How to Safely Discharge Capacitors? [Tutorial]

To safely discharge a capacitor you need to pick the best bleeder resistor. Calculating its resistance is crucial in terms of time required to discharge capacitors. Finding the golden spot is now possible thanks to some simple equastion. Calculate time using our short step-by-step tutorial and avoid any danger!

Check our offer on resisting components:

🔽 Watch more TME videos 🔽

0:00 - Don't Blow Up Anything!
0:17 - Dangerous Electronics
0:52 - What Is a Capacitor?
1:37 - Magic trick!
2:51 - Not-so-safe discharge
3:28 - Choosing The Best Resistor
4:38 - Discharge Time
5:16 - Calculating Tau
5:41 - Example
6:47 - Calculating Initial Power
7:01 - Discharging with 360 Ohm Resistor
8:06 - The Golden Spot
8:31 - Online Calculators
8:57 - Do It Yourself!

🎬 Thank you for watching!

✦✦✦ See where else you can find us! ✦✦✦

#TransferMultisortElektronik

[TheJkowi]

07:00 - 07:44 Please do not mislead people about RC constant, which DOES NOT mean the fully discharge (0V) time. The result from experiment (3.62V) was pretty close to the theoretical value (10 / e ≈ 3.68V) and is definitely not an error as you suggested. What if someone wants to discharge 400V capacitor instead of 10V capacitor that you presented ? 147V after RC time is rather not safe (as the title says), isn't it ?

[binjed-fb]

Hello, is there any difference when capacitors have a blue or brown color instead of the regular black?

[snudge]

2 minutes into this video and I'm finding it hard to concentrate on what is being said because the music is way too loud.

[renatovb]

hello, this is wrong to when you put screwdriver current (I) are infinit and possible to long time damage capacitor and spark are dengerous in some cases.
For correct discharge need to use multimiter and wait come secounds or device especific for this like capacitor discharge.
It's simply when it's capacitor from 10v, 25v, but when it's 250, 450v or more it's very dangerours.
Please don't show worng information for home users.