My worst electric shock
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ก.ค. 2024
- This video was inspired by Paul of Mr Carlson's Lab, and his shock story. You can find his video here:-
• ZAP! Mr C's Worst Elec...
It's inevitable that when diagnosing faults on equipment that maintenance workers have to work with some systems powered to be able to trace the fault, as turning the power off may make it almost impossible to find the fault. The main rules of live working are to avoid providing a good current path across your body, and to take extreme care where the work area is cramped or wet.
In the case of my worst shock the scenario was completely unexpected, and involved metalwork that should have been earthed/grounded - suddenly becoming live when it was moved.
If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and random gadgets for disassembly at:- www.bigclive.com/coffee.htm
This also keeps the channel independent of TH-cam's algorithm quirks, allowing it to be a bit more dangerous and naughty.
#ElectronicsCreators - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
Thanks for the kind mention Clive. I'm glad you're still with us as well, we all enjoy your videos.
Get a room ♥️
@@TheDutchShepherdoh come on!
@MrCarlsonsLab Ditto, so hardly have to say glad it wasn’t worse for you.
This is the best short-&-sweet comment I've read :)
So cool my two favorite TH-cam creators follow one another!
The Worst Electric Shock I have ever got in my Life was then I opened my latest Electricity Bill!
Da-dum-tish! 😂
you need solar panels over the roof!
@@fidelcatsro6948 Oh, the bill for those panels!!
I guess you must live in Australia, my friends cost is around 48 cents per KWH.
thank the misguided people pushing for "green" energy... a handful of nuclear plants would solve all these issues but they won't touch it.
My earliest shock was in the ‘50s when (at 10 years old) I wondered what electricity ‘felt like’. I removed a bulb from a table lamp and stuck two fingers (thankfully from the same hand) into the bulb socket. I soon found out what electricity felt like!!
I had the same impulse at 3 years old. I got the opportunity when we moved into a new house and the outlet covers were off, so I could shove my finger onto a live 120V wire. Not the only mains shock of my childhood, actually
Me too.... 😮
I did the same at the same age.
Me and my brother used to do that for fun, as well as touch the neighboring farms electric fence and putting 9v batteries to our tongues
I did a bicycle tour as a ~15yo with friends, we stayed at a very cheap hotel one night and there was a broken light switch right next to my bed. In the night i woke up and needed light for something, so clever as i was i figured i could complete the circute to the bulb with my finger, poked it into the switch, got shocked, and figured i dont need light afterall and went back to sleep xD
Worst shock i got was 400V phase to phase. It was a non earthed 3ph supply for testing so you could touch one line and be fine. The pain was insane, was like the loudest mains hum throughout the body. I was hooked up for a couple of minutes, big holes burnt into my hands. I still think what saved me was the guy who found me shut down the generator rather than switch of the isolator. 2 weeks in odstock burns unit later am still here. 30 years ago
I copped a similar shock across a 3 phase 415V circuit breaker.
Imagine what would happen if a cop used a Taser-Gun to taser a swollen fart?
like 120 sec with 400V going through you? maan!
That sounds like an insanely long time to be getting zapped. I've had several good shocks, but nothing of that length of time.
Sounds like a wonder to me.
I was about 10 years old and obsessed with all things electric. My reading and theory told me that first came the switch and next in line was the fuse...So I was to test this theory on my mothers 240 volt oven and cooktop. I unscrewed the class encased fuse, checked the hotplate switch was in the off position and then stuck my finger in the fuse holder. I can only describe being blown across the kitchen to the opposite wall. Shaking violently I carefully screwed the fuse back in and did a bit more in-depth reading and then became a train driver instead.
I have similar memories of "hiding the evidence". Kids do the funniest things. :D
I had a similar mishap, but there was no way I could hide the evidence. I remember my finger becoming black and blue and I had to apply some kind of ointment for at least a week.
See my comment..lol. It's a wonder some of us are still alive 😂
@@duncanmcewan1049 - Especially when you look at the "child safety seats" we grew up with. 😬
Bring a train driver can be even worse due too the ENORMOUS amount of energy that in one of those.
This one was painful at the time but funny on reflection. Not many people know that having alcohol in your system greatly reduces your skin resistance and hence increases the current you can pass. I was a computer tech back in the 70's and the morning after our team Christmas bash my boss called to say he needed me to go and fix a machine at one of the major retail stores in Oxford Street (London that is). I was still drunk from the night before. I turned out to be a faulty print mechanism so I set about repairing it. Alas, my elbow touched the mains transformer (unit still plugged in) and I got an almighty zap which caused me to yank the print mechanism out of the casing and fling it out the open window down into the street below. I explained to the customer that the unit could not be repaired as parts were needed. I then went home and back to bed!
Handled like a true professional
Absolute legend! 🤣
Wish i could have hear that call. "Boss I......."
Awesome story Clive, I had a electrical "incident" when I was 17, working as a electricians apprentice, we were out on a job to a temperature controlled warehouse, it had a enormous HVAC system in place, it started to shut down randomly, they traced the to the mains input breaker, so we were told "just get it running and keep it going until their guys get in", easy enough, find the manual circuit breaker and throw it, the breaker was massive, it had a manual charge mechanism but no wheel, just want to clarify, if anyone has seen Jurassic Park, the breaker in that is a Westinghouse circuit breaker, it looked almost identical to the one we were working on, it had a hole for a wheel to plug into instead of a lever, you turn the wheel to generate a charge in a capacitor, when fully charged you push a very hard button which slams the solenoid closed and completes the circuit, my trainer decided to plug his hammer drill into the socket for the wheel and crank it that way, it worked and he gave me the honours, what happened next was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life, this button was stiff, I needed to push it with two clenched fingers to get it in there while holding onto the panel, there was a bright flash, a massive bang, like metal smashing on metal and the next thing I remember is a crowd of people around me and being repeatably told to stay still, my face and right hand was covered in black soot, I had a numb feeling right up to my shoulder and my chest felt like I been hit by a truck, what actually happened was the breaker was fitted with the wrong capacitor, when fully charged it was fine, upon discharge it exploded and caused a massive explosion, I was leaning on the panel to push the button when I got the brunt of the discharge but because the capacitor exploded it was "mild", like licking your fingers and sticking them in a transformer mild, that numb feeling is still there to this day!
Fucking scary that is. Those charge up breakers freak me out too. I always have my back turned when turning them on.
As a kid, my grandfather was making a power supply for my radio out of scrounged parts - he was teaching me as we went about how the bridge rectifier, caps and transformer worked together and how to use the multimeter to read what was happening throughout the circuit - what he didn't tell me was to keep your fingers off the probes - I found out why as I got thrown across room!
That's what you call 'hands-on' learning.
My Dad always warned me not to take the back off of tv sets. Something about a 'flyback' transformer. Sounds like you learned when the name came from....
@@jfan4reva The old CRT TV's also had some big capacitors on the high voltage circuit, so they could zap you even if they were unplugged.
As an electrician I have lost count of how many shocks I've had but my worst was my first. I was about 6 years old, on holiday and in bed when the lamp went out and I started fiddling with it in the dark and got a shock. The next thing I remember was waking up in an armchair. My brother saved me. ❤
Something similar at about 10 years old, took the cover off the old style Lazy Betty light switch that hung over the bed and touched the live inside.
Every other 6 year old who gets zapped is forever nervous screwing in a light bulb, but 6 year old David decides "I'm gonna be an electrician!!!" 🤣
@@phydeux I think there are a lot of electricians who decided their job after getting zapped at a young age. My story is similar but I'm studying enginnering.
My worst shock was entirely due to my incompetence. I worked in a boardwalk arcade and was tracing a fault in one of the 240v machines. There was 1 microswitch to activate the system and another to drive the payout. Since I was stupid, I assumed the switch part would be insulated. I triggered 1 switch with my left hand and the other with my right. The next thing I knew, I was sitting on the floor several feet from the machine. You know what they say. If you live, you learn.
fellow ex-arcade technician, very poorly maintained machines, and i mean literally held together by random junk the owner could find. Got a shock off of one of the motors metal housings that was properly grounded.
I have a similar event with starting a kiddy ride that had 240V to coin mech micro switch. It got me - big hole in my thumb skin. Things changed at that workplace after that - Isolated coin mechs were introduced.
@@sailoroftheinternet3290 , you meant "that *wasnt* properly grounded".....
@@goodun2974 yes haha
Volunteering at a tramway museum, I've heard a few stories of high voltage shocks. A lady was wearing a metal sequined dress, and happened to sit down on a chair that had a single screw that punctured through the wood to power cables, and the bottom of the dress contacted something on the floor that was grounded and her dress caught fire, or so I've heard. Bet the regulars would have plenty more stories.
