SON OF A...

[PaulG.]

My first job out of the military involved installing and maintaining autonomouns control equipment installed in old M47 Patton tanks. The army used them for target practice. My first trip in the field was at Ft. Benning, GA. It was hot and very humid. Sweat is dripping off of me. At the end of the exercise my boss tells me to start uninstalling our equipment. First thing I do is go to the battery box to cut the power. 24V. I get the negative terminal off. Then I move to the positive terminal. My sweaty hand is on the wrench that is on the hot terminal to the battery and I use my other sweaty hand to support me. My hand lands flat on the metal on the tank. "OUCH!" I tried it again. "OUCH! DANG!" Again. "SON OF A ....!!!!" I had no idea it was the 24V and that it could hurt that much. Son of a ...

[Ben]

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@PaulG. wrote:

... My hand lands flat on the metal on the tank. "OUCH!" I tried it again. "OUCH! DANG!" Again. "SON OF A ....!!!!" I had no idea it was the 24V and that it could hurt that much. Son of a ...

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which remionds me...

I was maintianing a search radar in the Navy (Mk 86 A maybe?) that had a 14K supply for the Klystron tube. The power supply had about 30 screws holding in place ...to start with.

Every time I took it out and put it bak I left another screw out, not realizing the screws were the ground path.

I drew a 6 inch arc while reahing for a swinging scope probe in heavy seas.

I now put all of the screw back in.

Ben

[GregFreeman]

knocking my work laptop off a desk while testing and breaking the LCD monitor, resulting in an approximately $500 repair bill from Dell. Son of a...

[taper]

We have a few benches for ESD testing.  Operator touches the ESD tool to various pins of the unit to generate either a contact or air discharge spark at around 14kV.  Entire table is covered with a large steel plate and operators wear an static dissipative smock(aka conductive shirt).  You learn very quickly not to lean your elbows on the table while testing, just in case a pin shorts to chassis during test.  Think of the shock from a door knob in winter all over your body.

[GregFreeman]

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@taper wrote:

 You learn very quickly not to lean your elbows on the table while testing, just in case a pin shorts to chassis during test.

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Sounds like a good way to condition your kids not to rest their elbows on the dinner table 

[Ben]

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@for(imstuck) wrote:

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@taper wrote:

 You learn very quickly not to lean your elbows on the table while testing, just in case a pin shorts to chassis during test.

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Sounds like a good way to condition your kids not to rest their elbows on the dinner table 

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Patent it NOW!

Cook-up a good marketing phrase like Auto-etiquite and copyright it.

look forward to lots of cash and kid with good manners.

Ben

[GregFreeman]

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Ben wrote:

Cook-up a good marketing phrase like Auto-etiquite and copyright it.

Ben

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"shock other's with your kids etiquite!"

[DianeS]

"etiquette"

Emily Post would insist you spell "etiquette" properly.  She's like that.

[GregFreeman]

Was going to spell check that, but then I realized I'm an engineer so who cares!

[DianeS]

Probably the subsumed liberal arts major coming out in me.  I was a theater major before deciding that was an incredibly dumb idea and switching to engineering.  I'm actually a lot better at English than I am at math.

But I'm better with power tools than I am with crayons.