capacitor discharge

In the "constant to momentary output" relay circuit, a 10k resistor is used to bleed off the charge of the capacitor. What value resistor can I use so the capacitor will discharge within 3 seconds or less?

Its dangerous to try...what's the rush anyways? If you must...just try a automotive test light.

Thank you, i am an idiot....that is the answer that points me in the right direction.

It really doesn't make sense to try changing the resistor to shorten the timing. Just get a smaller capacitor, and you can make it as short a time as you like. The cap is already a HUGE cap, and there's no good reason to use it- It might be good to illustrate a concept, but I think that idea of using that configuration for the delay is a bit silly when it's so easy to simply add a transistor driver. Then you can precisely set longer or shorter times without using such a huge cap.

Thanks to all that have responded. Just for clarification, I'm not looking for an adjustable time delay for the relay. I'm looking for a more rapid discharge of the capacitor so that I can activate the circuit again within 3 seconds. As long as the capacitor maintains a certain amount of voltage, it won't allow another action until it has discharged. An illustration of the circuit can be found on this web site: www.the12volt.com/relays/page5.asp. As it turns out, using a 3.3k resistor provided the result I was looking for.

Since your driving signal is apparently +12V/open circuit instead of +12V/Gnd, you could have simply put a discharge resistor on the input side of the coil. That'll shorten the cycle time without affecting the pulse on time, and won't require a 10,000uF cap. Since you don't need any particular pulse time you could use a smaller cap and you'd still have a long enough pulse.