Obviously we know 50 won't work.

[pyromustang]

I would like to post some videos like how to make a e-match and other projects i do. how do you post an unlisted video that only pyrotalk members can see. thanks

[Pyro Nation]

U upload your video to youtube there is a option to make it public, unlisted or private. Just choose unlisted. Or if video is already uploaded. go to your video manager and you can change it there

[LightningPhil]

I wish I had seen this video before the newer version. Disregard my comment on the most recent video, as it has been covered to death in this one. Lol