Sorry man, I tried to get everyone in the top comments, the video ended up collecting hundreds. I'll pin this one instead. REALLY appreciate the feedback.
And you explained it very well. Took a few of us to break through the comment clutter. Please accept a large share of the credit and thanks for helping clear up the misinformation.
Not being funny but I'm sure you got some form of credit and thanks, but you seem bummed that it wasn't pinned and made clear to everybody. Doesn't really say much good about your character if you can't offer help and advice without expectation.
The leakage current through the Y capacitor will always be safe from an electrocution point of view as long as the value is within the recommendations. The risk in many cases is the reaction of a person to receiving a shock, which then leads to a physical injury. Dropping something, hitting your head, falling off a ladder etc.
Ah 2018, the year where you have to tell people that cutting the ground pin on a power supply can be dangerous, and not to eat laundry detergent. Glorious.
Eating the tide pods is really no different than any of the other "challenges", people were doing the cinnamon challenge like 10 years ago, causing people to breathe cinnamon into their lungs and have serious issues as well. Humans have done dumb shit for thousands of years, for various reasons, boredom, fun, just plain stupidity, etc.
I realize people have been doing dumb things since forever, and youtube is a veritable catalog of evidence for it. The whole "choke yourself almost to death for sexual pleasure" is another great example. Devil's advocate though, the cinnamon challenge is eating something which is ostensibly a food. In that regard at least, I'd consider it less dumb than eating a cleaning product.
Almost 3 decades ago, when a client built a new building on their property, we went to add another RS-232 terminal, and the terminal immediately fried upon turning it on, and the com controller in the mainframe at the main building caught on fire. It was a costly mishap. But I picked up one of those plug testers, and walked around both the main building and the new satellite building and every single plug in the new building was shown to be wired incorrectly. But where the actual error was, was at the d-panel where the high voltage mains came in. it was wired wrong, and considering they had several bits of equipment with metal chassis already connected, it was a miracle that no one had been electrocuted! Since then I always brought that little tester to new clients and used it before plugging anything in.
Early on I bought a similar mains tester unit that also tested/triggered the switch fuses. This has been invaluable over they years whereever I moved and its great for quickly mapping out the wiring loops in a location. Knowing which fuse each powerpoint is connected to helps you plan what equipment you can plug in and where problems may arise. If you've ever encountered a blackout in just part of your home thats likely due to overloading one wiring loop.You can't just plug everything in existence into one socket, some wire loops were installed with different wattage ratings for lower expected usage. Its well worth testing to stay safe and make sure all your equipment stays running well into the future.
Ground faults can be nasty. But it's true that the bypass filter capacitor won't pass enough current to kill. Another problem that can arise from no ground is interference. As a ham radio op, I can attest to that. Something with switching power supplies and stepper drivers would give out tremendous RF noise if it didn't have a good ground. Older houses especially should have all of the outlets tested for proper ground. At least here in the U.S., it's not surprising to find an old house where the outlets have been replaced with three prong outlets, yet inside there is only two wires and no proper ground connected.
As a home owner, you can replace outlets and switches by yourself. The problem is when the owner has no idea what they are doing. Very few people purposefully wire a house wrong to spite the law.
Here in Australia they're extremely strict about electrical work & licensing, with harsh penalties for dangerous practices like that! You're not even supposed to change an electrical-plug without a license, but in practice they turn a blind-eye if you know what you're doing & it's just basic stuff (& not charging for it)!
Good summary. Engineers often call those bypass capacitors because they bleed off unwanted noise and high frequency energy. Those thinking there's still a problem just don't understand electrical engineering and grounding. Safety grounding is there for a reason, and it is important. I would go one step further and measure the current to ground, the voltage is not what creates a danger in a shock, the current is actually the danger. Static electric shocks are very high voltage, but not dangerous because the current is brief and tiny. It takes only a few milliamps to create a dangerous shock that can cause heart issues. But bypass capacitors are small and at line frequency they have very large reactance, so the line current that flows is very small and not dangerous. On with printing!
We know what the current is (roughly). Since the DVM's input is probably 10M, 90v makes 9uA. If you're curious the reactance of the Y is 1/(2 x pi x F x C)
Da Hai Zhu except with his influence he should have never made the first video without knowing what he was talking about. He could have had an impact on the JG Aurora sales just from making that video when they did nothing wrong.
Actually, I ordered a JG Aurora A5 from Gearbest even after watching the review video despite knowing he also got that shock. Mind you I am an electronics engineer and suspected what Angus felt was just leakage through the PSU Y capacitor.
Exactly, you know what you are talking about. Angus is given a trust to fully and honestly provide information that is based on full investigation into a product they provide. He did not do that.
When I got my Flsun i3 clone, it came with a power cord without any ground pin. I took an old PC power cable, cut the end of it and installed that instead. I don't know why these are shipped like that. Pretty dangerous stuff.
Great video! I sincerely hope none of these companies would remotely blame you for the misunderstanding. Don't be afraid to ask the Electrical Engineering community, we 3D print too.
I'm not sure if you're serious, but if so - can you explain why? (Where I live, the gound is "built into" the plug, at the outside as a flat connector, so no extra pin. So I have no idea if or why the third pin would be annoying?)
Christoph Alexander so where I am we can have three or two prong outlets and plugs. Three is newer and the third prong is a ground. So if I have a three prong plug and a two prong outlet I was taught just remove the third prong so it will go into the outlet. Now since I moved all my outlets here are three prong so it makes no difference.
zapro_dk in the case of 3D printers and various other technology, removing ground can be quite dangerous. Nobody says, “do you know what would be cool? If we added a third prong for no reason!” Not everything needs ground but a lot of heavier duty machines use it for safety purposes.
Hey Kevin Loughin, an advantage I see with US outlets is 110-120vac and not 220-240vac. There have been time I wished for 220, because some items designed for a workshop are powered by 220, but 110-120 is less likely to be fatal, unless you get the full voltage and current. Also I do not know much about 220-240 in Australia however 220-240 lines in the US are available from the same electrical box as 110-120 volt lines. Here in the states the neutral is just that. There are two "legs" to our AC power. One leg is high while the other is low, with the neutral being half way between the high and low voltage (this alternates between legs). Measuring from the neutral conductor both legs appear to be 110-120 volts, however from measuring from one leg to the other the voltage measured is 220-240 volts. Our AC power is 60 cycles per second (or 60hz). In other parts of the world voltages are 110, 120, 220 or 240 and cycles are 50hz or 60hz, our breakers/fuses allow 15, 20 or 30 amps at 110-120 and I have seen up to 60 amp for 220-240. I am sure there are other amperage breakers but that is the basics. Now the ground is the tricky thing some older houses did NOT have one. When I was a kid I visited the neighbors house a lot. Old man Forney was interesting, he had old coins I had never seen, pictures of Roosevelt's funeral showing horse draw funeral procession and many other things, he loved showing us kids that stuff. Anyway, we went to his basement a few times, that's when I discovered how weird old wiring was. In his house on the basement ceiling was the wiring system exposed for all to see... Two single conductor wires run in parallel trough holes in the rafters all the wires were covered in braided clothe coverings. One dark one light colored, they may have been black and white at one time, but were almost the same color. NO junction boxes! Outlets on the same circuit were tapped in by running two wires again three inches apart perpendicular to the original wires. No ground wire. Newer houses use three or more conductors in a single cable covered in a plastic/vinyl covering, some are armored some still have an outer covering of braided clothe around all the vinyl/plastic coverings. Inside the breaker box, the neutral and ground are connected to the same buss bar. So what differentiates the neutral from the ground i US wiring? The neutral is usually heavier and carries a load, it is as heavy as the "hot" wire. half of the hot wire in a house are connected two one leg, the other half connect to the second leg. Any appliance that needs 220-240, like a stove or clothes drier connects to both legs. 110-120 outlets have three conductors, 220-240 have 4 conductors. Occasionally some 110-120 circuits use four conductors for switching where more than one switch controls the same appliance (mostly lighting).