As a child, I was very curious as to why things worked as they did (or didn't, as the case may be). Unfortunately, as a 12 year old in the 1960s, I didn't know much about how 240 volt radios worked, and was trying to find out why mine didn't any longer when I apparently touched something live. When I regained consciousness, I found I had been flung across the room from where I was sitting at my desk, hitting my head against the wall, my overturned chair lying next to me. Needless to say, this curbed my curiosity for electrical gadgets for quite a number of years ! !
My worst, was in Greece. I was living there.
Brushing my teeth one morning, I bent down to the tap to take a slurp of water to rinse, everything went white and I woke up on the terrazzo floor an hour or so later.
The pump that supplied the water had an earth fault and I got 240v through my mouth, down through my body and out of my feet, standing on the wet floor.
I ached all over for days.
Greek 'elf and safety - sketchy at best ;)
My worst was in a cinema which was used occasionally by the local amateur operatic society. Provision had been made for the connection of hired dimmer racks to a 300A TPN supply backstage, fed from an ancient fuse switch labelled ‘Amateur Main’ in the intake room. Under instruction I locked the switch off then backstage started to connect the racks at which there was a loud bang and I shot backwards across the stage at high speed. Apparently someone had done some switchgear maintenance and and replaced the labelled covers on the wrong fuse switches. Remember, people, always prove dead yourselves, or one day you might be. Don’t take the word of anyone else.
Ya didn't check for voltage before you connected racks did you?..
I managed an electronics store for a while and we were reconfiguring an entire wall (changing the shelving arrangement and items on display, etc.). As I was unplugging everything in one section, I came across an old, cheap 3-way power splitter. I grabbed it and before I even began pulling it out, the brittle plastic crumbled and my fingers wrapped my hand around the contacts inside. As said in this video, the juice made my hand clench even harder on it. As the contraction spread to my arm, it pulled my hand back (with the crumbled power splitter still in it), then I stumbled backward a step with a feeling like my whole body had just been smacked with a metal door, and the connection was broken. Luckily, I had on rubber soled shoes and my other hand was at my side instead of touching the metal shelves.
I developed an absolutely wicked headache that lasted the rest of the day, along with a pins-and-needles feeling in my hand and wrist. I also had a few minor cuts in my palm from having clenched so hard on the fragmented plastic.
It could have been worse, like some of the other comments here, but it was still no day in the park.
So where was the current path in this case?
@ There were 2 aspects to my shock:
1/ My hand was in contact with live and ground simultaneously. That's why the ongoing sensation stayed in my hand/arm -- it was a localized loop, basically. Much the same as electricity will still flow through, and even arc to, a tool with an insulated handle if held against, or close enough to, both live and ground.
2/ I started at a different potential than the wall power. That's why I got an initial hit of juice that I described like being hit by a heavy door, as my whole body suddenly changed potential.
This didn't happen to me, but to an electrician. When I was a teenager, my parents hired an electrician to install a ground for the house (old house). The electrician we hired was a bit dickish, charged them full price then did a 180 and sent out his "apprentice" to do the work, a 20-something kid. After being three hours late, he shows up looking like he'd slept in the same clothes for a week (who am I to judge, maybe his washer was broken). Clamps to an old hose bonnet, then takes it to the fuse panel. He doesn't pull the phases and does the work Live, with a length of wire that he cut juuust that much too short. Instead of just rerunning the wire, he literally wrestles with it, while the mains are hot. I go in the house, 30 seconds later there's an electrical explosion so big, the walls in the house seemed momentarily luminescent, the lights blacked out, and a shower of sparks went everywhere like 4th of July gone wrong. We go out to check on him. It was like a Loony Toons episode, a blackened semi-body outline on the wall, boot prints burned into the ground, and ole Jackson knew he f'kd up because he got thrown back about 15 feet. Turns out, the genius was tugging a bare segment of copper through the bottom of the fuse box, bare handed, and he touched an energized rail with the copper while holding it. His hair was everywhere and I swear his clothes looked burned and he had smoke coming off his shoulders and hair. At that point, my dad told him to stop what he was doing and to leave. He didn't like that because he wanted his $80 bucks, even though he almost fried himself with his negligence.
Awesome story 😂.
I actually don't want to believe any of this but it is a nice story.
Freezing cold winters day in Scotland I was fixing an old 3 bar electric fire for my mother. It was unplugged and I had the thing in bits. My mum came into the room, and because it was freezing, plugged it in and switched it on before I realized what she was doing. I believe that it is a defining moment in a man's life when he swears using every bad word he knows AT his mother. This was that day for me. I was shaking for about an hour.
let the witch freeze!
Switched off doesn't count! Only physically disconnected counts.
@@occamraiserAlso you are supposed to prevent reconnection to the mains until you are done.
Removing the plug would have helped to give an example, or putting up those white and red cones and warning tape around the construction site may have helped.
At the age of around 8, I was fascinated by the little blue spark that ignited the gas on the kitchen hob and decided to see if, by holding a metal knife, I could stop the harmless blue spark from jumping the gap. It hurt. A lot. Knife went up in the air, I fell on the floor but most importantly, nobody saw. I had a healthy fear of electricity from then on, something which has kept me alive all these years.
Wow electrically qualified at age 8!!! Only kidding! 😂 lol
Fascinating, as ever, Clive! My worst electric shock occurred when I was about14, after taking the case off an old (Perdio) valve reel-to-reel tape recorder, so I could 'explore' it's workings. It was switched off but still plugged-in to the mains, and I decided to turn the chassis over. One hand was earthed to the chassis and the heel of the other hand pressed onto the live terminal of the 'on' switch as I picked up the chassis. 240 volts went between my hands and across my chest, and everything went blank! After a few very confused minutes I realised that I'd thrown the tape recorder chassis a few feet away, and I had a hole burned in the heel of the hand that had contacted the live terminal. I was breathless for what seemed like half a day afterwards, and I learned to be much more careful... I've only had minor zaps since then, not forgetting (7 years later) the live ring main that blew a hole in my long-nose pliers and peppered my specs with tiny balls of molten copper - no shock that time, but the huge 'bang!' was rebuke enough for leaving the mains live!
Glad you were ok Clive. Ive worked for years doing twsting on live circuits, and what I've learned is, never trust a circuit you have not checked! Not only do people make mistakes, but shit happens.
there are old electricians and bold electricians..... but you rarely meet an old, bold, electrician! Check everything (in my case twice, and then tap it with the back of a finger before doing anything else..... so three times, I suppose)
My worst one was in an NHS medical centre. Whilst installing hand dryers in the toilets. I isolated the power at the distribution board, went up into the false ceiling and got a massive shock between live in my right hand and the metal ceiling frame that I was holding on to with my left hand. It threw me off the ladder. When I investigated - it worked out that every feed from the distribution boards went out from a breaker - around the circuit, then back into a second distribution board! I wondered why there were so many distribution boards - they had doubled up on every circuit - somehow they managed not to cross phases, but every circuit was fed from 2 sources !! That was an NHS installation !
Well in the right place to get one 😂
I think that's called the AMBUSH distribution system!
I've seen emergency lighting circuits which had the permanent live fed from another phase so you had the potential of 400v in the fittings!
Sorry, as in it was fed power from both ends?
@@FrontSideBus Friend of mine got bitten by the emergency lights decommissioning an old build. It was his first belt. Luckily not his last job!
warning: fatal accident story
I worked in the power generation field for a time. Had a story told to me second hand that I later checked up on and confirmed its truthfulness.
In a power plant there are large bus bars (2inch by 4 inch solid copper) usually encased in a ventilation box/chamber filled with a noble gas to prevent arcing, or rather reduce arcing distance during normal operation of the power generators.
These bus bars usually go between the generator and main transformers before power leaves the plant to a transmission yard.
With that out of the way, the story takes place in a south american power plant where safety procedures may not always have been followed by the local operating staff. They were replacing a section of the vent box/chamber around these bus bars for one of the generator/transformer unit pairs and had de-gassed it. The person in questions had the panel off the box and was leaning down inside to remove bolts holding the rest of the box together. He reached out to use one of the bus bars as support to lean down inside to reach the bottom and his hand was instantly vaporized to nothing, and he fell forward catching his head on one of the other bus bars losing his head as well.
The staff that was supposed to de-energize the entire unit decided it was faster to just reduce operating speed of the generator to near 0 instead of truly off. Well near 0 when dealing with 500kV is not the same as 0.
What was happen with the staff after this? Are they now in prison or did they told the police that they do not know what happened?
I have learned a important lesson during I was working with my father. Never trust that other people are doing it right, no matter how much pressure they create to convince you not to double check a hazardous source. Because it is often not checked even once, because it is not their own life what they risk here.
