You'll like this. (For those easily offended, these Ozians drop a few S bombs.) Watch all of it. The demo with the aluminum block is surprising.
I once asked a Fluke engineer why their DVMs were so expensive. He said most of the cost was in protecting the unit from misconnection or high voltages.
I wish Greg Lefebvre were alive to see this. I can hear his raucous laughter. "Oh, Willie..."
-- "We already know the answers -- we just haven't asked the right questions." -- Edwin Land
More of Daves stuff here:-
Colin
I've seen similar results of destroyed consumer grade DMMs which were being used used in an industrial environment. The cases and probes were nearly covered with vaporized metal residue.
In the instance of a RShack meter, I dunno what the user was trying to do, but the shadows of his fingers could be seen on the meter case and probes. He survived the incident but could've been killed since he was inside an electrical closet lined with live, exposed buss bars.
Only properly designed industrial rated DMMs are capable of surviving Ohshit! mistakes in industrial equipment.
The proper spacing of board traces and component orientation are fairly critical at elevated voltage levels, especially when the high current capacity of industrial circuits can easily vaporize almost anything that approaches the breakdown/arc-over threshold.
The resulting plasma effect immediately fills the surrounding air with a cloud of metal, increasing the likelyhood of more breakdown events in the same vicinity.
The presence of a small glass fuse in a DMM or other test equipment doesn't mean the user is safe from similar events.
-- Cheers, WB .............
"William Sommerwanker"
** For better or worse, I know the two people in that video.Particularly Doug Ford, the one who built the pulse energy box.
Doug was formerly chief designer for Jands Electronics - a Sydney based manufacturer of professional audio and lighting equipment. The largest such company in Australia. Then he moved on to Rode Microphones ( also in Sydney) and did a number of designs for them - including their first " tube mic ".
We used to talk about tech stuff on the phone regularly and met up on several occasions too.
... Phil
how's Dave in real life?
"Cydrome Leader"
** Never actually eyeballed the guy - we spoke on the phones a couple of times.What you see in the EE Blog videos is pretty much what you get.
He has an opinion on everything and most of them are erroneous.
... Phil
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