Hi Angus! Are you actually confirming that your string of cables you had cobbled together had a missing or bad ground connection? I wish you had replicated the cable arrangement and then plugged the tester into the end where the printers were powered to show the fault in the cable. It's not 100% clear from the video that this was the fault of the string of cables. I only infer that's where the fault lies from the context of the video.
I agree, you showed the tester, then the two printers, but never showed testing the daisy chain of faulty power extensions using the tester. So you let us infer the final conclusion. You missed it.
That's putting it more bluntly that I would say it. Angus does a great job with his videos, so this is not a really major deal. I was just getting clarification.
speaking as someone who wires houses sometimes, ground should never be saturated unless it is for intended use of dumping waste power from things outside of the power circuit. Machines are generally designed to not electrify themselves when grounding is unavailable.
We have got 240 Volts in Europe as well. I had some issues with an elevated ground causing noise and I was thinking to disconnect the ground for half a second before slapping myself in the face. Never ever get rid of safety precautions!
5:18 Would be a good idea to use the Fault Detector at the end of any extensions you may use to power your printers. Extension cables can become defective and could disconnect their ground line which would give the same results as when you got shocked.
I had close to the similar situation. When I was over in India on a business trip, I encountered a shock while touching my computer laptop case and touch the anti-static mat on the work bench. Couple things were going on with my situation. The manufacture of the laptop’s power supply has a filter capacitor connected to the AC neutral and the power supplies DC side of the laptop’s connector. Which in USA, that’s not a problem, but in India, the HOT and NEUTRAL are reversed. That caused the laptop case ground to be floating around 90 VAC above their earth ground on the work bench.
Also helps to have a bit of knowledge about basic electrical-systems! Most people don't even know why there is an earth-pin connection & how it keeps you safe even though the earth-socket is literally connected to the neutral wires in your building! My ex-wife's parents occasionally received a shock from their kettle so I tested the GPO (power-outlet) with my plug-in tester & discovered that when their house was built 25yrs beforehand, the sloppy electrician had connected the active & neutral wire the wrong way around despite the colour-coding! More dangerous was the twin-tub washing-machine (anyone remember those?) my parents bought when I was a child that almost electrocuted my mum (more current involved) because it had been wired up incorrectly at the factory!
for people from uk i would check the cheap mains-lead that comes with the printer. alot of them have insulation on the earth pin which stops it from making contact in the socket therefore it is not grounded
Hmm. Angus why didn’t you plug in the outlet tester into the power strip? Your video ( unless I missed it ) didn’t mention that the extension strip was not grounded.
The powerstrip setup that cause the problems was discarded so I recreated the issue using the IEC cable. If I had plugged the tester into the old strip however it would have shown red for fault, for sure.
Maker's Muse I think that’s my point - using that tester for the extension leads would have warned you if the Earth was faulty. Great explanation but you could have explained how that device can also check that the extension cables are safe. Some people might not make that connection as it were.
Keep in mind that not all sinks are grounded. Full PVC Pipes have that effect. Not all PSUs have a capacitor from live to earth ground. You will find that most all switching PSUs have a capacitor from live to neutral though and if this is the only capacitor, you wont see any voltage from an unearthed pin. Switching PSUs that are very well designed will not show voltage on an un-earthed pin. Also, in many places in the US (I cannot speak for other countries at all), ground and neutral are wired together at the breaker box, so you will never see this behavior from any switching PSU. You might even say that in many houses (USA) the ground pin is completely redundant.
So normally the frame is isolated from ground, but since there is a capacitor to ground that will pull the frame to line voltage when the ground is disconnected. Odd
This capacitor dumps noise generated by the PSU into ground, a quite common praxis. Unfortunately, with this extension cord there is no ground to dump it into.
Yeah, he really fails to answer this question. As if the ground wire just magically disappeared from his power board ... Still unclear to me what he did. Also unclear how he reproduced the issue.
So if you watch the previous video he discusses how he daisy chained a bunch of power strips and one of them or its adapter apparently had a faulty ground causing the whole setup to be ungrounded. He reproduced the issue just by using a cable without a ground for the power supply. I didn't feel it was all that unclear.
Thanks for the good info! Its worth checking every outlet/circuit in your home with an outlet tester and a chicken stick. They're cheap and replaceable, people aren't. When I did satellite occasionally I'd forget to hit an outlet with the tester and I've blown up a few tvs and let all the magic smoke out of a dozen set top boxes over the years. At one point it was standard operating procedure to snap the ground pin off my satellite equipment BECAUSE the ground was bad so frequently in rental units.
You get a similar tingle off the Y cap in metal Mcbooks. Solution is to plugf in a USB item like a printer which has a plug with an Earth pin. you will only get a tingle, not a proper bolt.
What we can tell from this video, is that Angus has metal plumbing. In newer houses in the US, they have been switching to "Plex" plumbing, which is all plastic, so there wouldn't be a ground connection. Things we can't tell, does the plumbing ground to the same spot as the electrical?
The sink isn't grounded by just the water pipes, it'll have its own ground strap, even if that goes to nearby copper pipes, which in turn are properly grounded, for the very reason that you can't trust the fittings to have proper continuity.
I've lived in older flats with ungrounded plugs only. I still have a lot of ungrounded plugs. I think it is very rare to feel the voltage leak from Y-capasitors from single device unless you are well grounded yourself, like leaning to a sink. You can measure it though as demonstrated. A yet better measurement would be current instead of voltage. Of course, if you have a lot of extension cords that parallel all the ground pins, you get the total leakage combined from all devices when the cord end has no ground. Parallel enough leakage sources and at some point you start to feel it for sure. That makes me think if ungrounded cords would be actually better when you have ungrounded plugs only.
Just a reminder. AC Current CAN kill you at nearly any voltage IF it goes through the nodes of your heart. To do that it must pass from one hand through your chest to the other hand. I never use both hands even with gloves to cross wire things. It's a nasty trip to the MORGUE waiting to happen! ;) Thanks Angus... Great Vid!
Thank you for making this video clearing up what happened. Actually is it not /one/ capacitor, but two. Across Live and Neutral you have one capacitor called the X-capacitor. It is not the reason for the mains voltage/2 voltage on the chassis. It's the two Y-capacitors, one from live to earth and one from neutral to earth. They will form a capacitive divider and give you approx. mains voltage/2 on the case. It's perfectly normal and NOT DANGEROUS - I live in Denmark and we don't have earthing in many places, and it's NOT DANGEROUS because we have GFCI's turning off the current if you get a "proper" shock, not the small "tingle" that is on un-earthed equipment. Here we take no notice of the voltage since we're used to it being "normal" and safe. If the user feels it's annoying, he can have earthing installed in his home.
I started to panic with your first film as I have a MK3 on order and a weak heart! Mrs McBeardface would not have been a happy bunny if my new hobby killed me! Like in Aus we are 240v here in the UK. Great informative film. Glad you got to the bottom of it all 👍👍
Thanks for the update! Still think that the A5 case should be grounded properly too as it is conductive. Also the PSU completely enclosed with nearly NO ventilation holes isn't that good. The PSU fan will have a hard time to try cooling this PSU correctly and could generate other issues.
it's not the voltage that hurts you but the amount of power thats flowing (messured in ampere). you even can experience a really high amount of voltage without getting hurt by simply putting on a piece of synthetic clothing. you can even see some tiny lightenings doing that when you turn off the light...
Is this the same reason why my MacBook gives me a tingle feeling from the trackpad when plugging the charger directly to the outlet, not using the longer cable which has ground as well?
Kind of, Yes. The low voltage side of a power brick often is connected to the mains voltage side with a filter capacitor too. However, it is often connected just to one side of the mains supply. If you flip your mains plug (if possible in your country) the tingle might go.
