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I hooked up my superpole sg to a 6 v battery and walked away for a few minutes. Checked the reading on the battery and it hadn't moved and then noticed that the machine was making a little more noise than normal. Everything looked right but the noise persisted so I stopped to check if a magnet had come loose. No joy.
At that point I realised the neons were lighting up (line of sight is obstructed).
I had a loose cable that I had connected to the battery rather than the output of the sg.
I connected it correctly and everything worked ok.
The danger lay in the capacitor bank the live radiant output had been connected to. There was NO circuit, just a radiant connection to my 60,000uF 100v capacitor bank on the positive side. The negative had no connection at all! There was no ground connection!
As I have little ones that can make their way into the garage I decided to test the bank just in case. It read at over 130v, so fully saturated! Just imagine what it would have been with a higher voltage rating for the capacitors! ( your sg is capable of outputs as high as 500v on a simple machine) Still at 130v it's still certainly enough to do some serious damage. I went to discharge it with a 1k resistor used to bleed discharge a 1000v microwave oven capacitor (rated at 5w I think). It blew it to smithereens! I ended using a 100ohm 10w resistor that got very hot very quickly. It had to be discharged a number of times to bring it down to a safe voltage.
I think this observation reinforces that we are not dealing with regular electricity. I wrongly assumed that the bleed resistor from the microwave would be more than enough. Secondly the electricity was far more destructive than expected. Thirdly IT DOES NOT FUNCTION LIKE REGULAR ELECTRICTY. ITS MORE ELECTROSTATIC IN NATURE THAN REGULAR ELECTRICITY AND HAD THE CAPACITY TO OPERATE WITHOUT A COMPLETED CIRCUIT. That means that usual safety practices are not enough. If in doubt check it with a multimeter. It could save a life, or a body part!
James
At that point I realised the neons were lighting up (line of sight is obstructed).
I had a loose cable that I had connected to the battery rather than the output of the sg.
I connected it correctly and everything worked ok.
The danger lay in the capacitor bank the live radiant output had been connected to. There was NO circuit, just a radiant connection to my 60,000uF 100v capacitor bank on the positive side. The negative had no connection at all! There was no ground connection!
As I have little ones that can make their way into the garage I decided to test the bank just in case. It read at over 130v, so fully saturated! Just imagine what it would have been with a higher voltage rating for the capacitors! ( your sg is capable of outputs as high as 500v on a simple machine) Still at 130v it's still certainly enough to do some serious damage. I went to discharge it with a 1k resistor used to bleed discharge a 1000v microwave oven capacitor (rated at 5w I think). It blew it to smithereens! I ended using a 100ohm 10w resistor that got very hot very quickly. It had to be discharged a number of times to bring it down to a safe voltage.
I think this observation reinforces that we are not dealing with regular electricity. I wrongly assumed that the bleed resistor from the microwave would be more than enough. Secondly the electricity was far more destructive than expected. Thirdly IT DOES NOT FUNCTION LIKE REGULAR ELECTRICTY. ITS MORE ELECTROSTATIC IN NATURE THAN REGULAR ELECTRICITY AND HAD THE CAPACITY TO OPERATE WITHOUT A COMPLETED CIRCUIT. That means that usual safety practices are not enough. If in doubt check it with a multimeter. It could save a life, or a body part!
James
you are close to E.V Gray....
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