If I need more time, then I need more time, but with people I have bad experiences.
I heard of a case where someone, presumably inexperienced, was working in a substation. There were overhead live bus bars, and the person concerned decided to jump up and do some pull ups on said bars. Needless to say, it did not end well.
@@micropower8 I do not know what happened to the workers after that, but I do know my coworker who witnessed it took a 2 year break from the power industry and refused to work in SA anymore.
@@spamhead If you grabbed ONE bar with both hands, nothing should happen. It's exactly like birds sitting on the wires - the birds aren't touching the ground, and both feet are at the same potential. If you grabbed a positive and a negative, one with each hand... bang.
@@tbelding I'm assuming the chap was still standing on the ground when he grabbed the bar...
We're all glad you're still with us Clive, the path of any electrical shock is the most dangerous rather than the voltage unless you're talking HV/MV.
Keep up the great work 👍
I am glad you were not seriously injured during these incidents and you regained your composure a lot faster than I would have.
Many years ago I knew someone who worked for the National Grid and got a 132,000 volt shock. The supply went in through his hand and out via his hip. He survived, and eventually returned to work. The biggest problem medically was the amount of internal burns and damage. He was a very fit guy so maybe that helped him.
I knew a fellow who pulled enough from the 15kV side of a 15kV 120mA transformer to trip the 15A house breaker. If you do the math he pulled 120mA through his chest.
Docs said he had weird scar tissue inside. He reported to me that he couldn't let go for a long time and he knew he was going to die. His parents reported the lights flickering and dimming before they went out. (old house) Dude kept building tesla coils his whole life but he also turned seriously weird and lived at home the rest of his unfortunately short life.
There was a guy who climbed a power pole and grabbed the HV feeder - don't recall the line voltage, hardly matters - and literally went up in flames. And yet he lived. There is frightful video of it here on YT.
I knew a guy when I was a teen who managed to stick a shovel - with a moist handle because muddy hole and hot sweaty day - into a 600V underground feeder. He woke up on his back, halfway out of the hole he'd been digging and with a great big notch out of the shovel... but the important part was that he woke up, at all. There was no one around to rescue him. The power company wanted to know who used what to cut through their "armored" cable. :D
@@railgapwow, your stories are scary.
They are a good reminder that, when digging, you should not attack roots too vigorously.
I heard fat is a great insulator or is that a myth?
On our farm we rent a house to a lovely bloke who was a crane dogman. He was holding the hook while standing on wet ground in the rain when the crane operator slewed the wrong way (towards power lines) as Doug saw the error he threw the hook, but the voltage was enough to ark from the hook to his chest where he now has a huge scar, and blew off four toes as well. He maintains that the only reason he survived was he was thrown off his feet, and the impact with the ground restarted his heart.
My mother’s laundry machine was faulty. While it was in place, I unscrewed the backside of it. I then decided to tilt the machine over towards the me to move it out of its place, bending over it, grabbing the inside, by the drain pump on the bottom inside. The machine was plugged in, but not workung. As in the Netherlands, we have non polarised power plugs, the neutral was probably live in this case. I was bent over the machine, a bit sweaty, so through my clothes, my whole belly and arms were grounded through the metal of the machine. Really, worst shock of my life, had to sit down for 10 minutes, to get back to my senses.
Stay safe 🙏
Internally many devices leave the motor live and switch the neutral. Perhaps it gives the switch some protection from nasty stuff on the live using the motor as an inductor/filter? I had the same thing happen with a portable AC unit and we have polarised plugs.
when a machine is plugged in expect any internal part be live. You should unplug before opening.
@@BrySmi How did you burn your butt? Your clothes should have insulated you just enough to only feel a tingle...unless you weren't wearing any, lol.
In India , like UK we have switches for every plug points. I think this is a great design rather than being redundant. Every country should accept this approach and make it mandatory to have a switch for each plug. You may have switches with your appliance but having a master switch beside the plug, that cuts off the live (or both the neutral and live) is a life saver. If you have it then you will definitely push /flick it to off position before removing the plug.
I got a number of minor shocks throughout my childhood. Most of them were from doing stupid things like disassembling a disposable camera and touching a bare metal wire to both ends of a small battery.
The most painful one happened about 10 years ago. Me and my family were checking out a house when I decided to go into the basement by myself. There was an electric piano off to the side of the stairs. I brushed the top of it as I came down and something zapped me. I touched it again to try and find out what it was and it zapped me again, but even worse!
I looked and saw what appeared to be an electrified screw on the top of the piano. To this day, I still don't know exactly what that was all about. All I remember was that it stung pretty bad and made my hand hurt for a while.
It doesn't seem likely you'd get a shock from a camera battery. What you could get quite a painful a shock from is the capacitor that gets charged up to a couple of hundred volts to fire the flash.
@@gcewing The shock from the camera and the shock from the battery were two different shocks. I have no doubt it was the flash capacitor on the camera that shocked me.
I was using an electrosurgical generator (high voltage and high frequency) to evaluate electrical characteristics of a device I was designing. The setup was sketchy with a lot of exposed conductors, I generally felt safe. I brushed my pinky finger up against one of those exposed conductors while reaching for something and got a nice set of
20 years ago was watching my CRT TV and the picture got small and lights flickered. Went to investigate and found my 4 year old son had been playing with the electric toothbrush. He took the brush off and used the oscillating metal tip to "drill" through the middle of a nearby power cord. Vaporized the metal tip, taught him a lasting lesson.
so i'm now wondering if he became a dentist, or jack-hammer operator..
I was a repairman, machinist for an industrial company. I was working on some extremely old equipment while sitting on the floor in a confined area. I grabbed the electrical box on a motor to pull myself closer, but didn't realize that someone before me left the terminal cover off. The ring finger of my left hand crossed the terminals of a 480V 3-phase machine. For about a second I wasn't able to move, then flew backward. I felt the current in my face and head, as well as the left side of my body. I was stunned for about 5 minutes thereafter.
Once I came to, I saw that my finger had two forth-degree burns on my fingers about a quarter inch in diameter each. They didn't hurt at all for a few days. Believe it or not but those marks can still be seen thirty years later. It could have been much worse.
Old equipment can be really dangerous. All my own designs using relay logic use 5 or 24VDC, occasionally 110VAC by customer's request. I was working on an old piece of kit in a pottery and found the logic voltage was 440VAC. OK, there was no neutral in the panel but a little transformer with 110V secondary only costs a few quid...
I still have the burn mark on my elbow 33 years later also
My neighbor was working on his boat and got his ring finger trapped between a spanner and the terminals of the boats battery. He said the ring turned red. He didn't feel the injury because all the nerve endings were burned away. He somehow managed to pull his finger out of the ring and went round the houses with his wife as to whether to go to the hospital. When they finally did the assessment was 3rd degree burns. Yikes.
Just one 277 volt leg is plenty to make you sit down until the taste goes away and you finally accept that you really did something that dumb. You paid a price, but survived and probably went home with the peace of mind that comes with knowing with 100% certainty that you would never have to worry about that happening again because the first time is so hard to forget that repeating such a mistake is damn near impossible, right? That's how it was for me anyway. I'm more likely to die getting shocked by a car battery than to make another 3 Phase 480 V mistake. i remember a particular day in 1988 better than I remember yesterday.
@SteveWhiteDallas severe trauma...emotional or physical...is what imbeds memories in our brains. Or one of the ways to retain amounts of detail from decades ago...while can't remember what I ate for lunch last Monday lol. Glad you're still kickin. Are you in Dallas tx by chance?
Interesting video Clive. Thinking about your compressor situation, you would have caught the inductive surge too as it started so that would have been quite the shock. I think mine was crawling between some ductwork to reach a valve, I touched two separate ducting systems and a fault current passed through me to reach the other duct. That and an intermittent live wire on a lighting circuit. But you only make these mistakes once and remember forever. At my bench I use a isolation mat and boots.
You should consider running your bench - indeed, most portable equipment - off a GFCI. I do. Might save a life.
@@railgap Yep, all sockets or breakers are RCD/RCBO in the workshop and office area, which is the UK equivalent to GFCI.
Can someone expand those abbreviations?
Thank you in advance :)
Negerkönigin
@@nos9784 Residual Current Device, Residual Current Breaker with Overload protection, Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter.