Didn't have my fluke with me to check, but my aluminum body laptop gave me quite the tingle when I was in ireland and using a non-grounded adapter to get my 'murican plug to fit their sockets. Changed the adapter to one with a ground pin and all was fine. It wasn't harmful to the electronics but you should def. be using the cable with ground at all times.
I hate to add additional information, but if you take a look at MIL-HDBK-2036 appendix B, you can approximate the human body as a 1500 ohm resistor in parallel with a 0.15µF capacitor. One end of that curcuit will be connected to earth ground and the other end will be connected to various points on the unit. The leakage current is determined by the voltage across the 1500 ohm resistor. In the military world I live in, the leakage current limit is 3.5 milliamps. As I recall, the threshold of pain is ~8 milliamps. Check out www.mddionline.com/leakage-current-standards-simplified for more information. I have not personally checked out that site, but it seems to have a lot of leakage current information.
Note for ppl: the sink only works if you have metal pipes, if you have PVC, it won't be properly grounded... you can still use it as a ground reference, but may have slightly off readings
You had floating ground. That isn't "extremely dangerous". Cleaning exposed high voltage cables with a wet towel is "extremely dangerous". If you try sinking (sic) some current I'd doubt you'll get much current going though it. Likely nowhere near anything dangerous. I'm not saying you should run your 3d printer ungrounded. I'm just saying this isn't "EXTREMELY DANGEROUS!".
That's what I was thinking... If my math is correct... and this is not even assuming skin resistance, but the reactence of a standard 10pf y-type capacitor at 50hz should equal a 318Mohm resistance. That would mean 0.75uA of current at 240 volts.... Impedance of a 10pf capacitor at 50hz: 1/(10 x 10(-12) x 50 x 2 x 3.14) = 318309886ohms Current flow at without any skin resistance: I = V/R so 240/318309886 = 0.75uA
If there is a fault condition that puts live on the frame, a functioning ground would cause the fuse/breaker to trip immediately, but if there isn’t a ground, the moment you touch the frame the GFCI would trip. It’s not *good* but it’s not life-threatening - over here in .nl, houses that were last rewired before 1980 or so have grounded sockets only in wet rooms (kitchens, bathrooms) and ungrounded elsewhere. The idea was that only equipment that had some degree of weatherproofing so it could be used in wet rooms would have a grounded plug, and all the normal stuff (like... basically only lamps) wouldn’t fit in a grounded socket. Fitting 30 mA or less GFCIs on the whole house is a strong recommend though.
The voltage isn't deadly, current is. 250mA is enough to kill you at any voltage. The chance of having 250mA is just higher above 24V (then the resistance of your body becomes obsolete) and certainly when dealing with high voltage (current breakdown). A floating ground isn't dangerous indeed, but messing with the ground definetely is. Angus is pointing out that messing with your ground might be extremely dangerous. A common guy doens't know when he's dealing with a floating ground or with a really dangerous situation. His warning is legit to me.
Just one point @Maker's Muse, Australia on 240V isn't higher than standard, the US, Canada and Japan being on 110, 110 and 100V respectively is unusual. Most other places use 220-240V at the mains.
Just a heads up: Those fault detectors aren't totally foolproof. You could have swapped Neutral and Earth connections and the fault detector wouldn't be able to detect it as Neutral and ground are at the same potential.
I had this on my ender 3, the power cable they gave with it did not have an earthing plug. The chassis was at 240V when turned off 110v when turned on. The adapter did have a grounding plug just the cable did not
You must lead a charmed life. Most of my sockets are ungrounded, so yeah, I get tingles off everything. A MacBook case while the charger is on, for instance. And certainly a 3D printer power supply. It’s just a fact of life here.
No ground in our flat (and probably in our whole house too). So what (to do)? Which parts of a 3d printer are the ground? So is it possible to short-circuit by touching different parts of a 3d printer? I can short-circuit only by touching the radiator in my room (only in a certain place where the paint was removed) and the printer. I don't think it's dangerous (need to do it on a purpose only).
My sink hadn't been grounded. My wife and I kept experiencing shocks when we touched the dish washer and the sink. We had a sparky come out and connect it up for us.. Make sure your sink is grounded if you ever do attempt anything like this
Also, you can do this all you want in Denmark. In fact, you most likely are. We have ground with a prong (K type sockets) but most devices are shipped witch shucko ground (ground around the side of the plug) It's safe though, because all sockets in danish buildings have to be protected by a GFI/RCD/HPFI (HPFI is the danish term) You'll feel it though, and it's super annoying.
Thanks solves my mystery I run my 3D printers in a shipping container in my backyard powered by solar & Battery and a yumcha inverter. I noticed it today when touching my new enders 7 when installing a magnetic pei build plate and cr touch. I was in bare feet and it's been raining a lot in qld so my feet were likely wet. I then touched my ender 5 same thing. Ender 3 had no leak but it powered by DC from battery bank. I assume the earth is not connected with this inverter.
I think there is something missing from this story. The presence of voltage does not mean inherent danger. What matters as well is how much charge is stored in the frame. A Van de Graaff generator creates over 100k volts, and produces a harmless shock.
germany got 230 volts. the voltage in europe varies between 220 and 240 volts. some countries got 220, some got 230 and others 240. most powersupplies work with 120-240 volts anyway though.
Brazil got 220v, but it really oscillates between 210v and 230v. I think most countries use 200ish line, since it requires less wire gauge in the transmission cables than 100ish volts.
North America 110, South America 50/50. I've destroyed a number of devices plugging them into the wrong voltages. Most modern devices can use both. Some have a manual switch, some can figure it out on their own.
Indeed. If you imagine electricity as a river flowing down a mountain, the electrons would be the water, the cable would be the riverbed (kinda incorrect, but just nicer to imagine), the voltage would be the height difference from one point to another, the current would be the amount of water flowing and the resistance would be the size and "roughness" of the riverbed. Why is riverbed as an anology for the cable kinda incorrect? - It resembles the origin of the resistance pretty well, but dosn't give an explanation why some materials conduct better then others (conductors vs. isolators) And just one more: the voltage is the height difference between two points in circuit, the potential is the voltage with respect to an arbitrarily chosen height which is called "ground" and would be the equivalent to sea level in our analogy.
voltage is the potential between 2 points in a circuit. current is the flow through a point in a circuit. the potential gives you the flow, similar to how heat moves from areas of higher energy to areas of lower. the bigger the difference in temperature between 2 points, the more heat transfer or flow of energy. higher voltage results in much higher current at a given resistance.
Glad you are okay. Angus I have quick question about the maker select v2 I can't seem to print anything besides the stock files from the sd card that came with it I've tried using the same profile from the successful prints on cura as well as going through the settings to tweak things before I start printing it out paying close attention to the temps and other settings. The prints generally do stick to the bed most of the time without much fuss but I've been having them for instance the extruder will start drawing a circle but it ill be half done or garbled looking low quality and it will try to print on and eventually drag the print around the bed. I use the profile and settings from my succeeded prints from the stock sd and that's how I was able to make my large spool holder which took 7 hours and went off without a hitch. Most of the prints I want to do are minor mods specifically made for and printed from the maker select v2 on thingiverse even when I use their specs it'll fail. I've tried taking apart the extruder and clearing out the filament and leveling the machine out multiple times trying multiple combinations of bed and extruder temps even had a buddy come help and they still fail. Can you be any help?
Im in Australia as well. I have an Anet A8, and haven't had any issues like this. But the power supply cable has a European plug with an adaptor to fit an Ozzy power socket but does not have a ground pin, but has a ground wire connected. Should i take the European plug off and change it out for a proper 3 pin aussie plug?
