SHOP PRODUCTS
Houzz Logo Print
iggie_gw

A safety tip

iggie
15 years ago

Awhile back we had a discussion about testing start and run capacitors. many people including me learned a lot of servicing tricks from a manual called the Trouble Shooters Bible, they still are being sold on the internet. Now first let me say I am no way critizing this book, because at the time Bill Doolin published the manual it was a fine source and much of the info in it is still accurate and ok. However, one thing that is definitely wrong and dangerous is the way he reccomends testing capacitors. The books advocates taking a power cord with insulated clips, plugging it in hooking 1 side to a cap terminal and touching the other terminal a few times with other clip to put a charge into the cap, unplug cord, then short a screw driver across cap terminals and observe the resulting spark, if it is fat and heavy makes a fairly loud pop cap is ok, otherwise if it is weak cap is bad. This was fine with the old rugged capacitors made by US firms like Mallory Sprague, GE and others. this is no longer true, most caps are now foreign made their cases are weak and testing in this manner can cause them to explode and spew hot wax and stuff all over. We had an incident at the shop Friday, a tech was using this method to test a cap, it was one of the imports it blew like a hand gernade when he shorted accross it. he escaped serious injury because my son who now is head honcho had put in a policy that everyone including me doing any work in shop wears safety goggles or an eye shield. This guy was wearing a plastic shield got a few cuts on face and hands but no damage to eyes or anything serious. The eye shield had several deep impact marks, in other words had he not been wearing eye protection I hate to imagine the result. So fellas don,t po po shop safety rules it don,t take but once. Iggie

Comments (5)

Sponsored
Dave Fox Design Build Remodelers
Average rating: 4.9 out of 5 stars49 Reviews
Columbus Area's Luxury Design Build Firm | 17x Best of Houzz Winner!