Great upload Clive! Your experience is very reminiscent of the one which told me very valuable lesson - The ground is important" - Growing in the rural area of poorly developed country in a pre WWII home the installation on my floor was old and ungrounded (just live and neutral). One day when I was impatiently waiting for the coal central heating to ramp up (took like an hour usually) I was eager to dry my hat on the electric oil heater while waiting for the coal CH to ramp up. Both radiators were separated by less than arms reach. Suddenly when I had my left hand on the still moist hat on the electric heaters radiator, my mum entered the room and asked have I fired the CH because its still cold inside. Without a single thought I reached to the CH radiator with my other hand, leaving other on the moist hat - I felt exactly what you describe. Although electric heater was 240V 1500W unit, thankfully the CH radiator was painted with the oil base paint so I haven't received the full blast, but nevertheless I was contorting in pain on the floor. It quickly downed on me that the CH radiators are grounded and electric is not (sockets in continental Europe have a ground pin going from the socket, not from the plug as the wise Brits established, so you can plug in the grounded plug to the ungrounded old socket) - Very painful and valuable lesson. Thankfully I moved to UK not long after so that shouldn't happen again right? :D
A core memory of mine is my father doing things like wiring the electrics in the house himself, and leaving the job half-done because he'd get distracted. This would be one thing if the switches were plastic, but the ones we had were "decorative" brass light switches. One day I arrive home, go to turn the stair light on, and get zapped so hard I jumped backwards and took a bookcase down with me. Thankfully, there wasn't any serious damage.
Electricity is firmly on the list of things I have a heartfelt respect for. And, likewise, I have a heartfelt respect for actually competent electricians.
That behaviour is why if I leave _any_ half done electrical work, I put wire nuts over the wires, and I leave them disconnected. My wife loves to passive/aggressive "ask" me to do something while I'm in the middle of a job.
Even if you're a 'Wago' fan, keep wire nuts around. They're fantastic for capping off wires, even if waving in the air, and they let the wires be moved around individually.
I'm not an electrician, but I was collecting specimens from the fly zappers in a large dairy, it was for my zoology degree. I'd been trained to turn them off at the wall and wait awhile for the capacitors to discharge then I could wipe the flies and moths etc off of the grid into the tray and I could do a count of the assorted species. Nobody told me that one of the zappers was very old school. When I was on tiptoes with my arm extended I got such a zap, I should have discharged it. My left elbow tried to make contact with my right shoulder blade.. Completely tore my rotator cuff muscles. took 18 months to recover, couldn't drive for 8 months. I did get an automatic pass for that unit and had a whole year out and a very generous payment from the company.. Somebody said it was 50,000v. I don't know, but it certainly hurt.
Stay safe 🙏
A very stupid idea really nobody gave a seconds thought to what happens if one of these units that has been on for an extended time an as they get warm has the unit failed under a fault condition ? How to test for that then a basic risk assessment by the person undertaking the work should have highlited that potential issue. And how to discharge the capacitors and then measure to make sure you don't get a shock ... You luckily live and learned
any time i've ever worked with a bug zapper i always shorted the connections to ground before touching them to avoid exactly what you describe, I can only imagine how much this hurt. sounded brutal sorry dude
@@joeledwards6587how do you short a thing. Like you described? I've heard the same thing about capacitors
@@SlyerFox666 and there in lies the “generous payment” I think, someone realized the liability they were in 😂
My first (and I think only) AC 240v shock I had when I was a younger lass, I was about 7 or 8, and my silly step-mother had left me at home on my own. I remember I wanted to make this extension lead out of one of those extension sockets you can wire yourself and a cable reel. It was all going well, until I touched the live terminal, it was at that moment I realised it was still plugged in and it was incredibly difficult to disengage since my hand muscles wouldn't "respond." - I managed to kind of flop over and that was enough to disconnect me, and while it has not tempered my curiosity of taking stuff to bits, it has given me a healthy respect for electricity. Also, afterwards I went and had a shower, which I have never understood why, since!
I remember you've told this story before, but always good to hear a Big Clive tale.
My brother had the worst shock in my family by far, at work he put his hand inside a 3 phase MIG welder to adjust something loose. For nearly a minute his workmates thought he was messing around doing a dance then realised and then pulled the plug. The hospital kept on going on for days looking for an "exit point" and saying there must be one. He survived and has scarring on hand and wrist. Luck seems to run in my family!
My colleague was shocked by electric vehicle. It is good that we have a safety pole that we can use to pull person away from the car. He will not touch those pieces of sh** vehicles anymore in his words. I enjoy your videos and it is always good to learn something new, thank you Clive!
I had a 1960s portable record player that I tried to modify to play electric guitar through. Somehow I managed to touch the HT power supply and got a massive electric shock I can feel to this day. The other bad one was an evil young man who lived on our street who said "hold these two wires" and gave me a 240v shock. What a wanker. Love your channel Big Clive, one of the first I ever subscribed to.
At the age of 6, I stuck my tong in the outlet because I am stupid.
That was the worst shock of my life.
Since then, every time I come close to working with high voltages, I get a flashback and become super aware of my surrounding.
I remember nothing but this incident from that age.
It's funny how no matter how well versed you are, we still live in a real world where mistakes happen, or things happen unexpectedly.
Its often people who should know better putting themselves at risk. I was once investigating a thyristor controlled industrial heater with an oscilloscope hooked up to the mains (heater) side of the controller. I had roped off my corner of the workshop and erected "Warning: high voltage" signage. My boss (also an electrical engineer) ducked straight under the ropes and was about to touch the live probe when I grabbed his arm and explained that the signs were not just for show.
I've found that it falls into two camps; naïveté and complacency. I got a few shocks early in my electronics career, then as I gained experience the number went down. Near the end of my career I had to work hard at not being complacent because of experience.
Personal Responsibility™©® is a neoliberal brainworm to keep you from fighting for things to get better.
You're smart enough to never get in a car crash right? If someone does a Grenfell to you, you're able bodied enough to just walk out I'm sure.
a mistakes should always anticipated, and and thing put in the way, minimised, worst of out come when a mistake will happen one day ? 😞
@@misamsung6191 , It has been said that an expert is somebody who has already made all the mistakes that it is possible to make. I know that I personally am not an expert, because I still make mistakes! The most important thing is to work in such a way that insures that you won't make one last final mistake before you shuffle off of this mortal coil.
I, for one, am glad you're still alive. I've been a fan since your video about the vintage elevator control board(February 2016). You have provided me with really fun, interesting, and educational videos over the years, and I sincerely thank you, and toast to your continued good health.
Wonderful words of caution Clive. My worst shocks were back when I was an Avionics engineer on helicopters. All were caused by other people not following safety rules. I'd disconnected the aircraft power, marked the batteries and ground sockets as 'NO POWER', whilst working on the high-intensity strobes. An impatient airframe engineer wanted power to run fuel pumps so ignored the signs and connected ground power and switched it on without checking. 10000 volts through my arm (albeit very low current) and I was thrown from the steps and away from the tail boom. Another was an EMS helicopter that ground-charged the defib when not in use. Some bright spark had deliberately rewired 7/8 extension leads with the live and neutrals around the wrong way, effectively putting the entire airframe at 240 volts. it was only the rubber tyres that stopped the RCD's kicking in until a hapless (i.e. me) grounding the thing out when working underneath. Fun times.
This didn't happen to me, but rather is an instance that I was told about during an electronics class I took probably 60 years ago when I was in high school. A technician the military was servicing some kind of electronic equipment when he received an unexpected shock. The shock wasn't severe enough to be life threatening, but he did react by suddenly and forcefully pulling his arm back from the equipment he was working on. Unfortunately, his superior officer was standing behind him looking over his shoulder, and the technician's elbow struck the officer directly in the testicles. Whoops.
And nothing of value was lost that day
As a kid, I wanted to replicate an experiment I had seen at school: electrolysis of water into H2 and O2. So I got a bowl, filled it with water and salt, attached two crocodile clips as electrodes then using two instrument screwdrivers, shoved them into the Live and Neutral of a mains power outlet. Learned quite a few lessons that day.
My dad did that when he tried to electroplate a toy when he was a kid.
Same experience of sorts. It's funny how while being kids were so damn curious and wanting to learn and experiment and how unsafe it is...yet we're still here. Dunno about the latest generation of kids though...in multiple ways
@@jeremygalloway1348 You could reword that, the ones that survived are still here!
@@jeremygalloway1348agree
I did the same experiment when i was a kid of 12-13 years old. But I did with a panasonic tape-recorder detachable wire and it was series connected with a refrigerator. I did not get electrocuted but interesting fireworks burned the plug. Yes, kids are dangerously curious when I look back.
Very glad you're still here AND doing this work on here to help other people still be here in the future.