Woah... I have the exact same Problem with my laptop and basically everything else on that powerstrip. (100V, a few µA. I wonder why it's ~100V though, because we have 230V mains here) Thank you for pointing me to the solution! Now I can resolve this issue. Thank you very much for this video. :)
24V AC is considered as a safe voltage. All depends on how well you are grounded. in most case, you won't stand with your bare feet in a water, or with a ground cable stuck in your... whatever... you're most likely isolated somehow (with your shoes, carpet etc.) and therefore the potentials difference is lower. Trust, this could have been dangerous for you if you were grounded properly. Anything above 50mA makes irreversible damage to your body. Avarage body resistance is around 1kOhm (depending skin moisture etc.) so anything above 50V AC is seriously dangerous.
There should be no voltage from ground. The capacitor is between live and neutral. The cheap chinese LED power supplies don't even have a ground pin. You likely had bad wiring where somebody switched neutral and ground in your house. They might have a barister going to ground but that just absorbs spikes.
Ever tried the same experiment with an laptop connected to it's power supply equipped with a 2 pin mains power plug (like most MacBooks)?? !! You'll definitely get shocked by the result (literally!)
😂 I live in a house that was wired in the 1950's, nothing is grounded, everything will electrocute you. My old PC case was constantly electrified. You would get a good zap anytime your leg touched it.
if you use a decent UPS it will not power if there is no ground. so it would be good to have a UPS on your bench when testing as it will scream and will light to show a fault.
Yup, figured that was what is was. Glad you are okay and that you figured everything out (and kept Joe Prusa feom having a panic attack)! Could have been much worse. Google Fender "death cap" for a historical example.
So... the problem was that the printer wasn't grounded, but what actually caused the problem? You never actually say in the video. Did you use a 3-pin to 2-pin adapter?
Yet an other reason to wire yourself a standard ATX powersupply to your printer instead of those sketchy ones that come with them. I use a server powersupply (flexATX) that is capable of operating at its rated 500W 24/7 on my printer and it works beautifully. It even allows you to wire a power switch and usb plugs inside the printer to have an octoprint server running on a raspberry pi inside the printer. ATX is the way to go for 3D printers. Just like a computer, if the PSU dies, it can kill a lot of other components with it, so it's the one piece that you should never cheap down on.
Yes, but no matter how high quality you y capacitor is, it will transfer a tiny bit of current into ground. High quality PSUs drastically reduce the chance of "tiny bit" turning into "whatever the socket provides"
Oh so thats the explanation for why I feel a tingling sensation sometimes when I touch the non painted metal parts of my Ender 3 V2? It doesn't happen every time though, and as far as I know It should be grounded? Does this mean that the ground connection is not working properly?
If you haven't solved your issue yet I'm hunting down the same problem with my ender 5....from what I've found so far, most likely causes are poor grounding with the psu->frame bolts, other biggest one is checking for loose connections with the crimps on the power wires to the PSU terminals
That metal swagged uninsulated wire holding the chart on your power point tester scares me. There is a slight chance it could swing around when plugging the plug in and become live. If it was mine I'd replace the wire with something insulated.
If you look properly the live and neutral pins have insulated shanks which is part of our power point standard. This prevents accidental contact as the pin holes extends deeper then the uninsulated tips before the internal contacts are reached.
point taken but the earth pin isn't, which has been pointed out in the video can be live in certain circumstances. Is it likely no, but is it possible yes.
+Richard Grenfell The earth pin is longer than the line and neutral pins so will be connected first. I agree that a plastic coil would probably be my initial choice regardless.
Dave Lordy Our UK plugs, do seem to have every safety feature available...I don't think any other countries use all of them. I like the Danish sockets, they look like happy little faces :)
_"Our UK plugs, do seem to have every safety feature available"_ Yup! From the nylon sleeve - so the pins are only ever live when they are pushed in far enough that you can only contact the nylon sleeve - to the solid square pins, have you ever used any of the EU plugs, you only need to put a little bit of weight on the plug to pull it out ! To the switch on the socket . . . everything about them says "I'm going to plug this in and live to tell my children" . . . actually our plug (type G) is also used in a few places like Singapore and Malaysia (and a few others I think) . . . another clever thing I only noticed a few years back, the earth connection in the plug is designed so that if you were to yank the lead so hard that you pulled the whole cable out of the plug - almost impossible with our cable clamp at the plug input - then the various live/earth/neutral wires will get pulled out in the order live/earth/neutral ! That is to say the first wire to detach would be the live, as it's shortest, then the earth, then the neutral . . . so even more UK tax payers remain on the HMRC's books ! Genius !! _"I like the Danish sockets, they look like happy little faces :)"_ A happy face that hides death ! Lol : P
Pook365 The 240V also means cheaper cables. Lower 110V means you need waaay more current for the equivalent power which needs thicker more expensive cabling. On the other hand our plumbing standards are crap compared with some other countries 😂
Using the sink as your return path is not always true. If your waste connection is PVC and your water supply is plastic there is no current flow ie. insulation.
You 'should' be able to have the fuse board fitted with an RCD, which should protect you against this sort of thing. BTW, also noticed it on some computer case/PSU combinations.
Nailed it, kinda bummed I didn’t get credit for explaining this in the comments on the first video.
Sorry man, I tried to get everyone in the top comments, the video ended up collecting hundreds. I'll pin this one instead. REALLY appreciate the feedback.
And you explained it very well. Took a few of us to break through the comment clutter. Please accept a large share of the credit and thanks for helping clear up the misinformation.
Not being funny but I'm sure you got some form of credit and thanks, but you seem bummed that it wasn't pinned and made clear to everybody. Doesn't really say much good about your character if you can't offer help and advice without expectation.
Not the volts that kills you - its the amps :)
Nothing to say, just commenting so OP feels better knowing we saw their contribution
The leakage current through the Y capacitor will always be safe from an electrocution point of view as long as the value is within the recommendations.
The risk in many cases is the reaction of a person to receiving a shock, which then leads to a physical injury. Dropping something, hitting your head, falling off a ladder etc.
Ah 2018, the year where you have to tell people that cutting the ground pin on a power supply can be dangerous, and not to eat laundry detergent. Glorious.
Eating the tide pods is really no different than any of the other "challenges", people were doing the cinnamon challenge like 10 years ago, causing people to breathe cinnamon into their lungs and have serious issues as well. Humans have done dumb shit for thousands of years, for various reasons, boredom, fun, just plain stupidity, etc.
And you thought natural selection was over...
I realize people have been doing dumb things since forever, and youtube is a veritable catalog of evidence for it. The whole "choke yourself almost to death for sexual pleasure" is another great example.
Devil's advocate though, the cinnamon challenge is eating something which is ostensibly a food. In that regard at least, I'd consider it less dumb than eating a cleaning product.
alot of old homes (including mine) dont have ground pins on sockets
Almost 3 decades ago, when a client built a new building on their property, we went to add another RS-232 terminal, and the terminal immediately fried upon turning it on, and the com controller in the mainframe at the main building caught on fire. It was a costly mishap. But I picked up one of those plug testers, and walked around both the main building and the new satellite building and every single plug in the new building was shown to be wired incorrectly. But where the actual error was, was at the d-panel where the high voltage mains came in. it was wired wrong, and considering they had several bits of equipment with metal chassis already connected, it was a miracle that no one had been electrocuted! Since then I always brought that little tester to new clients and used it before plugging anything in.
Early on I bought a similar mains tester unit that also tested/triggered the switch fuses. This has been invaluable over they years whereever I moved and its great for quickly mapping out the wiring loops in a location. Knowing which fuse each powerpoint is connected to helps you plan what equipment you can plug in and where problems may arise. If you've ever encountered a blackout in just part of your home thats likely due to overloading one wiring loop.You can't just plug everything in existence into one socket, some wire loops were installed with different wattage ratings for lower expected usage. Its well worth testing to stay safe and make sure all your equipment stays running well into the future.
Ground is also known as protective earth (PE). Use it, be safe and always remember: Main Voltage can kill!
