Last night I finished reinstalling the power supply in its new half-rack home. The power entry is fused at 20A, the big Variac is connected, the wires safely routed around the HV supply; still, there is only one power receptacle that the regulator and whatever auxiliary items must share. It was just too inconvenient to somehow plug the regulator into an internal receptacle so near the HV poles of the supply. I'm going to make a sign reading something like, "Do not unplug this cord until supply has been powered down for 60 minutes."
I switched on the affair with my big toe, my fingers firmly inserted in my ears. No bang, boom, or fizz. I cranked up the Variac to 1000V, as shown on the input voltage meter. It looked perfect and I switched it off with my right index finger. I often get to talk to real engineers (after all, I'm related to several) and the question that keeps coming up in my imaginary conversations (since real engineers don't have these kind of conversations) is, "Why did you spend so much money on cosmetic bling?" And...I've got nothing. Still, it doesn't mean we hobbyists have to pay top dollar for that huge Variac knob or half-height rack. eBay has brought some great things my way -- some good, some bad, all cheap. OTOH, I've had custom self-centering steel washers literally made one-off. It feels arbitrary, but so far it's looking pretty good.
I just ordered several blanking panels for my project that will cover up most of the exposed openings on my power supply rack. It's pretty important to have a huge, grounded panel between my fingers and this power supply, so the order of the day was "effective, yet as cheap as possible, without having to dig through surplus." Ding! eBay. |
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Welcome to the ESKB. Please check out my projects' tabs above. Right now the laser project is the most fully developed. Archives
September 2017
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