Story Time! How bad have you been shocked?

[Fiddy]

LoL lightning WINS!

my first shock was 240VAC 10A outlet, put together an old skool computer that used "main switched active & neutral" to turn on the computer, not switched by relays like the new ones.

Anyway i held the switch and clicked with my index finger and my thumb was at the back of the switch across the terminals, as soon as i clicked it on my arm involuntary contracted and i kind of threw it, luckily in Australia we have RCDs (residual current devices) or as you Americano's call them GFCI (ground fault circuit interrupter) that drop out the active & neutral conductor with 400mill seconds if there is an imbalance between the active and neutral!

I got 2 large white burns on my thumb

Another incident was when i cut a HV lead on a TV i brought home from a throw out, the TV had been disconnected for a while so i 'thought' it was safe, cut the HV lead with insulated pliers and still got a nice sharp boot as it traveled up my arm again, bloody capacitors

Ive touched my plasma speaker arcs which is pretty funky and my 12v jacobs ladder than has a nice punch to it.

Now im a Electrical tradesman with engineering certificate, i have never had a boot at work, its always been at home.

 

[Things]

Can't beat lightning, but where to start ...

Ignition coils 3 times, dual ignition coils twice
240V 3 times,
15kV 30mA NST once (never again)
Countless flash capacitors
Tesla coil a few times, secondary output luckily.
Couple flyback transformers

Oh, and static thousands of times

 

[00Giorge]

Oh, and static thousands of times

I used to work for a big printing Co. and we used to make carbon paper. One of the guys I used to work with was an idiot (Rusty) and he was standing on the finished end making sure the roll was winding ok. But when you see a blue static arc start going between the rollers your supposed to step back onto the rubber mat away from the machine. We told him to step back and he kept standing next to roll as it was spinning saying how cool the blue arc was. Next thing you hear is a loud crack and Rusty drops to the floor. We actually saw the arc strike one of the buttons on his 501 Levis, it was about a 6" arc when it hit. He was lying in the floor holding his crotch and we were laughing hard! Rusty said that the arc went to the button and right to the head of his pecker and it hurt to pee for 3 days.

I still laugh every time I think about it. :crackup:


@JLSE That is one of my favorite Christmas movies.

 

[Lase]

I got hit by 240VAC when I was 12. Our light switch had broken and recessed in the wall so I stuck my fingers in the hole and put my index on the back of the switch while I turned it on. All I remember is my brother screaming out "Who shut off the power?"

Lase

 

[grgguy]

[QUOTEOh, and static thousands of times [/QUOTE]



Static is a form of lightning , so don't sell yourself short.

:na:

 

[Cyparagon]

Heheh, static can be nasty. I used to work for a wire factory. The insulation came in pellet form in >1000lb crates lined with massive plastic bags. When they were empty, we needed to take the plastic lining out so the crates could be recycled. Needless to say, all that plastic can carry quite a charge. Sometimes when you go to touch something metal, you'd leave with a small black hole in your finger.

The most painful for me was not realizing the heat sinks in ATX supplies were live (>400VDC). The most physically damaging was when the output from a flyback (ZVS driver, ~30V input) jumped from one electrode into a knuckle, and out of my thumb into the other electrode which left a rather large blistery burn :yabbem:

 

[Sigurthr]

I can't name them all, I've been shocked thousands of times from HV low current stuff, and dozens of times from mains lines.

The worst... I was welding the frame for an air filtration system (industrial) from the inside... my torch's cable caught an edge at some point an sliced the insulation without me knowing. This was with an old TIG welder which had continuous HF arc start, even when welding DC. IIRC open circuit welding voltage was 130V, and I had it set to ~200Amps. The HF provides a start path using high voltage high frequency ac, which is superimposed on the actual welding current. I went to strike up the arc and the HF decided my glove & hand were less impedance than the air between the electrode and the steel frame I was welding. It burnt a hole down to bone in my hand and at my elbow where the current exited. Thankfully my elbow was resting against the frame and provided a non cross-thoraxic low impedance path, or I probably could have died. The shock only lasted about a second as I kicked the ground clamp off with my foot. Did I mention I was lying on my back inside the thing?

All the motor neurons in my arm were depolarized for hours that day, it went pretty limp and hurt continuously. My boss wouldn't let me go home early though so I did some desk work (still welding) with my right arm for the rest of the day. The next day it felt better but my arm was still pretty cramped.