Ground faults can be nasty. But it's true that the bypass filter capacitor won't pass enough current to kill. Another problem that can arise from no ground is interference. As a ham radio op, I can attest to that. Something with switching power supplies and stepper drivers would give out tremendous RF noise if it didn't have a good ground.
Older houses especially should have all of the outlets tested for proper ground. At least here in the U.S., it's not surprising to find an old house where the outlets have been replaced with three prong outlets, yet inside there is only two wires and no proper ground connected.
Goes to show just how well the laws are enforced
As a home owner, you can replace outlets and switches by yourself. The problem is when the owner has no idea what they are doing. Very few people purposefully wire a house wrong to spite the law.
Here in Australia they're extremely strict about electrical work & licensing, with harsh penalties for dangerous practices like that!
You're not even supposed to change an electrical-plug without a license, but in practice they turn a blind-eye if you know what you're doing & it's just basic stuff (& not charging for it)!
Good summary. Engineers often call those bypass capacitors because they bleed off unwanted noise and high frequency energy. Those thinking there's still a problem just don't understand electrical engineering and grounding. Safety grounding is there for a reason, and it is important. I would go one step further and measure the current to ground, the voltage is not what creates a danger in a shock, the current is actually the danger. Static electric shocks are very high voltage, but not dangerous because the current is brief and tiny. It takes only a few milliamps to create a dangerous shock that can cause heart issues. But bypass capacitors are small and at line frequency they have very large reactance, so the line current that flows is very small and not dangerous. On with printing!
We know what the current is (roughly). Since the DVM's input is probably 10M, 90v makes 9uA. If you're curious the reactance of the Y is 1/(2 x pi x F x C)
Better to measure than estimate, but that is a reasonable estimate. And I know the formula for reactance. :)
Thanks for clearing it up for everyone and for clearing JgAurora of any fault. Well done. 👍
Da Hai Zhu except with his influence he should have never made the first video without knowing what he was talking about. He could have had an impact on the JG Aurora sales just from making that video when they did nothing wrong.
Actually, I ordered a JG Aurora A5 from Gearbest even after watching the review video despite knowing he also got that shock. Mind you I am an electronics engineer and suspected what Angus felt was just leakage through the PSU Y capacitor.
Exactly, you know what you are talking about. Angus is given a trust to fully and honestly provide information that is based on full investigation into a product they provide. He did not do that.
@ The 3D Printing Corner : They'd just litigate for damages.
@@KeanM Should have gone for the A5S or A1. They have improved quite a lot. Unless you are trying to keep the cost down.
Thumbs up to the steadycam operator!!!
Nailed it!
When I got my Flsun i3 clone, it came with a power cord without any ground pin. I took an old PC power cable, cut the end of it and installed that instead. I don't know why these are shipped like that. Pretty dangerous stuff.
+1 for using an actual sink as your ground reference
Joel Bernstein that can be a bad idea particularly in more modern homes as plumbing is moving to more and more plastic
Yep, plus ground isn't done through plumbing these days but through a dedicated earth stake, for that very reason.
Oh yeah I’m not saying it’s a good idea, just a funny ‘sink’ pun
Ground sunk (sink)
Great video! I sincerely hope none of these companies would remotely blame you for the misunderstanding. Don't be afraid to ask the Electrical Engineering community, we 3D print too.
Thanks for these videos. I have removed the ground pins on numerous plugs and never thought anything about it. This is something I will no longer do.
I'm not sure if you're serious, but if so - can you explain why?
(Where I live, the gound is "built into" the plug, at the outside as a flat connector, so no extra pin. So I have no idea if or why the third pin would be annoying?)
Christoph Alexander so where I am we can have three or two prong outlets and plugs. Three is newer and the third prong is a ground. So if I have a three prong plug and a two prong outlet I was taught just remove the third prong so it will go into the outlet. Now since I moved all my outlets here are three prong so it makes no difference.
There is no problem in what you did. You do not need to change anything. Do not get scared by this. It is NOT DANGEROUS.
zapro_dk in the case of 3D printers and various other technology, removing ground can be quite dangerous. Nobody says, “do you know what would be cool? If we added a third prong for no reason!” Not everything needs ground but a lot of heavier duty machines use it for safety purposes.
Ah, I see. Thanks for the explanation.
Glad to see that this has been cleared up Angus. Kudos for the followup. Thanks to DIY3DTECH and many others as well.
Hey Kevin Loughin, an advantage I see with US outlets is 110-120vac and not 220-240vac. There have been time I wished for 220, because some items designed for a workshop are powered by 220, but 110-120 is less likely to be fatal, unless you get the full voltage and current. Also I do not know much about 220-240 in Australia however 220-240 lines in the US are available from the same electrical box as 110-120 volt lines. Here in the states the neutral is just that. There are two "legs" to our AC power. One leg is high while the other is low, with the neutral being half way between the high and low voltage (this alternates between legs). Measuring from the neutral conductor both legs appear to be 110-120 volts, however from measuring from one leg to the other the voltage measured is 220-240 volts. Our AC power is 60 cycles per second (or 60hz). In other parts of the world voltages are 110, 120, 220 or 240 and cycles are 50hz or 60hz, our breakers/fuses allow 15, 20 or 30 amps at 110-120 and I have seen up to 60 amp for 220-240. I am sure there are other amperage breakers but that is the basics.
Now the ground is the tricky thing some older houses did NOT have one. When I was a kid I visited the neighbors house a lot. Old man Forney was interesting, he had old coins I had never seen, pictures of Roosevelt's funeral showing horse draw funeral procession and many other things, he loved showing us kids that stuff. Anyway, we went to his basement a few times, that's when I discovered how weird old wiring was. In his house on the basement ceiling was the wiring system exposed for all to see... Two single conductor wires run in parallel trough holes in the rafters all the wires were covered in braided clothe coverings. One dark one light colored, they may have been black and white at one time, but were almost the same color. NO junction boxes! Outlets on the same circuit were tapped in by running two wires again three inches apart perpendicular to the original wires. No ground wire.
Newer houses use three or more conductors in a single cable covered in a plastic/vinyl covering, some are armored some still have an outer covering of braided clothe around all the vinyl/plastic coverings. Inside the breaker box, the neutral and ground are connected to the same buss bar. So what differentiates the neutral from the ground i US wiring? The neutral is usually heavier and carries a load, it is as heavy as the "hot" wire. half of the hot wire in a house are connected two one leg, the other half connect to the second leg. Any appliance that needs 220-240, like a stove or clothes drier connects to both legs. 110-120 outlets have three conductors, 220-240 have 4 conductors. Occasionally some 110-120 circuits use four conductors for switching where more than one switch controls the same appliance (mostly lighting).
Hi Angus! Are you actually confirming that your string of cables you had cobbled together had a missing or bad ground connection? I wish you had replicated the cable arrangement and then plugged the tester into the end where the printers were powered to show the fault in the cable. It's not 100% clear from the video that this was the fault of the string of cables. I only infer that's where the fault lies from the context of the video.
+USWaterRockets yes, ground was not connected in my horrific setup before.
I agree, you showed the tester, then the two printers, but never showed testing the daisy chain of faulty power extensions using the tester. So you let us infer the final conclusion. You missed it.
That's putting it more bluntly that I would say it. Angus does a great job with his videos, so this is not a really major deal. I was just getting clarification.
speaking as someone who wires houses sometimes, ground should never be saturated unless it is for intended use of dumping waste power from things outside of the power circuit. Machines are generally designed to not electrify themselves when grounding is unavailable.
You might stop wiring houses as you have no clue of what you are talking about.
We have got 240 Volts in Europe as well. I had some issues with an elevated ground causing noise and I was thinking to disconnect the ground for half a second before slapping myself in the face. Never ever get rid of safety precautions!
So only America is overseas :D? All of Europe, Most of Asia and a good part of Africa are 220-240V
Wasn't sure where is what voltage :P
America (maybe Canada) uses 110V 50 Hz (unless on an over seas military base)
Japan is probably the weirdest, they have 110v in part of the country and 230v in the other...
