RE: Safety training..

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

Original poster: "Michael Brooks" <mbrooks-at-perrytech.edu> 

I don't know how much safety training goes on at your particular place
of work but we have meetings every Tuesday morning with the entire
electrical department.  Horror stories are exchanged as well as some
rather graphic films and pictures.
Another favorite of mine personally is to download a particularly
grotesque aftermath illustration of people who have tangled with
electricity and mount them on the various labs and equipment we have
around the shop.
Some students are a bit disturbed by some of the more sickening sites
they see but I believe that is the general Idea.
I agree that some of the younger people (18-25 year olds are the ones I
generally deal with) are less prone to safety than those who have
experienced it first hand.  Unfortunately I think it almost has to be a
close call for people to develop a true respect for electrical power no
matter what level you are dealing with.
My catch phrase of late is to state to my new students:
"Electricity has three functions; it will educate you, it will retire
you, or it will kill you.  It has no other function and doesn't care
which order it takes"
Anyway just a thought I would share
MB

Michael Brooks
Instructor
Perry Technical Institute
mbrooks-at-perrytech.edu
509 453 0374 xtn 234


-----Original Message-----
From: Tesla list [mailto:tesla-at-pupman-dot-com]
Sent: Friday, July 30, 2004 7:10 AM
To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
Subject: Safety training..

Original poster: "Jim Lux" <jimlux-at-earthlink-dot-net>

An interesting issue has come up at work, and I think the folks on this
list
will have valuable insights.  You can send them to me off list if you
like,
but they might be interesting to the whole list.

Here's the deal..

At work (Jet Propulsion Lab), we work with a variety of high power RF
sources (usually microwave, but also HF). We've got a whole herd of
young,
bright engineers working on things like this that have never had HV
experience.  Unlike myself and my contemporaries (and, probably, most of
the
people on this list), they have not had that "fundamental life changing
experience" of getting shocked as a youth, and as a result, do not (in
my
opinion) have adequate respect for the "get close and it will reach out
and
kill you" nature of these things.

One older engineer commented that when he started working at a large
company, one of the senior engineers had taken him down into the lab
where
they were doing high power modulators and showed him these two foot
marks
burned into the tile floor.  They were from someone who had reached into
a
piece of equipment that he had thought was safe, but wasn't.

My group supervisor had an experience as a 10 year old plugging zip cord
into the wall socket to measure the voltage on a panel meter he was
holding
in his hand (in 220V land!).

A good friend of mine who knew nothing about electronics had a life
changing
experience when I suggested that the 300 W tabletop plasma etcher he was
cleaning might have significant stored energy, and that he should think
about shorting the caps out before working on it. (I walked out of the
room
to my office, heard a very loud bang, and saw my friend holding a
screwdriver with an amazingly large chunk knocked out if it, and very,
very
wide eyes.  Quote: "And I had my hand in there before you came in the
room!")

I had more zaps that I care to remember as a kid standing in bare feet
in
the garage working on low voltage power supplies, but being careless
about
the 110V wiring.  To this day, I don't even reach into TTL circuitry
with
both hands.


All of us 40 and olders have similar experiences... the 30 and unders do
not.  They haven't had that "oh my gosh, I could have died" experience.

So... here's the's question. How can we come up with some sort of
suitably
visceral training.  When I started working with really HV (50 kV+), an
old
guy (always a good sign in HV workers) suggested that I get a big Van
deGraaff and fool with it.  No kidding... you get within a meter and the
hair literally stands up on your arm and you get zapped a couple times
when
you don't expect it..  Less than a joule, but it stings, and you
remember
it.

At work, it's even more insidious, because we're working with high power
microwaves (although the 1kV, 10 Amp supply for the HF amplifier gives
me
the willies, but unfortunately, it doesn't do the same for the young
engineer working with it) which you can't see, or feel, until it's too
late
(no evil hiss of corona, etc.).  That whole, oops the waveguide flange
wasn't tightened, etc. kind of thing. (or the, don't look into the open
waveguide with your remaining good eye, thing).

What I'm looking for is good ways to give people that "if I'm not
careful,
I, or someone else, will die" feeling.