Why YOU Need to Discharge Cap's

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Steve Mach by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <gossamer-at-cox-dot-net>

All, Below is the post I put up on Bert Hickman's message board(and his
response) it isn't strictly TC related but I feel it has relevance to the
thread on shorting cap's.
SM  (Terry use your judgement on this one)
 

Hello Bert,All,
A SAFETY reminder from"subaru shrinik'n Steve"
While repairing a warning strobe light the other day,I mistakenly used a
100k resistor to discharge cap's(appx.150uF/450vdc)instead of 1k.Both
resistors were physically IDENTICAL.
Probably got 200v or so.It still hurts and
I've been doing this for 35 years.
Remember to double check things.
SM 

Hi Steve, 

Glad to hear you are OK! Charged capacitors can really be deadly! I've take
many a jolt from smaller ones, but fortunately, no hits from any really
large energy caps. The shrinker uses a batch of series connected 225 watt
power resistors as bleeders. The bleeder resistors are disconnected when
charging the bank, but are otherwise always connected across the bank. Any
current flowing through the bleeder resistors is sensed to generate an
audio and visual warning that there's still a charge on the caps. The
system works very well (at least thus far...) :^) 

Play safely and best regards! 

-- Bert --