AnukTheWolf Ahh that might be it, I just remember it was crazy :)
sorry made an error 60Hz not 50 in US
5:18 Would be a good idea to use the Fault Detector at the end of any extensions you may use to power your printers. Extension cables can become defective and could disconnect their ground line which would give the same results as when you got shocked.
I had close to the similar situation. When I was over in India on a business trip, I encountered a shock while touching my
computer laptop case and touch the anti-static mat on the work bench. Couple things were going on with my situation. The manufacture of the laptop’s power supply has a filter capacitor connected to the AC neutral and the power supplies DC side of the laptop’s connector. Which in USA, that’s not a problem, but in India, the HOT and NEUTRAL are reversed. That caused the laptop case ground to be floating around 90 VAC above their earth ground on the work bench.
Also helps to have a bit of knowledge about basic electrical-systems!
Most people don't even know why there is an earth-pin connection & how it keeps you safe even though the earth-socket is literally connected to the neutral wires in your building!
My ex-wife's parents occasionally received a shock from their kettle so I tested the GPO (power-outlet) with my plug-in tester & discovered that when their house was built 25yrs beforehand, the sloppy electrician had connected the active & neutral wire the wrong way around despite the colour-coding!
More dangerous was the twin-tub washing-machine (anyone remember those?) my parents bought when I was a child that almost electrocuted my mum (more current involved) because it had been wired up incorrectly at the factory!
for people from uk i would check the cheap mains-lead that comes with the printer.
alot of them have insulation on the earth pin which stops it from making contact in the socket
therefore it is not grounded
Hmm. Angus why didn’t you plug in the outlet tester into the power strip? Your video ( unless I missed it ) didn’t mention that the extension strip was not grounded.
The powerstrip setup that cause the problems was discarded so I recreated the issue using the IEC cable. If I had plugged the tester into the old strip however it would have shown red for fault, for sure.
Maker's Muse I think that’s my point - using that tester for the extension leads would have warned you if the Earth was faulty. Great explanation but you could have explained how that device can also check that the extension cables are safe. Some people might not make that connection as it were.
Well it was certainly better than the last video, bit again this isn't a problem specific to 3D printers. This is basic electrical safety.
Keep in mind that not all sinks are grounded. Full PVC Pipes have that effect. Not all PSUs have a capacitor from live to earth ground. You will find that most all switching PSUs have a capacitor from live to neutral though and if this is the only capacitor, you wont see any voltage from an unearthed pin.
Switching PSUs that are very well designed will not show voltage on an un-earthed pin. Also, in many places in the US (I cannot speak for other countries at all), ground and neutral are wired together at the breaker box, so you will never see this behavior from any switching PSU. You might even say that in many houses (USA) the ground pin is completely redundant.
So normally the frame is isolated from ground, but since there is a capacitor to ground that will pull the frame to line voltage when the ground is disconnected. Odd
This capacitor dumps noise generated by the PSU into ground, a quite common praxis. Unfortunately, with this extension cord there is no ground to dump it into.
Good opportunity to subscribe to DIY3DTECH.COM's channel to thank Joe for the referenced video and learn from his many other informative ones.
Agreed!
Stay tuned for the SHOCKING conclusion!
Now we know LM likes you. She could have turned on the tap and inherited all your printers!!!
Floating switch mode power supply, very common. Made worse if the house doesn't have a connection between neutral and ground at the switch board.
So... What was it that wasn't grounded? His outlet?
+AWARHERO in the previous set up, the power board plug. In this test, the iec cable has no ground
Yeah he didn't exactly answer the question
Yeah, he really fails to answer this question. As if the ground wire just magically disappeared from his power board ... Still unclear to me what he did. Also unclear how he reproduced the issue.
So if you watch the previous video he discusses how he daisy chained a bunch of power strips and one of them or its adapter apparently had a faulty ground causing the whole setup to be ungrounded. He reproduced the issue just by using a cable without a ground for the power supply. I didn't feel it was all that unclear.
Thanks for the good info! Its worth checking every outlet/circuit in your home with an outlet tester and a chicken stick. They're cheap and replaceable, people aren't. When I did satellite occasionally I'd forget to hit an outlet with the tester and I've blown up a few tvs and let all the magic smoke out of a dozen set top boxes over the years. At one point it was standard operating procedure to snap the ground pin off my satellite equipment BECAUSE the ground was bad so frequently in rental units.
You get a similar tingle off the Y cap in metal Mcbooks. Solution is to plugf in a USB item like a printer which has a plug with an Earth pin. you will only get a tingle, not a proper bolt.
What we can tell from this video, is that Angus has metal plumbing. In newer houses in the US, they have been switching to "Plex" plumbing, which is all plastic, so there wouldn't be a ground connection. Things we can't tell, does the plumbing ground to the same spot as the electrical?
The sink isn't grounded by just the water pipes, it'll have its own ground strap, even if that goes to nearby copper pipes, which in turn are properly grounded, for the very reason that you can't trust the fittings to have proper continuity.
I've lived in older flats with ungrounded plugs only. I still have a lot of ungrounded plugs. I think it is very rare to feel the voltage leak from Y-capasitors from single device unless you are well grounded yourself, like leaning to a sink. You can measure it though as demonstrated. A yet better measurement would be current instead of voltage.
Of course, if you have a lot of extension cords that parallel all the ground pins, you get the total leakage combined from all devices when the cord end has no ground. Parallel enough leakage sources and at some point you start to feel it for sure. That makes me think if ungrounded cords would be actually better when you have ungrounded plugs only.
Just a reminder. AC Current CAN kill you at nearly any voltage IF it goes through the nodes of your heart. To do that it must pass from one hand through your chest to the other hand. I never use both hands even with gloves to cross wire things. It's a nasty trip to the MORGUE waiting to happen! ;) Thanks Angus... Great Vid!
Thank you for making this video clearing up what happened. Actually is it not /one/ capacitor, but two. Across Live and Neutral you have one capacitor called the X-capacitor. It is not the reason for the mains voltage/2 voltage on the chassis. It's the two Y-capacitors, one from live to earth and one from neutral to earth. They will form a capacitive divider and give you approx. mains voltage/2 on the case. It's perfectly normal and NOT DANGEROUS - I live in Denmark and we don't have earthing in many places, and it's NOT DANGEROUS because we have GFCI's turning off the current if you get a "proper" shock, not the small "tingle" that is on un-earthed equipment. Here we take no notice of the voltage since we're used to it being "normal" and safe. If the user feels it's annoying, he can have earthing installed in his home.
Well.....that explains a few things..
Great explanation tho....thank you for the info!
Legend. You having had this “near miss” problem could potentially save someone’s life as they can learn from your mistakes.
I started to panic with your first film as I have a MK3 on order and a weak heart! Mrs McBeardface would not have been a happy bunny if my new hobby killed me! Like in Aus we are 240v here in the UK.
Great informative film. Glad you got to the bottom of it all 👍👍
Thanks for the update!
Still think that the A5 case should be grounded properly too as it is conductive. Also the PSU completely enclosed with nearly NO ventilation holes isn't that good. The PSU fan will have a hard time to try cooling this PSU correctly and could generate other issues.
it's not the voltage that hurts you but the amount of power thats flowing (messured in ampere). you even can experience a really high amount of voltage without getting hurt by simply putting on a piece of synthetic clothing. you can even see some tiny lightenings doing that when you turn off the light...
Great update Angus. Hope your Mum has calmed down.
Is this the same reason why my MacBook gives me a tingle feeling from the trackpad when plugging the charger directly to the outlet, not using the longer cable which has ground as well?
Kind of, Yes. The low voltage side of a power brick often is connected to the mains voltage side with a filter capacitor too. However, it is often connected just to one side of the mains supply. If you flip your mains plug (if possible in your country) the tingle might go.
