Your worst experience in electronic

[nanocycle]

Dear All

Every body writes his worst experience about electronic devices.(exploding,firing,burning,. . . )
For me,i was trying to run AD7715 but i wasn't successful within 10 days while i was working at least 10 hour daily.
Finally i found problem in power supply.


Regards

[FriskyFerret]

Getting zapped by a 3000 VDC supply between my finger and thumb when a total idiot plugged the unit into the mains while I was working on it. It knocked me off my stool and against an office partition, knocking it over. The employee says he did it as a joke and since he was the business owner's son's buddy, he wasn't sacked. So it goes.

[cyber_drifter]

Where do I start, there's been that many. I once got hit between the eyes by a exploding electrolytic capacitor, almost knocking me out. Picking up a CRT tube thinking I'd discharged it, then dropping it down a flight of stairs  . How many times I've been zapped I've forgotten, but once got full 240 volts between my two hands - that should of killed me! 

Tom

[sphinx]

mine was when i was repairing and old amplifier while moving it aroung i forgot to think where transformer was and the 220vac input fiddling i put my elbow the electric place on it over the connectors, and that made my arm hurt for 2-3 days, from that time i put plastic around hazardous places while working with it.

mike

[Hrdwr_Adct]

I too have had so many over 30 years that I had to take a moment to figure which catastrophic event could be #1.  I suppose it was when in college and working on high power DC inverter battery banks I dropped a socket from a socket wrench across the DC copper buss bars.  I never forgot the chrome green flash, the bang and the  3/8" socket just vaporized into thin air barely a few feet from my body.  Or was that thick air. 

I take 120vac thru the heart once a year as tradition...in one arm..out the other.  I need to get a different job, hahaha


H_A

[cyber_drifter]

I think the scariest thing I've done was when I worked on the railway as a technician. When working on the track side power supply, you couldn't just switch the power off as it would stop all the trains running. So what they did was to issue us with rubber gloves and a rubber mat, so as to work on the equipment live. The voltage was only 600 Volts but the supply could push out a fair amount of current to serve lot's of equipment. I wasn't so much frightened about being electrocuted (the rubber gloves went up to your elbows), it was shorting out terminals and getting a bit of an explosion that bothered me. I think that was about the time I started taking Valium.

[pickit2]

I dropped a socket from a socket wrench across the DC copper buss bars.  I never forgot the chrome green flash, the bang and the  3/8" socket just vaporized into thin air barely a few feet from my body.  Or was that thick air. 

I was working in Telephone Exchange and we had the painters in and one of them put his paint pot on the bus-bar, I can still see image of paint and no pot.
But my worst Experience was a few years latter while upgrading the same exchange, and me returning to working for British Telecom, after working abroad, the site manager set me to work disconnecting the old circuits, to ease me back to working for BT again. I was shown into room and told "all this is finished with - This is all off-line" , and I started to do as told, only problem was the site manager was so not up to his job. And he had shown me to the new section That was new and online, Guess what First thing I did was disconnect the ringing circuits, so when other exchages seen there was a problem, they where trying to ring to ask *^WTF^%  going on. and when lines started to drop out, They had to send someone in a car to stop what was going on. I work quick on strip outs so there was plenty of overtime for the engineers to put it back in service.

[Biggles]

Some good stories. I have had plenty of shocks, anyone reading this, dont underestimate how dangerous they can be. The common newbie mistake is not use discharge resistors on high voltage caps and then touching the terminals or another part of the circuit when the power is off.

For me however, my recent worst experience was spending 3 months on a project of 18 hour days 7 days a week. After three months I am told I can use a parameter I was originally told I could not. I finish the project in 2 days after that.   Insane.   

[rahuljin]

it happened with me during working on DTMF project. The circuit was not working. Tried everything -- rewrite the whole program, desoldered complete circuit and made it again but nothing. After 4-5 day, the circuit started working without any problems. That problem is still a mystery for me.

[hemlig]

@rahuljin
"After 4-5 day, the circuit started working without any problems. That problem is still a mystery for me."

Maybe it started when you finally applied power to the circuit?

I couldn't resist giving you that comment..

[cooperharris]

I have many moments, I guess that those  are  the ones that make  us learn the most, I remember  one time  when I was starting with pics, I had  to design a project for a subject in college, and  it was very hard  for me  to make it  work, I spent  nights and  the principal thing  that I think that was  the reason it did not  work at the beginning  was  the Protoboard it was  very hard to make connection between cables and plus  that I had not idea about pics and stuff like this.... nowdays I mistake a little  less...

[y0shi18]

For me it was working on my final year project, and 2 days before the review, another team, who for no reason raged out(presumably because he could not finish his project) and smashed my pic.. with the board and all.. it was scary.. but luckily i had a good friend whose review was just over, so i went out to buy another pic, and used his board for the review..

[cwm9]

Working at a lab as a tech when I was a teenager calibrating temperature and humidity sensors.  Most of the sensors required 12V, but they had a few models that used 110V.  Crazy designers used the same connectors for both designs.  We had this huge bank of connectors that we used as test points.  I hooked up about 10 units to these 110V sockets, and when I hit the power all 10 of them exploded in my face.  It wasn't pretty.

[mr_byte31]

when i was working with 741 opamp , I didn't realize that there is a problem in the power supply
i put it on 10 VDC then after a while it increased automatically till 300v
heheheh
I didn't know what to do
the 741 jumped from the testing board about 2 meters up and fall into 2 parts
I thanked God i wasn't near it when it explodes

[Alienbeing]

Spilling a can of pepsi into a 30,000 dollar US Navy HF Transmitter linear amplifier while it was on. Got in big trouble for that and took about a week to scrub the insides clean and repair all the fried circuits.

Numerious electrocutions through out my life. Still have all my fingers though.

Alienbeing

[medik]

Well, to have enjoyed electronics so much, it comes with it's ugly experiences which makes it an interesting field. My worst experience was when I was in college, I took a pair of scissor to pull down a 240V ac cable hanging down in my ceiling unknown to me  it contained both live and neutral, The scissor cut through and short both live and neutral and bang the metal blade of the scissor was cut into two with huge flame. God saved my life despite my carelessness to have made me held on the plastic and nothing happened to me.

[DarkClover]

There are two experiences which could have nearly cost my life or a bodypart.

1st situation was in the first year at my school in the laboratory.
The prof. went out to do something "important" and one of my friends found a really huge capacitor. Somebody had the
idea to load it and create a flashover. So we did but exactly when I put the wire near the other pole the prof. came in.
I was so upset, that I droped the wire and it short-circuited the poles. Then the capacitor exploded and ripped a hole
into the wall. --> Nobody killed or hurt

2nd situation was at the same friends garage. He did some high voltage experiments with a MOT (Micro Oven Transformer).
I came into his garage and at this moment a big flash zapped over to my arm. Later I woke up at the hospital with
a big burned hurting wound. It smelled a little bit like beef