BigClive is ALIVE and WELL. That is the most important we can get more videos :)
Adding to the electrical war stories, the most dramatic shock(s) I had received was from the inside out. It was in the 8th year of having an implanted defibrillator while in the queue at the pharmacy to pick up heart rhythm medication I had neglected to take for one week. A sudden explosion in my chest caused me to yelp a shout of pain and dropped me to my knees. While explaining to those near me that my defibrillator had just fired it hit me again. Then again and again roughly every 15-20 seconds. The pharmacy was only a kilometer from the hospital and a clerk jumped in my car where my teenage daughter was waiting and rushed me to the emergency room. According to the device's internal memory, I received 28 'inappropriate shocks' over the course of 40 minutes. After nearly two years of anxiously anticipating a repeat of this every time I felt my heart flutter, I convinced my physicians to explant the device.
My goodness, that's terrifying in a way I don't even have words for. I'm glad you're okay.
health companies should not ever get away with stuff like that. I hope you were at least compensated for that.
Wow, hope your doing good now buddy
take care
Jebus. That's ironic. And tragically hilarious.
omfg.... this is like the worst fucking nightmare.... imagine neurolink.... or whatever they want to invent to implant into people.... holy shit man....
Big Clive, you are doing the world a great service by spreading the gospel of safety. This video (and Paul's as well) will definitely save lives. Bravo!
What doesn't shock me is that Clive is a Mr Carlson's Lab viewer. In my opinion these two are the greatest EE's on TH-cam, if not the world.
No love for JW?
@@hypnotised-clover Absolutely, he's another favourite, has me in stiches with his dry wit.
EE?
@@UJustGotGamed Electrical Engineer
27KV while measuring the voltage on a CRT anode cap, which unfortunately popped off, and landed on my hand, after I pushed the measurement probe under the cap. I know it was 27KV because that was what the probe's meter indicated immediately before the cap dislodged. I worked in a TV repair shop at the time. Fortunately I'd been trained (at the BBC) to only use my right hand for such measurements, so current didn't pass through the heart, but I felt major cramping in other internal organs for several hours afterwards. Happened in 1987, but I still remember it vividly.
🤯 Glad you’re still with us Clive; producing quality material. 👍
This is a great format for you since you are a good story teller.
I think my worst schock is the discharge of an air conditioning unit capacitor in my hand. It left a small hole in my hand but it healed completely 2 weeks later.
Clive is an _incredible_ storyteller, IMO.
@@jkobain 💯per cent agree! Something about his voice (but don't tell him).
I was bored at work in the early 2000's and decided to disassemble a disposable camera. The shock i got really felt to me like I'd been hit in the chest with a defibrillator. Thinking about it now wonder how dangerous that could have been.
Very good format for stories. This man is a treasure.
Whilst serving in the RAF as a Radar engineer. I was working on a unit which required we pull forward the top draw of the cabineta few inches. Getting tired ,(lazy), I hooked my right hand over the edge of the top draw - higher than my head. I contacted a 10KV buss bar with my fingers, fortunatly only at a few milliamps. However that wasn't what caused the 3 days in hospital.
I jumped back in a fairly small room and slammed into the wall behind me giving myself concussion and 3 days in hospital for checks with 4 neat burn marks on the ends of my right hand fingers. Lesson learned.
Same in my world. We are still using power tubes that have 8-12kv on the plate at a couple amps when operating. Scary beasts if anything gets out of resonance.
When i was young and used to service televisions, my fellow amateur radio club members would warn me, "It isn't the 25 kV shock that will kill you - it's getting thrown into a wall and breaking your back that'll kill you!"
@@allenlutins I worked on my first CRT in the mid 90s and decided it was my last. That said I have had a few flat panel backlight boards bite me too.
When I was in ATC training the Radar tech trainees were taking classes in the hanger below. One day on break a female Radar tech trainee reached into a live mobile radar unit with a wrench for some reason. We just heard a loud BOOM and never saw her again.
@@FrugalShave A colleague of mine earther an in operation thyatron to the back of the cabinet with a large screwdriver, why, no one will ever know, a huge bang and he welded the tip of the screw driver to the panel and luckly (for him) I caught him as he jumped back.
My 2 most memorable: As a curious kid, I tied a metal hook to some string as a grappling hook & lobbed it over the overhead power lines near my home. Even with maybe 10m of dry string, I could feel a strong throbbing in my arm. That answered my question as to whether those lines were insulated.
50 years later, helping a friend with with a 130W CO2 LASER (powered off), he got a shock cleaning it. So to make it safe, I tried to discharge it with a screwdriver, as I've done with CRTs many times. I felt a great injustice when I got shocked but later realised that the 54kV could easily pass through the insulated handle of the screwdriver.
was it 240V power line or 15kV? If you felt it over dry long string it probably was 15k... Good you did not test it on 400k power line.
@@liamkaloy It was up-stream of transformers - I think I read 6-ish or 11-ish kV. Of course I didn't know that at the time.
Overhead lines are definitely insulated, but just by the air between the ground and them!
8:56 "Humpy Current". I'm using that.
Thanks for sharing this Big Clive. So glad you were ok! My worst shock was over 25 Years ago. I was a young technician in my 20's and replacing an I-Line breaker hot in a 480V 3 phase system. Found the fault to be a faulty breaker started swapping it out. I made sure the breaker was in the Open/Off position before taking it out and also the spare and starting to push it in place on the live 3 phase busses. Before I had it fully in I thought - what I am doing - I had never megged this spare breaker to make sure it was ok phase to phase. So I megged it and it was good. So next I thought - I did not close the breaker to measure resistance to verify good contacts, so I did. Feeling good that I had thought about checking all these things and safety first as I begin installing the breaker this time I did not realize that I did not verify the 2nd time that it was Open/Off again and sure enough my finger went across one of the load side terminals as I was sliding it in toward the line side busses. My other hand obviously on the other side of the I-Line panel pulling so the current had a straight path through my chest. The textbook example of what not to do. I was blessed that day as I felt 277V @ 60HZ through my chest and I am so gratful that I was not sweaty or damp enough to cause a bad burn and I guess the clamping of my musles actually pulled my finger from the hot lug! Not something you ever forget! ⚡RESPECT IT!
My worst shock was from an industrial flash gun capacitor bank. I was involuntary thrown backwards and thought I'd lost my sight as I couldn't see anything for what seemed like several seconds but in reality it was probably only less than a second. Having had mains shocks before, this was in a different league - it really hurt and I didn't feel particularly well for a few hours afterwards. It gives me a cold sweat thinking about it nearly 50 years later!
The worst shock I ever got was when installing a socket at my grandfathers cellar. While connecting the socket with a flashlight I was holding with my teeth, my grandfather screwed the fuse of the cellar room back in and I felt slowly how my arm which touched the strands of the wire got numb. I was able to retract my arm in time, but only because there couldn't flow much current over the strands in my body and I wore isolated boots. In the meantime my grandfather came in and said, that somebody took out the fuse and he put it back in, because I wouldn't be able to install the socket without light. Some swearing by me and a strong coffee delivered by my grandfather the socket was installed successfully at the end.
It reminds me of the time in the RAF as a radar tech. You had to learn this off by heart. "Be aware in an unserviceable equipment, that there could be the presence of dangerous voltages where they would not normally be expected". I was made more aware of this in training in the 70's when connecting a clip to a component and steadying myself to the rack with my other hand when I was thrown back off the equipment and into a wall. My instructor at the time said " did that hurt?" To which I replied "I think my scream said enough" his reply? "Once bitten twice shy" I have been ultra careful ever since.
Thank you for your candid confessions...Was working on an old 440 circuit in an Air Force hanger in New Mexico and a buddy isolated the circuit from the roof. I went into a metal enclosure and did not verify there was no power (last time that happened) and stuck my wire cutters in to cut one leg and it grounded on the case and kaboom...lightning struck. I wasn't hurt but learned a free valuable lesson that day! About one third of the end of the cutter was vaporized...crazy...now i'm sweating again just thinking about it!
More painful than dangerous, the worst shock I remember was from disassembling a camera as a kid that had a flash bulb. I didn’t understand at the time how the flash circuitry worked and got a painful shock from the flash’s capacitor.
Well that happened three times to me as a kid. On 2 cameras. No I never touched it on purpose. But it took 3 shocks for me to say no more taking apart cameras 😂
You can make a taser from a camera flash - don't think it's legal though
I have done few times myself. Yes, nasty surprises I came across flash capacitor. Brrr... It gave me a chill. Not fun. Aftermath, I've learned to remember discharged the flash capacitor before working on repair. ⚠
Exact same story for me
I took apart an old camera as a kid after fully charging it, and realising it didnt work.
Touched a capacitor and as I flinched to pull my hand away the camera lifted up with my hand.
Ended up dismantling the whole thing including the components out of spite.
My worst one ever was from a big, 15A@240v drill. Typical farm work, we were building a wooden fence for horses. The wood had been treated with creosote paint, and while one of us drilled, the other held the opposite end of the beam.
