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Engineering
Electrical Engineering
What's in an electronics hobbyist's toolbox?
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[QUOTE="UsableThought, post: 5693227, member: 611113"] Since possible shock via mains AC has been mentioned, I'd make a further recommendation for anyone regularly working on devices that require mains AC. In my case, it's guitar amplifiers, but it could be any audio or household appliance. The recommendation is this: 1) Assuming you have a bench with a line of outlets running above it, replace the outlet closest to the circuit breaker with a GFCI outlet; wire it up so that the outlets further outboard are a load on that GFCI outlet, thus all outlets are protected. Be prepared to test regularly since eventually these can get tired, just like a breaker can get tired. 2) If you travel to work on mains AC appliances, consider getting (a) a portable GFCI outlet, and (b) whatever you consider adequate for testing for incorrectly wired outlets - you want to be able to rule out no ground, bootlegged, or reverse-bootlegged, etc. I'm tired at the moment otherwise I'd look up all the conditions. To really test them all you need a pretty expensive tool that I am blanking on at the moment, but you can test most of the conditions with a simple neon proximity voltage tester - one of those pen-like devices - if you know how. I carry one in my toolbox along with instructions on how to use it for such purposes. People may not like GFCI since you can occasionally have a false trip; but it is far safer than relying on a 15A or 20A breaker to kill AC before you can get badly hurt. Of course it can't help with other issues, e.g. if you are working with high voltage DC and decide to interpose some part of your body into the circuit; but still worth it. Lots of appliances, amplifiers, etc., are built such that bare AC terminals inside the box are quite near things you might want to be working on. There are work procedures to make this less unsafe, but it's still nice to have a backup safety measure. [/QUOTE]
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What's in an electronics hobbyist's toolbox?
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