Creating a particle system explosion without a collision I have recently discovered a tutorial about 3DS Max on Youtube that explains (in one of its parts) the creation of an explosion with a PF Source.

I am trying to create the same explosion but for a different scene and scope. My explosion should begin suddenly and without a collision to happen. I followed those steps but I discovered that they don't work in my case.

More information: I have an extruded text (converted into an editable poly object) that is required to explode at the 450th frame in my animation. 

How can I create this explosion?
If you want to use a physics simulation, your best bet is to have a collision but don't render the object that collides.  I haven't used 3DSMax personally in a number of years, but there should be an option to have the object physically impact the scene but not be rendered by the render engine itself.  Then you simply do the collision to occur at frame 450 and it should behave the way you want as it does in the tutorial you are following.