I was going to post the same thing. I've worked on a lot of video game monitors. They all have a hot chassis with about 130VDC to ground (always run them through an isolation transformer) but from that hot to the HOT (horizontal output transistor) is what gave me quite a few burns and the smell of burning flesh. I think it does hurt more than any other shock, and damn, it grabs you and doesn't want to let go. Most of the shocks I've encountered ran from one hand to the other... with my heart in between. Either I'm lucky as all hell or that thing about the one hand behind the back and the current going through your heart is just a story.
I think my worst ever shock was _only_ 120VAC from my pliers with sweaty hands, onto a hot wire, through me and to ground through my sweaty forehead. It went through my head, I did see a very bright flash, I suppose when it went through my eyes and the nerves for them. I had the machine unplugged and a good Samaritan plugged it in for me.
One of my little brothers was very helpful by cutting off the little plastic nub made when my insulated pliers were dipped in plastic. I suppose he thought it should be more symmetrical. I got the crap zapped out of me when I grabbed a hot wire with them.
Ironically it was around that same time in one of the last operating stables in NYC (Clove Lake in Staten Island) that I learned about another of the many ways to get injured. I was mucking out the stables where we kept the draft hourses. They were all Clydesdales, the REALLY big horses that pull the Annheiser Busch beerwagons and the horse I was behind when I had my "near death" experience was one of our "famous" horses that was part of a team that pulled haywagons through the streets of Staten Island.
This particular horse, Judy and her mate, Punch had once "starred" in the movie 'Hello Dolly' and unfortunately been abused by some idiot with a broom when she was younger. I was walking directly behind her, holding the broom, not realizing how skittish she was about them when someone started to warn me about walking too close to her. I turned my back on her to hear what my friend was saying at the same time she became aware of me walking behind her with the dreaded broom. BOOM! She used her incredibly powerful rear legs to kick me squarely in the butt, as hard as she could. I flew across the width of the barn, hit the wall, and slid down to the ground, miraculously not crippled for life, but with the imprint of a horseshoe on my butt for a month thereafter.
Had I not turned completely I would have either been gelded or had my spine or hip fractured. I never walked within kicking range again. That which does not kill me makes me awfully wary the next time! I had no memory of being airborne, although my friends said I flew in a perfect arc across the stable like a scene in a movie where a train hits a car and the car goes flying. All I knew was that one moment I was standing behind a horse and the next moment I was somewhere else, sliding down the opposite wall in a heap on the ground with a very sore butt. I didn't even know what had happened until someone told me.
Afterwards all the old-timers told me about all the people they had known that had been gimped for life by getting kicked like that. I could easily believe that a hit to the noggin could be very, very serious if not fatal. I got plenty of injuries at the stables. I put a 10P rusty nail clean through my foot (I saw the tip pop through the top of my boot), got thrown from a spooked horse with my foot tangled in the stirrup and got dragged, rodeo style to the delirous laughter of my buddies. I got thrown into the street while driving a haywagon down Victory Blvd. when the entire rear end of the wagon fell off, dumping about 25 passengers into the street as the horses, now pulling a much lighter load, took off like rockets, dragging me behind them, trying to stop them. I got bitten by nearly every animal in the small zoo they had on premises, too, and remember getting chased around something fierce by a freaking swan! They may look pretty, but they're vicious!
I suspect they don't run those rides anymore if only because of the ever-increasing number of drunken idiots that would honk horns or throw beer bottles at the horses. It was a hell of an experience for a city-born kid, though, and I doubt there were a lot of people in NYC that could harness up and drive a team of horses. I learned to be attentive to detail because if you connected any of the traces the wrong way, all sorts of disasters could result.
I've never really spent much time around horses but I've always been told not to approach one from behind unless the horse knows you're there. The last horse I saw was a really sweet animal that craved attention like a lonely puppy, an eight hundred pound puppy. The poor horse was kept in a small fenced area with no one spending much time with the animal. :-(
As part of the Safety Training for new arrivals at the Loran transmitter sites I mentioned earlier, we came up with a way to keep the non-electronics personnel out of the transmitter building.
