[Shop-talk] Electrical fire waiting to happen

[Pat]

In the military I taught basic electronics for several years. At the end 
of the course was a 2 week long lab to teach troubleshooting.
I would put one strand of wire from a power cord across the input to the 
power transformer. When the student turned on the switch it popped and 
blew the fuse. The wire disappeared, hardly leaving any sign of the arc. 
The students then tried to figure out what caused the pop and the fuse 
to blow. Since there was no nothing wrong with the equipment at that 
time, it took some time for them to work up enough nerve to replace the 
fuse and try plugging it in again.

Great fun and troubleshooting with real world problems!

When they did a good job of troubleshooting I would have them put a bug 
in another piece of equipment for me to troubleshoot at the end of the 
two weeks. By that time there were usually somewhere around 50 problems 
with it. If I needed to repair a problem to get on to troubleshooting 
other parts of the equipment I would repair it and move on. It usually 
took me less than 3 hours to find all the problems, about the same time 
as it took some of them to find one! Experience has its rewards.

Peace,
Pat

Thusly spake Ron Schmittou:
> Yep - I'm guilty of this also - It really is a time saver!  I got hooked
> into doing this at an early age, when we used to wrap solder around the
> plugs of the teachers overhead projectors in school.  Always got a good
> reaction, and the solder disappeared after the tremendous POP when the unit
> was plugged in so there was nothing left to trace our shenanigans.
>
> Uh - If one of my former teachers happens to be on this forum - it wasn't
> me!!! 
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: shop-talk-bounces+rs1121=earthlink.net at autox.team.net
> [mailto:shop-talk-bounces+rs1121=earthlink.net at autox.team.net] On Behalf Of
> Doug Braun
> Sent: Sunday, June 08, 2008 9:51 AM
> To: Jack Brooks; 'Shop-Talk'
> Subject: Re: [Shop-talk] Electrical fire waiting to happen
>
> Yikes!  Are you saying that to switch off a breaker,
> an electrician will short it out at the outlet box to
> avoid the trouble of going down to the basement,
> identifying the correct breaker, and manually
> switching it off?
>
> Doug
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-- 
Pat Horne, Owner, Horne Systems 
(512) 797-7501 Voice		5026 FM 2001
Pat at HorneSystemsTx.com	Lockhart, TX 78644-4443
www.hornesystemstx.com
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