[Judas]

I witnessed something the other day that initially was a frightning experience but emediately turned into something beyond funny.

My father vacumm powerhead quit working awhile back.

Tony, the person i work with and rent the building from sells the vacumm system and whatnot, and does work on them. Well in attempt to find the problem, had a old style bulky multimeter and was testing the connections. Found the switch was buggered on the vacumm hose itself... changed it.. and then proceeded to test the powerhead again..... only still no go.

Well being that this multimeter had only large alligator clamps, there was no way of testing the little tiny pin holses for power.. so i made the suggestion of grabing the small screwdrivers i've got in my rack of tools.. These has no protective rubber/plastic or anything, straight on metal...

Now i didn't understand why the switch on the vacumm wasn't just turned off while putting them in.... but it wasn't..

Tony carefully slides the screwdrivers in and then proceeds to test the connections.... everything was fine there. power, 120v/15amp.

However what happened next was simply, lack of being in the right mind or something.

After he had carefully put the screwdrivers in, and tested the connection, making sure neither of them touched..... proceeded to set down the multimeter.... turn around

and


GRAB BOTH screwdrivers with BOTH hands....

emediately the dumb bastard got fried, one screwdriver went flying one direction and the hit the roof.

Lucky SoB is lucky he's still living considering he just super charged his heart, making a complete circut from one hand/arm across his chest to the other arm/hand.....

All he did was just shake it off and said "nice little tingle, won't be sleeping tonight" and proceeded to giggle.


What's REALLY funny about the situation is before we had started this all, the discussion had been about making stupid mistakes like this, and tony had brought up his mishap several years ago about an arc welder...

Working in the wet snow, welding large water tanks together.... it's night, sweating like crazy, facial hair covered in frozen thick wet snow..... basically soaking wet and the arc welder managed to spin around while he was sitting in the wet snow.... it spun around in such a manner that the welding rod had the right length to touch his facial hair and all he remembers is a bright light and loud massive cannon explosion sound.. And then skidding across the ground 30-50 feet away.

Guess so when you've got 240v/110amp's being fed through ya...

tough lucky bastard..


What's really interesting is the fact that the vacumm incident occured in the store, where all 4 security cameras were focused on him, so i've got 4 points of view of him frying for a little while.....

[mainman]

This story is useless without video evidence!!

[kris23]

wow.....

wait.... with your specs on power, the guy got zapped with 26,400w of power?

[Judas]

mainman... i know..

i just haven't got any way of transfering from VHS to computer available to me ..

kris23,


yeah.... that's alot of heat hey?

[kris23]

lol that just aint right..... itsv just a typo right?

[Tril]

Originally Posted by Judas

Well being that this multimeter had only large alligator clamps, there was no way of testing the little tiny pin holses for power.. so i made the suggestion of grabing the small screwdrivers i've got in my rack of tools.. These has no protective rubber/plastic or anything, straight on metal...

That was a bad idea and he should have known better. I once got an electric shock when touching something through a screwdriver. I touched something with a screwdriver with a plastic handle and touched something else with the other hand (I knowm you should only work with one hand with high voltage) and got a nasty electric shock.

It must have been some pretty high voltage because I got a shock through the plastic handle (it was not a rubber handle) and I was lucky because the screwdriver probably limited the amount of current. Since then, I've been more careful around electricity.

[Judas]

out here.. we improvise..

everything would have went well if he hadn't tried to grab both at the same time...

[Mousey]

Wow he is lucky o.o
Kinda reminds me when i slipped climbing a wall a few weeks ago, brought my leg up, pulled my other foot up, clipped it and kinda fell straight down the other side of the wall and landed on my back.
Scrambled up with a bit of a slice in my elbow but otherwise unhurt, i was scared shitless at the time but i saw the funny side when i got home.

Eh well, if you can get that VHS transferred i'd really like to see it, as do all the rest of us sadists :P

[dj_stick]

there's NO WAY that you'd be pulling 110A off that GPO - it'd be 10A max

but still, he's bloody lucky

[Matth]

Worst I've done is tripped a lab RCCB, also by some carelessness with an uninsulated screwdriver, and this is your PROPER mains, 240V, not your half baked 110V stuff.

[Geminiwave]

watts dont matter. amps matter. you can have the voltage and the wattage up the ASS (tazers have huuge voltage) but if the amperage is low, then its much more likely that you'll survive.

[kris23]

most of us already know that. and i think you mean volts

wattage is the measure of power consumed at a certain voltage (5Kv @ 50ma = mean shock)

but looking at that peculiar 110A spec made us think....

but im pretty sure thats false or typo....

110A at 240v is more than enough to power 2 standard homes for crying out loud!

[Judas]

Originally Posted by dj_stick

there's NO WAY that you'd be pulling 110A off that GPO - it'd be 10A max

but still, he's bloody lucky

wtf?

an arc welder uses a completely different circut system..

we can set the welder to 240AMPs.... the amps is the heat.... heat to "weld" metal together...

normal circut breakers are rated 15-20amps max.... usually 15...... some double breakers are rated 30-40amp..

anyways that doesn't matter....

[mike2h]

judas is right amperage is wha tis importaant in welding.
dont most conventional welders convert ac to dc? just curious.

[kris23]

i believe DC is much better for welding, more sustained heat man..... so thats my guess

[Judas]

Originally Posted by mike2h

judas is right amperage is wha tis importaant in welding.
dont most conventional welders convert ac to dc? just curious.

most decent welding equipment have both options available.... but generally for all purpose welding... DC is best.... gives a better learning experience..

AC has other purposes....

There are a considerable number of other factors, type of rod, thickness of rod, thickness of the coating on the rod......materials your working on..

Mig-Welders however work on a different set of rules.. but still allow for adjusting the wattage/heat...