So there I was, my turn to hold the end while the other guy drilled. The drill is some ancient piece of hardware fitted with a new 15A cord (here in Australia we have specialized power sockets for 15A units, that have a larger than normal earth pin), but because the 15A plug wouldn't go into standard power sockets, whomever had fitted the lead *_had cut the earth pin off._*
So, back to holding the timber. It's a sticky mess, as are we both, and we're both losing layers of skin to the creosote (you can see where this is going). One of the brushes in ye olde 15A drill failed, shorted mains to casing. Casing found a path to ground through the creosote-lubricated path of least resistance. Other guy screams and lets go of the drill. Now the shortest path to ground is lost and, so, the next longest is sought. That would be me, holding the other end of the timber. I got thrown back several feet too, because (like you said) if you're standing, you have a good chance of the shock-contractions shoving you away.
Not a fun one, I'll say that.
But it was surely a funny sight.
Damn, I've never heard of anyone removing the ground. Grinding it down till it fits perhaps ;-) glad you're ok mate
@@zyeborm A plug is what, 3 bucks? If it takes you 10 minutes of sanding, that's already not worth it in hourly rate even lol
I once had a shock from a DIY drill's gearbox where a brush wire had shorted to the casing. The muscle spasm in my forearm was sufficiently severe to require my arm in a sling for a week. When I appeared the next day at work it caused some hilarity from my colleagues as I was a part-time safety officer at the time.
@@whatevernamegoeshere3644 now add the round trip time to Bunnings vs the 12 seconds it takes with a grinder to take 2mm off the pin.
I have no background in electricity or anything related but I find your videos so engaging, informative and interesting! You defiantly make the subject accessible to us laymen! Thankyou Clive 😎
Glad you’re ok, Clive! Stay safe!
When I was very small, my folks had an HMV radiogram (with tambour doors). I remember being fascinated as I changed a record, that I got a slight tingle in my finger tips when I touched the turn table. Later my parents moved the radiogram unit closer to the window. I went to change a record, whilst I had one hand on the radiator. This time the shock sent me across the room. Years later (with years of electronic knowledge) I decided to service this old piece of furniture. I removed the amplifier/radio chassis (it used valves). It was then that I noticed that the two core mains wire (red & black) had been wired incorrectly at the two pole mains switch. The chassis was meant to be connected to the the neutral (dangerous anyway today). But because the colours of the wire had been reversed, the chassis was now live, despite following the correct wire colours at the plug. Hence the shock years ago. Everyone survived because of the foam backed carpets, provide enough insulation.
Sounds like it was a transformerless, "AC-DC" set. Highly dangerous back in the day when 2 prong power cords were not polarized here in the US and so you had a 50-50 chance of plugging the thing into the wall in the "wrong" direction and enlivening the chassis with 120 V AC. Most such radio sets were constructed of wood and plastic, non conductive materials and knobs come with screws hidden or recessed are going into plastic isolators so that no electricalky charged metal parts would be exposed on the outside of the unit. Most units of the 1950s and onward had a capacitor tied between the neutral and the chassie so that it would function as a audio ground and RF ground without allowing the chance he to become fully hot and live if the plug was inserted into the wall the wrong way. Of course, after a decade or so, the capacitor (typically rated for only 400 V DC) would become leaky and energize the chassis. High voltage AC rated safety capacitors that would fail open instead of short-circuiting were very expensive back then and so most manufacturers didn't use them.
I was a TV tech in my early career and had many shocks while working on TV's. My worst injury though was not the shock. I had my hand in the back of a TV doing some measurements when my hand accidentally touch some high voltage, the backwards movement of my hand on receiving the shot hit a sharp edge within the TV and completely ripped open the back of my hand, blood gushed everywhere.
Good Video Clive. My worst shock was in India, where I was simply plugging in a video cable (0.75v !) into a video server. Just at the moment I had the metal body of the BNC connector in one hand and my other hand on a grounded metal rack, there was a big bang and a lot of smoke rolled down the corridor. After picking myself up off the floor and overcoming my complete confusion I took a walk down the corridor where I found some soot covered electricians who had managed to drop a spanner between one phase of a HV to 240v transformer (output side) and ground. For some reason, they had removed the actual ground sometime earlier. This meant I had 240v on the equipment rack I was touching with the video cable actually grounded through the metalwork of the building. It was a one in a million chance of this happening at the time I was doing what I did. Fortunately no permanent damage done to anyone involved, but the metal spanner was a molten blob on the floor.
Glad you and Paul are. Still in this world its not your time yet you all are still here to teach us something and to help us stay safe when doing something
When I was about 13, I lived in the countryside on a smallholding. My dad had extension leads for powering various tools. However, for some reason, he had fitted an exposed two pin connector to the LIVE end of the extension.
Save to say I received a powerful 240v shock and the ground was damp as well. I went unconscious within seconds and whilst I was unconscious I experienced a very real 'dream' experience.
In the 'dream' I went to the bathroom to put antiseptic cream on my hand, then I went outside to the garage and turned off the power to the cable, then I sat next to my brother who was reading a newspaper on the floor, at that moment he said "Don't worry Rob, I've had lots of electric shocks"
When I woke I was sitting in the house on a chair and I started to question my parents where I had been, because the experience was so real. They said that I had been on the chair since my brother carried me inside.
Then for some reason I started to re-enact the dream experience. I went to the bathroom and found the cream and I could smell it on my hands as well. Then I went to the garage to check the power was off. Then I went to the summerhouse where my brother was sat on the floor reading the newspaper, just as in the dream, and as I sat down he said "Don't worry Rob, I've had lots of electric shocks".
Your brain got so jumbled, you temporarily became a higher dimensional being.
Really though, that would mess me up! Did you have any odd dreams or recollections afterwards?
@@dkfsamurai I did have several deja vu moments in unconnected circumstances in subsequent years, but never anything quite as powerful as that one.
They're not called "suicide leads" for nothing ... i.e. plug at each end.
@@MrAdopado 😜😝
OOBE!
Thanks for your shock tales, Clive. I've had a few myself.
The highest voltage was while I was investigating a 3-phase inverter. This one had 600VDC on the "DC-link" or internal power supply which was pulse-width modulated to give 400VAC 3-phase to drive a common or garden induction motor. I had it connected to a 3-channel chart recorder. I went to change the setting on the gain pot and got a powerful shock for my trouble. The pot's metal spindle was live and I'd caught the grub screw on the control knob.
The most spectacular shock was while hosting my parents' silver wedding anniversary party. My pinball table was proving popular with guests when it failed. The glass and play-field hinge upwards on props like a car's bonnet. I switched off the pin table underneath and went to pull out the mains fuses. My uncle stuck his head in to look just as I made contact with the fuses. They were still live and the shock threw my arm in the air, rewarding my uncle with a punch in the face. A previous owner had wired the single pole mains switch to the neutral wire. The lesson of unplugging before working learnt the hard way in this instance.
The weirdest was while working in a junction box under a machine which should have contained only 24VDC control circuitry. I got a belt which I investigated with my meter and found 88VAC superimposed on the 24VDC. The 24VDC simple linear power supply was mounted in very close proximity to a 2KVA transformer inside the control panel. The unintentionally induced voltage may have been at a very low current but remarkably shocking.
I've mad respect for electricians here in the States, but even more so for those working with 220/240. Mains over here is 110v, but I like to nickname 220/240 'Extra Spicy Death Juice'. I think my OCD in checking circuits would go absolutely overboard.
When I was nine or so, the switch to my reading light next to my bed developed a contact fault. I was smart enough to know about fouling on the contacts and also smart enough to unplug the thing before opening the switch. For the first four times I had it open between testing. The fifth time I was annoyed at the persisting fault despite cleaning the contacts and forgot to unplug the wire.
My thumb and middle finger closed the contact and my fingers clamped the switch hard. Took me a second to pull the plug with my free hand.
Gained me sore muscles in my palm and fingers and a life-long appreciation for electrical safety, work safety and LOTO.
Many moons ago, a colleague of mine was working live on an S259 radar. There was very little space in the cabin and he was working with the front panel off.
He turned his back on the kit to kneel down to consult the manual that was on the cabin floor and promptly sat on the anode of the live thyratron - can’t remember the voltage but 250Hz PRF.
He just remembers waking up in a crumpled heap in the far corner of the cabin.
owch.. reminds me of tuning VHF lecher line valve based transmitters.. arc over was a common issue!
Reminds me of a story my father-in-law tells about working on a destroyer. Found himself against a far wall listening for his heart to start beating normally.