 

[KGB_Productions]

The worst for me was just last month. I was on tour, in some club setting up truss and lights. There was a metal gate attached to the stage that, for whatever reason, kept shocking people. Most of the time it wasn't a bad shock but I was the first one to find out that since the truss we were setting up was grounded, if you touched the truss and the baracade at the same time you wold be shocked so bad you wouldn't be able to let go... I just remember screaming while I was getting shocked. I somehow freed myself, but ill always remember this as the worst shock I have ever gotten. Before the end of the night 2 other people got severely shocked.
Home / Neon Glow Tour Hammond @ The Mezzanine | KGB Lasers Photos

 

[Seoul_lasers]

I was inspecting my largest gallery coil for parasitic streamers when my brother
flipped the mains on by accident. I was 8.5ft away from the coil and took a direct hit.
Taking a streamer from a nearly 6.5KW Tesla coil to my shoulder and upper arm threw me back 5 ft or so into the grass. Knocked me out cold. Also the streamer gave me a fairly light burn where it hit me. I guess I was fairly conductive. My shoes didn't fair so well.
Potential from this coil is on the order of around 1.5-1.7MV + some 600,000Vdc from the toroid charging up alone.

It wasn't a good day.

 

[JLSE]

Rusty said that the arc went to the button and right to the head of his pecker and it hurt to pee for 3 days.

I still laugh every time I think about it. :crackup:

Rusty provided some great guilt free laughs im sure.. I've worked with
guys who just dont listen, its always fun to watch a co-worker who
must learn the hard way

The worst for me was just last month. I was on tour, in some club setting up truss and lights. There was a metal gate attached to the stage that, for whatever reason, kept shocking people....

Reminds me of this video, same thing was happening in Toronto, IIRC 4 times
or so in the past few years.. Lifting their legs is no longer safe.

Google

 

[Seoul_lasers]

Originally Posted by 00Giorge
Rusty said that the arc went to the button and right to the head of his pecker and it hurt to pee for 3 days.
I still laugh every time I think about it.

That's what we call sterilization folks. Darwin has a way of sneaking up on you.

 

[JLSE]

Was going to post this in the fail thread, but thought is was perfect
for this thread..



:wtf:

That has to be one of the creepiest coin operated machines
ive ever seen.

 

[millirad]

^ Ha ha, I enjoyed that vid. They should have had the hair "smoke" with a fogger.

Well, I posted this before, and have been shocked several times, but this was the one that keeps me from repeating it. I decided to replace the tubes in my Marshall amplifier years ago and took the "first" step of putting my screw driver into the phillips head screw on the back panel, with my other hand touching the chassis. There was no sound, or "snap" but my muscles tightened up with a jolt.

I gasped as the current flowed through my heart defibrillating me, and I blacked out for a few seconds. It took me several minutes to figure out what had just happened with my dazed mental state. My arms and chest were sore along with my head. I told my wife what happened and went to lay down. I woke up an hour later feeling "mostly" ok. But that was about 90% close to being killed, due to skipping rule "number one". Always discharge a circuit first, before doing "anything".

 

[AUS]

One very close call was while working on a 10kW AM transmitter, had the thing on and off trying to fix it and was getting tired and frustrated. I was about to grab a capacitor on the 30 kV DC 1AMP supply and thought "did I short that out?". I hit it with the earthing wand and got a 2" spark.

Once changing a 240 VAC 10A fuse (one of these)when i was 14, my finger slid over the edge to the contacts and I ended up on my back.

Once the insulation pulled out of my electric blanket switch and I got another 240V hit when touching it.

A few belts of 100 kV electric fences and HV triplers in TV tubes.

A few RF burns, 100 Watts of HF on my finger when a capacitor arced over, 5kW of AM when my hand slipped while measuring the antenna coil.

Two VERY close lightening calls- once I had lightening strike a tree 100m away from me. The world went white, I thought someone had set a stick of gelignite off and smelled ozone.
Once I was installing a satellite dish on a house roof in QLD, black clouds came over and I was memorized when all the hair on my arms and head started to stand up until i figured out what it was and bolted down the ladder.

A good friend of mine died installing satellite TV in Maryborough QLD - a metal strap had cut through a 240VAC power cord in a ceiling and he grabbed it while his head was touching the (earthed) sisalation (metallic foil insulation).

 

[personx910]

steel stick through 220v ac when i was 6-7 years old :umbrella:

 

[ped]

Ive had countless static/tesla related shocks. The worst was setting up the pincusion correction on a CRT i'd just replaced, the main pcb slid from where I had it propped up and the chopper circuit landed on the fleshy soft part of my underarm. I involuntarily punched the TV 6ft across the workbench as my muscles contracted . A pain like no other.

But the best story is my mums, back in the early 70's , a thunderstorm was rolling through, my mum was peeling spuds when she heard a loud crack, she looked over to the window (15ft) away and (in her words) saw in slow motion, a lightning bolt entering with aerial coax through the window, along the skirting board, arc'ed to the kitchen sink where she had just dropped the knife , it hit the knife and then hit her. She survived.