All we needed was a huge oil filled capacitor, a Hi-Pot power supply and a Dead Man stick - AKA a grounding rod: a long wooden handle with a metal hooked rod threaded into it and a braided grounding strap attached to the rod. It's main purpose was to tap around inside the transmitters once they were turned off to make sure there were no stray valotages hanging around. Their secondary purpose was to hook the clothing of anyone unlucky enough to get stuck inside a powered on piece of equipment and pull their dead, smoking carcass out so we could get back to work.
Anyway, as part of the newbie tour, we'd let the guys peek into the transmitter room and then close the door. We'd then explain to them that the machines on the other side of the door wanted to kill them and they they should never to go into that room without a journeyman transmitter tech.
Then we'd take a big oil filled cap, hook the grounding strap of a Dead Man stick to one terminal, use a Hi-Pot to charge the cap up to a couple of KV and, right after turning the lights off, we'd tap the rod to the other terminal, shorting out the cap. The resulting CRACK and sparks were enough to convince them that they didn't want to hang around inside the transmitter building.
Well, one time we got a little ballsy and charged the cap up a bit higher than we normally did. When I tapped the rod to the terminal, not only was there a CRACK that sent even the most seasoned of us running, it split the hardwood handle and shot the metal rod halfway across the room.
After we calmed down, someone realized that there was a good chance that the cap was not fully discharged, so he grabbed another Dead Man stick and shorted it out again. Good thing too. We got a decent CRACK out of the second try, but nothing like the first.
Me and the other broadcast engineers I know refer to them as "Jesus Sticks". When you ground something with it that has a high potential, you shout "JESUS!" when it explodes. The other explanation is that the safety device keeps you from going to Jesus but all the guys I know who work on electronic gear are all going to meet the other guy. :-)
The Daring Dufas wrote in news:idig3j$4f0$ snipped-for-privacy@news.eternal-september.org:
That's sad :(
Years ago as a 10 year old there was an old farm nearby. They didn't do farming anymore, but still had a horse. We used to come by to visit and pet it and give apples. At some point the old farm was sold and houses built in it's place.
When the commericals come on TV for abused animals I have to change the channel. They play the real sad music and show hurt animals with their sad faces and injuries. I can't sleep if I see one of those ads.
I bet. I've had the 110 a/c tickles, but the worse was a 250VDC elevator control circuit. The elevator guy swore it was off and I stupidly believed him.
I eat animals and I'm not the sort of person who will step over a starving, crying human child to pick up a whining puppy, perhaps second but there are people who care more about some obscure lizard than they care about me and thee. I suppose you can tell a lot about about a man based on how he treats other living things. There's a lot of difference between domesticated food animals, game, pets and vermin. There are also differences in the way other cultures look at the same creature. I enjoy fried chicken while another fellow across the ocean may enjoy fried rat. I love the TV show where the chef goes around the world to try out the food of every culture.
If I see a kid using a kitten for punting practice, I know there is something very wrong with with his mind. The same goes for someone who would catch a mouse and giggle hysterically as he dangles it over a flame. I've never seen a sane hunter torture a deer or other prey and the same goes for a sane exterminator. I suppose it's OK to hate vermin like roaches, rats, mice and Democrats but the way you dispose of them indicates a lot about your mental health. :-)
Yeah... Having done a lot of lighting work in commercial buildings, I always touch the hot wire in the fixture to a ground before I work on anything inside it (for other than re-lamping) -- this does two things: one, it either lets me verify that I was successful in locating the correct circuit and two, if I did not locate the correct circuit, I now have a tripped breaker to help me locate the means to re-energize the fixture after I finish working on it to know where to kill it the next time...
It is often difficult to locate the correct breaker for a light fixture that has either burn out lamps or a non functional ballast... You have no positive indication that the power is off as the light was not lit when you started...
Well, there is a new requirement for disconnects in light fixtures now. It's a little plug an socket set that you just unplug for service. It seems a lot of maintenance people were getting hurt or killed while servicing 277 volt lighting. Just about every electrician I run across on a job will cut the things off and use a wire nut. SOP for me has been the installation of a fuse holder and fuse. One on the hot wire for 120 volt ans two for 277 volt lighting. It serves a dual purpose of disconnect and keeping the magic smoke inside the ballast. I see from your post that you use the Jesus method to find circuit breakers. :-)
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