Didn't have my fluke with me to check, but my aluminum body laptop gave me quite the tingle when I was in ireland and using a non-grounded adapter to get my 'murican plug to fit their sockets. Changed the adapter to one with a ground pin and all was fine. It wasn't harmful to the electronics but you should def. be using the cable with ground at all times.
I hate to add additional information, but if you take a look at MIL-HDBK-2036 appendix B, you can approximate the human body as a 1500 ohm resistor in parallel with a 0.15µF capacitor.
One end of that curcuit will be connected to earth ground and the other end will be connected to various points on the unit. The leakage current is determined by the voltage across the 1500 ohm resistor. In the military world I live in, the leakage current limit is 3.5 milliamps. As I recall, the threshold of pain is ~8 milliamps.
Check out www.mddionline.com/leakage-current-standards-simplified for more information. I have not personally checked out that site, but it seems to have a lot of leakage current information.
Note for ppl: the sink only works if you have metal pipes, if you have PVC, it won't be properly grounded... you can still use it as a ground reference, but may have slightly off readings
you can use a small light bulb instead of meter if it lights the currant is high enough to hurt
You had floating ground. That isn't "extremely dangerous". Cleaning exposed high voltage cables with a wet towel is "extremely dangerous". If you try sinking (sic) some current I'd doubt you'll get much current going though it. Likely nowhere near anything dangerous.
I'm not saying you should run your 3d printer ungrounded. I'm just saying this isn't "EXTREMELY DANGEROUS!".
That's what I was thinking... If my math is correct... and this is not even assuming skin resistance, but the reactence of a standard 10pf y-type capacitor at 50hz should equal a 318Mohm resistance. That would mean 0.75uA of current at 240 volts....
Impedance of a 10pf capacitor at 50hz:
1/(10 x 10(-12) x 50 x 2 x 3.14) = 318309886ohms
Current flow at without any skin resistance:
I = V/R so 240/318309886 = 0.75uA
If there is a fault condition that puts live on the frame, a functioning ground would cause the fuse/breaker to trip immediately, but if there isn’t a ground, the moment you touch the frame the GFCI would trip. It’s not *good* but it’s not life-threatening - over here in .nl, houses that were last rewired before 1980 or so have grounded sockets only in wet rooms (kitchens, bathrooms) and ungrounded elsewhere. The idea was that only equipment that had some degree of weatherproofing so it could be used in wet rooms would have a grounded plug, and all the normal stuff (like... basically only lamps) wouldn’t fit in a grounded socket.
Fitting 30 mA or less GFCIs on the whole house is a strong recommend though.
The voltage isn't deadly, current is. 250mA is enough to kill you at any voltage. The chance of having 250mA is just higher above 24V (then the resistance of your body becomes obsolete) and certainly when dealing with high voltage (current breakdown). A floating ground isn't dangerous indeed, but messing with the ground definetely is. Angus is pointing out that messing with your ground might be extremely dangerous. A common guy doens't know when he's dealing with a floating ground or with a really dangerous situation. His warning is legit to me.
Just one point @Maker's Muse, Australia on 240V isn't higher than standard, the US, Canada and Japan being on 110, 110 and 100V respectively is unusual. Most other places use 220-240V at the mains.
This happened to me when I grabbed a cheap power cable that did not have a ground. Glad this confirmed my suspicion on what was wrong.
Some countries have a a dubious grasp on the concept of grounding.... honestly just move to the UK where we know how to handle AC.
Yes it's one of thew very few things we've got absolutely right. Except for when you tread on an upturned mains plug in bare feet
Just a heads up: Those fault detectors aren't totally foolproof. You could have swapped Neutral and Earth connections and the fault detector wouldn't be able to detect it as Neutral and ground are at the same potential.
I had this on my ender 3, the power cable they gave with it did not have an earthing plug. The chassis was at 240V when turned off 110v when turned on. The adapter did have a grounding plug just the cable did not
You must lead a charmed life. Most of my sockets are ungrounded, so yeah, I get tingles off everything. A MacBook case while the charger is on, for instance. And certainly a 3D printer power supply. It’s just a fact of life here.
No ground in our flat (and probably in our whole house too). So what (to do)?
Which parts of a 3d printer are the ground? So is it possible to short-circuit by touching different parts of a 3d printer?
I can short-circuit only by touching the radiator in my room (only in a certain place where the paint was removed) and the printer. I don't think it's dangerous (need to do it on a purpose only).
My sink hadn't been grounded. My wife and I kept experiencing shocks when we touched the dish washer and the sink. We had a sparky come out and connect it up for us.. Make sure your sink is grounded if you ever do attempt anything like this
Also, you can do this all you want in Denmark. In fact, you most likely are. We have ground with a prong (K type sockets) but most devices are shipped witch shucko ground (ground around the side of the plug)
It's safe though, because all sockets in danish buildings have to be protected by a GFI/RCD/HPFI (HPFI is the danish term)
You'll feel it though, and it's super annoying.
The only grunder outlet in my apartment, is behind the fridge. Never felt any shocks. We have 230v here in Sweden.
Maybe it would be good to have a little pictorial to explain the ground path? just a suggestion. Have you ever had static electricity stop a machine?
Same applies to most tower PC's.
No ground can burn out the PC power supply if not other parts can/will fail.
No. You are incorrect. The power supply doesn't care if it's grounded.
Shout out to a great channel (DIY3DTech). You're the only Angus I don't want cooked.
Thanks solves my mystery I run my 3D printers in a shipping container in my backyard powered by solar & Battery and a yumcha inverter. I noticed it today when touching my new enders 7 when installing a magnetic pei build plate and cr touch. I was in bare feet and it's been raining a lot in qld so my feet were likely wet. I then touched my ender 5 same thing. Ender 3 had no leak but it powered by DC from battery bank. I assume the earth is not connected with this inverter.
I think there is something missing from this story. The presence of voltage does not mean inherent danger. What matters as well is how much charge is stored in the frame. A Van de Graaff generator creates over 100k volts, and produces a harmless shock.
All of Europe has 240 as well.
germany got 230 volts. the voltage in europe varies between 220 and 240 volts. some countries got 220, some got 230 and others 240.
most powersupplies work with 120-240 volts anyway though.
Brazil got 220v, but it really oscillates between 210v and 230v. I think most countries use 200ish line, since it requires less wire gauge in the transmission cables than 100ish volts.
voltage in germany varies a bit, but rarely more than 5 volts. depends on the area though i think.
Most of europe has ~220v
North America 110, South America 50/50. I've destroyed a number of devices plugging them into the wrong voltages. Most modern devices can use both. Some have a manual switch, some can figure it out on their own.
faulty ground sent me flying once using a 240V 220amp arc welder and fried everything electrical in the car i was working on
Grounds to the sink in one room, Screams heard from someone in the shower getting shocked by the drain system...
Voltage does not flow!
Indeed. If you imagine electricity as a river flowing down a mountain, the electrons would be the water, the cable would be the riverbed (kinda incorrect, but just nicer to imagine), the voltage would be the height difference from one point to another, the current would be the amount of water flowing and the resistance would be the size and "roughness" of the riverbed.
Why is riverbed as an anology for the cable kinda incorrect? - It resembles the origin of the resistance pretty well, but dosn't give an explanation why some materials conduct better then others (conductors vs. isolators)
And just one more: the voltage is the height difference between two points in circuit, the potential is the voltage with respect to an arbitrarily chosen height which is called "ground" and would be the equivalent to sea level in our analogy.
But what about the sultanas!!??
voltage is the potential between 2 points in a circuit. current is the flow through a point in a circuit. the potential gives you the flow, similar to how heat moves from areas of higher energy to areas of lower. the bigger the difference in temperature between 2 points, the more heat transfer or flow of energy. higher voltage results in much higher current at a given resistance.
