mdj wrote:
My worst experience comes from helping a friend replace a hard drive in an older AT style PC. The shoddy assemblers had put the switch assembly together without including the rubber sheaths over the spade connectors. Trust me, you do not want to be a part of the conductive path between an active pin and the ground :-(
Heh. One of the most potentially lethal units out there is a Fender Twin guitar amplifier. B+ supply is 675v at about 1/4 amp. Power supply filtering is handled by a row of axial-lead electrolytic caps soldered to a circuit board in a can on top of the chassis. As shipped, a bleeder resistor is the end component on the board and, when working, it drains things down very quickly after power-off. Problem was, they didn't use any glue or silicone rubber to cushion the resistor on early units and vibration invariably cracked off one or both of the leads.
After getting nailed with that baby once (and fortunately living to tell about it) I got in the habit of shorting the output tube plate pin to ground with an insulated screwdriver before delving in :-). Lost all feeling in my right arm for about 10 minutes after the initial event.
Steve