Ah yes Radars have some healthy stuff
Worked on ome its polse transformer was as big a a big fridge ! Earthing that out even with a 3 foot wand was always interesting
I have worked on radar units, and plate voltage is high. He was lucky he was thrown and not cooked internally from a magnaton or klystron output.
@@cheeto4493 Bulkhead on a ship, not a wall. Sorry I'm a pedantic bugger.
not sure how i survived as a kid as my bedroom was a pile of circuit boards, solder burns and chaos. my first memory of a shock was when i decided to slide a piece of meccano behind a 3 pin plug. this was before the days of half insulated live and neutral pins.
it made a huge bang and left a big black splut mark on the socket.
fortunately my parents had fitted an RCD, albeit it seems a rather slow one (this was the late 70s) so after recovering i went downstairs and flipped the trip back on.
back then parents at most said "what did you do?" and the response "i was trying something" didn't gain much more than a humpf in return as they awaited the TV to warm up again :)
I did however as an adult create a lightning storm of my own. this was the most terrifying experience, albeit i didn't get a shock. I had a large old linear transformer based power supply that was running all my ham radio and other kit in my workshop. this was plugged into a multiway adaptor as you never have enough sockets as always, other items such as a UHF handled radio charger were plugged into the sockets and a packet radio TNC and an old converted PMR radio.
Anyway, while sat there with this power supply under my desk in front of me there was this sudden massive blue flash and bang.. followed by complete silence (and tinnitus that i have to this day..).
once the air cleared and i took stock of still being alive and not having any bits missing, i investigated.
it turns out the transformer shorted secondary to primary, this dumped 240V into the nominal 12V secondary. This in itself was a bad thing to happen, however the huge amount of power hitting the secondary blew the fuse in the plug to the multi way socket strip.
At this point the transformer secondary had this massive magnetic flux built up and it had to go somewhere as it collapsed, so it did, induced back to the primary winding, stepping it up over 20 times in voltage. (guessign some 1000's of volts).
as the fuse had blown, the only place for this energy to go was every device plugged into the multi way strip and boy did it do so.
The Packet TNC and UHF handheld and PMR radio were stone dead, as were their power supplies.
a look inside found the surface mount transistors on the PCB of the hand held radio were vapourised onto the case, like they had been Nagasaki'ed.
The TNC was the same, chips that looked like face huggers had recently lept out of them and transistors sprayed everywhere.
This was an expensive explosion, i survived but not a single electronic item in the room did.
I'm so glad that you're still with us, you make the world a better place, thank you Clive.
I'm not an electrician or electrical engineer and I'm lucky to have only had one 'shock' (mild buzz). I moved into a flat and the washing machine and dishwasher were right next to each other in the kitchen. The dishwasher was powered on but not running and the door was open. I squatted down to empty some clothes out the washing machine, grabbing hold of the edge of the dishwasher door with one hand, touching the metal inner part of it. As I reached inside of the washing machine drum and touched it with my other hand, I felt a tingle across both hands/arms. Turns out whoever installed the circuit for the kitchen plug sockets (likely the previous owner before the flat was let out) hadn't connected the earth! So I got what was probably a small AC shock from the relative voltage between two ungrounded appliances.
I think my worst one was when I was young (early/mid teens?), and I was changing a bulb for my mother at the bottom of the stairs, and I was stood on this puffet thing. In my infinite young wisdom, it looked like one of the bayonette pins in the socket was stuck, so I reached in to push it, and managed to bridge the connections, naturally it was live enough to make me tense up, while my mum stood there and freaked out. Luckily I did manage to pull myself away and lived to tell the tale, it was scary at the time. Don't put your fingers in light sockets, kids.
Worst shock - 4th grade, I took apart a disposable camera and got bit by the 330VDC flash capacitor. That hurt worse than when I got bit by a 5000V CRT anode last year.
The CRT just felt like a big static shock.
I've been hit by both as well. The flash cap really caught me by surprise and was WAY worse than I would've expected, leaving a nasty little burnt crater in my finger, but the CRT was, at least for me, significantly worse - not in terms of outright pain, that mf of a flash cap gets that trophy, but in terms of violence of the shock.
Flash capacitors! I got zapped by one when I learned the hard way that you don’t charge up a flash, turn it off, and immediately open the battery cover.
I was working on my Tesla (I'm a big lad, swapped damaged plug sockets out, installed an 10.5kW electric shower in my parents house by using a spur from the lights, etc), and I'm also practically a mechanic. Anyway I needed to do an oil change, and I can see why people say these cars are poorly made because I practically ripped the entire car apart trying to find it, in fact just before the accident I was so sweaty I took a break to have a bath, but jumped right back into the job. Well at one point these stupid big orange cables kept getting in my way so I went to where they had these big bolts connecting them. I grabbed both to see if I needed to get my impact, and suddenly without warning I wake up in the ICU with no arms, burns, and a TBI. The doctors said I probably had multiple megawatts passing through me momentarily, really shows you how far the NHS has fallen when they just joke around making back to the future references. I asked again what happened and my wife explained to me that the car partially exploded and then burned for several hours and that I'm lucky I got blown clear of the first blast. This is when it really hit me. I was devastated. I paid so much money for that car and now it's gone :(.
I guess freak accidents do happen. I don''t think we'll ever know why I got shocked by the car. That's the problem with this new technology, it's unpredictable. This is why I'm strictly against right to repair, no one should be touching these electric cars with all of that energy in those batteries. It's just totally different, normal cars just don't have all that energy in a battery in them, so they're safe to work on. That's why I wish I took it to the manufacturer, the company is ran by Musk so I know he won't cut any corners or anything.
Finally I'd just like to say that we need to hold EV makers accountable for what they do. That's why I'm currently suing Tesla and Elon Musk directly (due to him being known for taking shortcuts) - hopefully if they're held accountable random freak accidents like this won't happen in the future. And while the money can't undo the accident, at least I can buy another Tesla to replace the one that exploded.
My friend of several years, i trained him and he was qualified to fix the kit...
The earth in the sockets was crap, the radiator next to the machine he was fixing had a very good earth. He had a shock down one arm and out his arse.
Thankfully he is still with us :)
My mother's sewing machine had a tear in the power cord. I remember grabbing it as a kid and finding out first hand what it's like to not have control over your muscles!
I have a soldering iron, and one of its wires started to break and make little punctures in the isolation next to the handle.
I guess, when you cut the faulty piece out and solder back the same cord, it's just a matter of time when it happens again.
After watching Clive reviewing battery-powered cordless soldering irons, I switched to using such thing, and I'm happy now, lol.
I wasn't sure whether I should put in my own story, but decided to. In my youth I had acquired a cheap soldering iron and one day I was enjoying myself fixing the record player (it was a LONG time ago). The iron went cold, but for no reason I can fathom even today, I put two thumbs on the inline switch to separate the two halves - which were pressed together. My finger nails did the necessary substitute spudgeoning and suddenly the casing let go. Both fingers went straight into the innards of the switch and I got the full mains voltage across my chest. My arms flew out sideways, probably saving me, and I went flying backwards to land on a heap across the room. The part I remember most, however, was that for fraction of a second my vision dimmed into a vast nothingness in which a long line of grey sausages stretched in front of me horizontally. Days later I counted the sausages in my seared-in vision. I could just count 14 sausages. I reckon that meant I was zapped for 280 milliseconds (at 50hz). I am now a veggie!
For me it was as a teenager. My reel-to-reel tape recorder had a barely noticeable crack in the power cord's insulation but my damp hand found it...
Probably my most serious electrical shock incident for me was when I was maybe 10 when I was fiddling with an old black and white TV and somehow came in contact with metal prongs of the TV power plug as it was for reasons I don’t remember only partially plugged in. Given that this was an American style power cord without the extra insulation and other safety features found in UK main’s plugs, it was just waiting to happen. I manage to pull my hand away without any serious harm but I learned the hard way to always make sure the plug is fully pushed in or fully unplugged. Generally.
My worst shock came from the large metal capacitor that resides inside the old style microwaves that stays charged to many KVs. When it happened I was too young to understand the dangers of taking such things to pieces.
I remember at about 10 years old, pulling apart an old disposable camera with a flash unit. This was my first experience with a capacitor. Afterwards, I figured it must be discharged, so I grabbed it again only to get another zap.
And the worst bit? I figured that after giving me two jolts, it would certainly be discharged...
@@danielv5825 Something tells me you got a 3rd one 😂
@@danielv5825yeah those are painfull, worked on such cameras but got a jolt through my hand, my hand was numb for 1 hour, that was when i first started electronics so yeah i did not know those components held charge but now i do and i never get zapped anymore
When I was about 18, I pulled out the HV Transformer and that HV Cap from an Amana Microwave (Notoriously known for High Power) and wired it up on the floor as the Primary winding to energize my Tesla coil which when i flipped the switch and the lights in the house dimmed, I promptly blew a One Inch hole in the linoleum floor because I forgot the attach the 1 In steel Nut I was using a s a ground plane dangling above the toroid. -Good Times..