Glad you are okay. Angus I have quick question about the maker select v2 I can't seem to print anything besides the stock files from the sd card that came with it I've tried using the same profile from the successful prints on cura as well as going through the settings to tweak things before I start printing it out paying close attention to the temps and other settings. The prints generally do stick to the bed most of the time without much fuss but I've been having them for instance the extruder will start drawing a circle but it ill be half done or garbled looking low quality and it will try to print on and eventually drag the print around the bed.
I use the profile and settings from my succeeded prints from the stock sd and that's how I was able to make my large spool holder which took 7 hours and went off without a hitch. Most of the prints I want to do are minor mods specifically made for and printed from the maker select v2 on thingiverse even when I use their specs it'll fail. I've tried taking apart the extruder and clearing out the filament and leveling the machine out multiple times trying multiple combinations of bed and extruder temps even had a buddy come help and they still fail. Can you be any help?
Im in Australia as well. I have an Anet A8, and haven't had any issues like this. But the power supply cable has a European plug with an adaptor to fit an Ozzy power socket but does not have a ground pin, but has a ground wire connected. Should i take the European plug off and change it out for a proper 3 pin aussie plug?
Woah... I have the exact same Problem with my laptop and basically everything else on that powerstrip. (100V, a few µA. I wonder why it's ~100V though, because we have 230V mains here) Thank you for pointing me to the solution!
Now I can resolve this issue. Thank you very much for this video. :)
They NEED a warning sticker saying " Caution: Risk of electric shock if not grounded."
I had this happen with a PC too so make sure your grounds are good. It actually fired a camera power supply.
Wait, do all outlets there have switches? You almost never see that in America
Hey Angus, can you make a video about the danger of filament fumes and how to prevent it? That would be great! Thanks for your time.
Am I the only one impressed with the wall outlets in Australia having their own build-in switches? Meanwhile here in the USA...lol
24V AC is considered as a safe voltage. All depends on how well you are grounded. in most case, you won't stand with your bare feet in a water, or with a ground cable stuck in your... whatever... you're most likely isolated somehow (with your shoes, carpet etc.) and therefore the potentials difference is lower. Trust, this could have been dangerous for you if you were grounded properly. Anything above 50mA makes irreversible damage to your body. Avarage body resistance is around 1kOhm (depending skin moisture etc.) so anything above 50V AC is seriously dangerous.
There should be no voltage from ground. The capacitor is between live and neutral. The cheap chinese LED power supplies don't even have a ground pin. You likely had bad wiring where somebody switched neutral and ground in your house. They might have a barister going to ground but that just absorbs spikes.
Ever tried the same experiment with an laptop connected to it's power supply equipped with a 2 pin mains power plug (like most MacBooks)?? !! You'll definitely get shocked by the result (literally!)
😂 I live in a house that was wired in the 1950's, nothing is grounded, everything will electrocute you. My old PC case was constantly electrified. You would get a good zap anytime your leg touched it.
if you use a decent UPS it will not power if there is no ground. so it would be good to have a UPS on your bench when testing as it will scream and will light to show a fault.
In my home we don't have any ungrounded power supplies, it's illegal to do so in my city! So no DIY powersupplies!
Yup, figured that was what is was. Glad you are okay and that you figured everything out (and kept Joe Prusa feom having a panic attack)! Could have been much worse. Google Fender "death cap" for a historical example.
Could you do a video about routine printer maintenance?
So... the problem was that the printer wasn't grounded, but what actually caused the problem? You never actually say in the video. Did you use a 3-pin to 2-pin adapter?
+SnakebitSTI a broken, ancient power board
How about using a GFCI 220V extension cord / adapter for absolute safety?
Yet an other reason to wire yourself a standard ATX powersupply to your printer instead of those sketchy ones that come with them.
I use a server powersupply (flexATX) that is capable of operating at its rated 500W 24/7 on my printer and it works beautifully. It even allows you to wire a power switch and usb plugs inside the printer to have an octoprint server running on a raspberry pi inside the printer.
ATX is the way to go for 3D printers. Just like a computer, if the PSU dies, it can kill a lot of other components with it, so it's the one piece that you should never cheap down on.
And i can more or less ensure you, the server PSU does exactly the same thing.
xSchattenfluchx higher quality components matters in PSU. both for efficiency and for how securely the power is being delivered.
Yes, but no matter how high quality you y capacitor is, it will transfer a tiny bit of current into ground.
High quality PSUs drastically reduce the chance of "tiny bit" turning into "whatever the socket provides"
While the capacitor does the bare minimum, I definitely think grounding the frame is a better design choice. I suppose it’s not dangerous though
So, if there is a proper ground you don’t have the voltage"?
+wpherigo1 yep! You might get some but very very low.
what is the jingle that plays on the end?
Also, you can buy GFCI/RCD extension cords for not too much $$$... which if you are putting together kits, seems like a good idea to me...
Oh so thats the explanation for why I feel a tingling sensation sometimes when I touch the non painted metal parts of my Ender 3 V2? It doesn't happen every time though, and as far as I know It should be grounded? Does this mean that the ground connection is not working properly?
If you haven't solved your issue yet I'm hunting down the same problem with my ender 5....from what I've found so far, most likely causes are poor grounding with the psu->frame bolts, other biggest one is checking for loose connections with the crimps on the power wires to the PSU terminals
That metal swagged uninsulated wire holding the chart on your power point tester scares me. There is a slight chance it could swing around when plugging the plug in and become live. If it was mine I'd replace the wire with something insulated.
If you look properly the live and neutral pins have insulated shanks which is part of our power point standard. This prevents accidental contact as the pin holes extends deeper then the uninsulated tips before the internal contacts are reached.
point taken but the earth pin isn't, which has been pointed out in the video can be live in certain circumstances. Is it likely no, but is it possible yes.
+Richard Grenfell The earth pin is longer than the line and neutral pins so will be connected first. I agree that a plastic coil would probably be my initial choice regardless.
Would this be enough to trigger a GFI?
All bow down to the UK's three pin plug and socket switches, it makes the rest of the world's electrical connections look pretty dicey !
Dave Lordy
Our UK plugs, do seem to have every safety feature available...I don't think any other countries use all of them.
I like the Danish sockets, they look like happy little faces :)
_"Our UK plugs, do seem to have every safety feature available"_
Yup! From the nylon sleeve - so the pins are only ever live when they are pushed in far enough that you can only contact the nylon sleeve - to the solid square pins, have you ever used any of the EU plugs, you only need to put a little bit of weight on the plug to pull it out ! To the switch on the socket . . . everything about them says "I'm going to plug this in and live to tell my children" . . . actually our plug (type G) is also used in a few places like Singapore and Malaysia (and a few others I think) . . . another clever thing I only noticed a few years back, the earth connection in the plug is designed so that if you were to yank the lead so hard that you pulled the whole cable out of the plug - almost impossible with our cable clamp at the plug input - then the various live/earth/neutral wires will get pulled out in the order live/earth/neutral ! That is to say the first wire to detach would be the live, as it's shortest, then the earth, then the neutral . . . so even more UK tax payers remain on the HMRC's books ! Genius !!
_"I like the Danish sockets, they look like happy little faces :)"_
A happy face that hides death ! Lol : P
The only downside to a UK plug is when you stand on them in the dark! Ouch!
Pook365
The 240V also means cheaper cables. Lower 110V means you need waaay more current for the equivalent power which needs thicker more expensive cabling.
On the other hand our plumbing standards are crap compared with some other countries 😂
_"The only downside to a UK plug is when you stand on them in the dark! Ouch!"_
Sure it's painful, but at least you're earthed. : )
Good work by the Camera Minion.
Using the sink as your return path is not always true. If your waste connection is PVC and your water supply is plastic there is no current flow ie. insulation.
Should do the job, Mica Plates Sheets ??
You 'should' be able to have the fuse board fitted with an RCD, which should protect you against this sort of thing.
BTW, also noticed it on some computer case/PSU combinations.
I got shocked few days back and i only see this video now 😩