[AT] Discharge Chains

Sat Apr 2 13:37:06 PDT 2016

Physics class in Middle School.  We charged a box of electrolytic caps 
and left them in the closet.

The poor teacher was an ex Petroleum engineer.  He was injured on an oil 
rig accident. He retired to teach.  He was really a good teacher.
He found one of those charged caps while giving a lecture about capacitors.
He almost broke his neck when it hit him Fell off the stage.

He did not see the humor. :-{

 From then on those caps were stored with a shunt across the contacts.

On 4/1/2016 4:42 PM, Richard Fink Sr wrote:
> Did you ever change a condenser then load it and just lay it down some
> where. Surprise
> R Fink Sr
> PA
>
> On 4/1/2016 4:30 PM, tmehrkam at sbcglobal.net wrote:
>> I always liked to connect a chain or wire to a spark plug wire and wait for someone to come over and lean against the Truck.
>> :-}
>> Do this at your own risk. Some folks will take exception to this.
>>
>>         From: Indiana Robinson <robinson46176 at gmail.com>
>>    To: Antique tractor email discussion group <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
>>    Sent: Friday, April 1, 2016 3:11 PM
>>    Subject: Re: [AT] Discharge Chains
>>      
>> 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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>>>
>>
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