Did any of those shoppers who watched you nearly die come over to you and ask if you were okay or needed anything? I sincerely hope so! I always remember when I hit a deer on the M11 at a high speed (I shall not say what speed but I managed to slow a little before impact). Deer might seem small in the garden but this was a massive beast. Managed to just about prevent car going into a spin which was itself a dramatic event, but had it done so I may not have survived it. I never forget the only other car on motorway at the time (Range Rover!) stopped just to check I was okay and make sure I was calm, check the car, etc. Basically he was so calm and methodical in his approach to ensuring I came to terms with it and the damage to the vehicle. Extremely grateful as was so shaken up!
Very glad you're still here Clive, even if your still buzzing a bit ;)
Glad you're still with us. My worst shock was when I was a small child - I stuck a house key into the hot side of a 120v wall outlet. All I remember is coming to in my mother's arms, and she was hysterical.
I've done that as well, making sure there was no complete circuit, and didn't get zapped. Can't recommend it however, there certainly is risk.
I accidentally touched a 230v lamp lol
@@Kevin-mp5ofYou sound like someone who’s taken a few 120V shocks to the cranium
In old CRT TV repair the greatest danger of electric shock was the retraction reaction and gouging arms and fingers on the metal chassis and glass tubes.
The same problem occurs when working on microwave ovens if the capacitor hasn't been discharged.
People popping bubble wrap behind you when working live can cause the same problem ;)
@@machintelligence Definitely. Discharge caps, preferably not with a screw driver ;).
@@MJMC56 Or playing the beginning of James Brown's "I feel good" at full volume. Get 'em every time.
I was camping with a caravan at a site in Oxford that had mains power. I think I made the commando style plug to standard mains plug & I held the two prongs of the mains plug in my left hand while the commando style plug was connected. I felt the shock & somehow got away, but even now, very many years later where the two plug leads touched my hand there are two white marks. It was one of those so stupid things that seems to require the intellectual stupidity of a politician, but I did it & it left me highly respectful of electricity. Thank you for sharing your experience & all the other super helpful stuff you contribute.
7-8 years old, on holiday in Switzerland, I slid my hand along the power cable of an abat-jour trying to find the switch on it. The textile braided cable sheeting and the underlying cable were nicked and had a bit of exposed copper which promptly threw me back on the ground. I don't think I i passed out, but I have much more respect for working on electrical systems (which I only do as a hobby) as a result.
I was working on a Power supply trying to diagnose an issue with my multi-meter. I pressed my fingers onto the heatsink so that I could probe without wobbling all over the place. The heatsink was at mains voltage and through my fingers up my arm down through my body and out my legs. just a few milliseconds I'm sure but it felt like ages! It made me sit there and think for a long while.
I'm not sure which was worst out of the following two:
Many moons ago I used to repair old style CRT TVs. This sometimes required adjustment of the scanning yokes which required the TV to be live & displaying a test picture, the standard approach was to watch the screen via a mirror and tweak whilst avoiding both the often live chassis and the connections to the back of the tube, one day I learned the hard way that whatever you are doing - always look at your hands when moving them anywhere near live connections. The searing pain still haunts me ~30 years later!
The other one involved a high power multi stage switch mode power supply that I was testing/fault finding. I have little recollection of events leading up to the shock beyond knowing that I had traced the fault to an intermediate stage running at ~6kV DC with a 25kHz 3kV oscillation superimposed on it... On coming round, my whole body ached & for quite a few hours everything tasted metallic.
An honourable mention also goes to my first ever shock probably aged 6 or 7 - whilst unplugging our vacuum cleaner from the outlet my fingers closed around the plug and contacted the unshrouded pins that were quite common in those days!
Not my worst but my first electric shock was when I was a young kid. I pulled apart a 3 pin mains cable connector that my dad had fitted to a table lamp to extend the flex, only to realise that he'd wired the protruding pins to the live side not the lamp side. Yes, I touched them and yes, I learned that my dad wasn't that good at electrics! It didn't put me off though, as I went on to work for Radio Rentals. I think getting that shock so early on taught me to respect electricity, as I'm still here! (Those old connectors are thankfully banned now).
My worst shock was entirely my own fault (with hindsight) but indirectly caused by a safety feature of the thing that shocked me. It was a light fitting over a bathroom mirror, designed to take one of those long incandescent lamps with a terminal at each end. The old one had stopped working but when I took it out I couldn't see that the filament was broken, so I thought it was possible something else had caused it to stop working, such as a faulty switch. So, in order to test the new bulb, I fitted it without replacing the plastic cover (having first isolated it). When I powered it up it wasn't working, so I assumed I was right about the fault being somewhere else. After removing and replacing the bulb a couple of times in case it wasn't seated properly, remembering to isolate it but still without the cover, it still didn't work, so then I removed the plastic covers from the terminals of the light fitting in order to check that there was power to these. At some point I forgot to turn off the mains supply and inadvertently touched both terminals, one with each hand, and got a shock right across the body which was, well, extremely shocking but fortunately no serious damage. I eventually figured out why it wasn't working: the plastic lamp cover had a brass tab at each end, which when fitted went through a slot on the plastic terminal covers and bridged a small gap between the terminals of the fitting and the end caps on the lamp (somehow I hadn't noticed this when I was messing about with it). This was evidently a safety feature so that the end caps could not be touched while live, but meant the lamp would not work without the cover fitted. Moral of the story: safety features can be unintentionally defeated by people trying to be too clever.
Or, more likely. too clever "safety features can be unintentionally defeated by people trying to be too clever."
The most insidious and sneaky failure of a safety measure is the one you believe was protecting you
@@jagmarc Those are the ones that have gotten me! I now apply to electricity a similar rule to one a carpenter taught me about cabinetry, measure twice, cut once! I double check before I touch.
@@RoySATX yes not just double check, but check the check itself is valid
Worst one was in the basement of a shop just after it closed for a half day. There were two 240V metal clad distribution boards, one for power circuits, the other for lighting circuits, each supplied by its own separate isolator. I had isolated the power board using its isolator to connect a pair of pyro's (new ring main). I'd checked it was completely dead after isolating it. I needed the lights on to see in the dark basement so the lighting board was still powered on. I was trying to feeding the sleeved wires through the tangle of existing wiring going to the fuses, they were not going through, so I poked a finger through the mess of wires to help guide them through... Zap!!!! After a huge amount of pain, I was thrown back and hit a wall behind me. I apparently let out a string of expletives as I sat on the ground. Investigations found the live and neutral for the lighting board went through the power distribution board board and some asshat had joined those cables with a pair of porcelain connector blocks. The porcelain insulating the live connection had broken away and fallen into the bottom of the distribution board and I had made contact with the live brass connector... The most embarrassing thing was the manageress and one of her staff were 'cashing up' above where I was working and my boss came down and told me I'd never make an electrician as long as I had a hole in my arse, he made me go up and apologise to the ladies for swearing. The ladies were more than amused and could not stop laughing, which made it worse (at the time) I had an egg size bump on the back of my head and a sore finger for quite while, but my pride was more damaged LOL
One of my worst shocks was as a teenager when I decided to touch the contacts of a camera flash capacitor that I had just fully charged, with both hands.
Another bad shock was when I was tuning a vacuum tube tesla coil. I had my variac controlling a microwave oven transformer and one side of the transformer output was to a variable capacitor. I had one hand on the variac and the other hand I was tuning the cap, however the makeshift knob I was using to tune the cap had a bit of metal that I had failed to cover and I got a really bad shock. Thankfully with my other hand I could quickly drop the voltage from the variac and the knob on the top of the variac is made from plastic so it didn't go across my chest, but it still burned the end of my finger.
In all seriousness, just a note. The video thumbnail reminds me of the Bluto figure you have on your bigclivelive background shelfes :D It's good to see you out and about working. Working with what you love!
I am pretty sure you already know this but you are awesome! All around awesome person. Thank you for the videos, the education, the laughs, and everything in between!
I was working in and industrial setting in the maintenance department. One of the machines had a huge electric clutch powered by 24V DC something in the 50W class. It looked like the clutch had failed, so I tested it by applying direct power to the wires. I thought: 24V, nothing bad can happen. This was the moment when I felt how ignition coils work... But way way more energy stored in those coils. The clamping was done in the disconnected parts, so maximum fun...
Done the same thing with the stator of an washing machine motor while trying to build a generator.