Solid State Things that make you say Ouch

or at least Huh?.

To _(new) Or not to  ₍₂₀₀₃₎ and The Fancy Home Page

High voltages and stored energy can hurt you dead. Don't play with them unless you know what you are doing and respect the danger involved.

Don't work on high voltages alone, someone has to be around to at least laugh at you when you get shocked and have to go change your underwear (or worse, they need to douse you with a fire extinguisher.)

Don't work on high energy alone or without a face shield (not just safety glasses.) Someone has to be around to at least laugh at you when you get blow up a part that dents the 0.062" steel metal work of the chassis or a flame shoots out of it and they cut a notch in a 3/8" thick aluminum cold plate.
 
OSHA says dangerous voltages start at 50V peak. 

Voltages below 50V can hurt you too. At 24V DC I've seen co-workers electrically shocked and have seen wires throw shrapnel feet, not inches, from high currents.

24V can cheat and make high voltage. Opening an inductive circuit running from 24V with current flowing will generate high voltages.

Touching a wire that is smoking because of too much current will burn you. It can cut through your "meat" like a hot knife through warm butter. I watched a buddy do this and had to drive him to the ER.

I'm not your guardian, you are responsible for your own safety if you try anything I'm discussing or linking to in these web pages.

If you do any of these, contact Bill Engvall and get a sign:

Liking your finger and touching a circuit to see if it hot

Sticking your tongue (or licked finger) in a light socket so see if it is on. I don't care if if was a double dog dare. You will get hurt.

The list of stupid thing you can do would fill 1/2 of google servers if it covered everything.

These design ideas come with negative warranties,
        if you try them, your warranty is void!

Manufactures may change their designs over time and some manufactures do not change their model number when the make the change. Before you make a change, make sure your version of your equipment matches the version the change was written for.

This means before you attempt a modification, make darn sure the stock version is working correctly first. If the stock version has a problem, there is a chance the manufacture will fix it for you. If you do anything not in the manual and it does not work, it is your challenge to fix it, not mine nor the manufacture's.

For example: If you hear that putting elephant snot on your circuit will make it perform better, it is your problem to make the circuit work with the elephant snot on it. Nobody, not me, nor the manufacture, is required to touch a circuit with elephant snot on it. Once elephant snot touches your circuit, your warranty is void. This same concept applies for mods that do not involve elephant snot.

By the way:

1. If you are close enough to an elephant to see its nose without binoculars, you are too close for safety!

2. The odds are 10:1 that real elephant snot is a controlled substance.

• Gertrude and Fred Amp ( 2N2222/ 2N2907 only power amp)  ( One Channel Built, runs hotter than expected. Sounds great in Mono. Was put on back burner, will share schematic eventually. )
• Head Zen ( Nelson Pass Zen Based Headphone amp ) ( Built, not happy with cross feed, chassis design or capacitor leakage current risk from output caps. The Turn on/Turn off "pop" control worked well)
• Battery Powered Low Impedance Headphone Amp    ( Built, no cross feed, happy with chassis, working on fixing thump from leaving on until non-matched batteries die. My friends say it sounds great. Even Mrs. Volt hears the difference between the cell phone output and the amp output.)
• Gyrator Based Phono Pre-Amp  ( Paper Designed. Multiple Sziklai Darlington Pairs turning caps into inductors. )
• Switched Mode Rail Splitter.  Turns 19V 7.8A laptop supply into +/- 9.5V at 14A total. This should deliver a clean 4.5 Wrms per channel into 8 ohms Stereo, will drive ~28Wrms into stereo 2 ohm.)  (1st pass is paper designed so I could discuss it with a friend. Layout is started, but on back burner because my friend lost interest in sharing the build effort.)