[AT] Discharge Chains

[Indiana Robinson]

Check the grounds.
Check the grounds.
Check the grounds.
:-)
Those were ground straps made of conductive rubber, some had fine wire in
them and I think some just had a lot of conductive carbon in the rubber.
Many that you bought at a parts store or the old J. C. Whitney catalog had
a lightning bolt painted on one face of them. They started putting them on
cars around 1950 or as little ealier when they were switching from cloth
seats to plastic seat covers. Those dang things could really nail you when
your feet touched the ground or you reached over and touched another person
who had just slid into the car.
I don't really recall the trucks here ever dragging chains or a strap... I
do recall always grounding a tractor when doing flat belt work usually with
a steel bar or sometimes a chain. I did normally drag a chain from the rear
axle of my SP combines for two reasons. One was for a ground to keep the
windshield cleaner and the other was when dragging about a 6' piece of well
secured fairly heavy chain when running corn in wet weather it saved
crawling under a combine in the freshly churned mud to hook a chain or tow
strap to the axle to tow it out backward if you get stuck.
As far as lightning goes the best explanation I ever read was by a weather
scientist (I can't spell meterihffjikist right now) who said that a bolt of
lightning may well have traveled over 20 miles across the sky... It is
silly to think it is now going to stop for 4 inches of rubber.  :-)
As to metal skins or wire cages you can Google Faraday Cage Effect.
In wood working we often use plastic pipe on dust collectors and it is bad
about building static. You can ground it either by running a bare wire
inside or outside and to a ground. You don't need a wire for metal pipe as
long as a ground connection is maintained at one end or the other. That
mostly applies to commercial woodshops and sawmills etc. In a home shop you
just don't want the plastic to be zapping you all of the time.
In commercial shops there can be risk of fire or dust explosion from static
sparks. In spite of a lot of wild stories floating around on the web I have
read that there is no statistical record of a home shop explosion or fire
in a dust collection system unless there were flammable solvents being
used. Still better safe than sorry I guess. As they say "It couldn't hurt
anything".  :-)


.

On Fri, Apr 1, 2016 at 7:58 AM, Henry Miller <hank at millerfarm.com> wrote:

> Won't male any difference to lightning. Remember, lightning has already
> traveled a mile or more through the air, nothing you can do in a few feet
> will stop it. All you can do is provide a better path than you to ground.
> Metal car bodies are ideal as the lightning can travel around you and then
> jump the last few inches to the ground.
>
> I don't put much faith in tires as a discharge path for static buildup. It
> probably doesn't matter much while the truck is moving though. Static
> electricity is on the outside and anything flammable is inside. It is only
> when loading or unloading that you need to worry, as that is when the
> contents are on the outside for a moment. So connect the ground wire.
>
>
> On March 31, 2016 11:33:43 PM CDT, Ralph Goff <alfg at sasktel.net> wrote:
> >On 3/31/2016 10:51 AM, Ray Trimble wrote:
> >> Growing up in Northern Louisiana in the early 50's I would see trucks
> >dragging a chain with sparks flying, Dad said that this was to keep a
> >static charge from building up. What has been done to eliminate the
> >need for these?
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> AT mailing list
> >> http://www.antique-tractor.com/mailman/listinfo/at
> >>
> >Probably something to do with preventing static electricity build up.
> >I've tried it with the combine when harvesting. The theory being that
> >the straw passing through the moving parts of the combine builds up
> >static electricity and it causes dust to stick to the machine and
> >windows. I can't say for sure if it helps all that much.
> >Not sure if it would be such a good thing during a lightning storm.
> >
> >Ralph in Sask.
> >_______________________________________________
> >AT mailing list
> >http://www.antique-tractor.com/mailman/listinfo/at
>
> --
> Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
> _______________________________________________
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>



-- 
-- 

Francis Robinson
aka "farmer"
Central Indiana USA
robinson46176 at gmail.com