27 Apr
2005
27 Apr
'05
7:28 p.m.
On Wed, 27 Apr 2005 23:56:46 +0100 (BST)
ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote:
A few years back, I had a bench power supply ('constant current/constant
voltage' type) that would output 5000 volts at up to a few hundred
milliamperes.
SCARY POWER SUPPLY.
I sold it on eBay, hopefully to somebody who knew what he was doing.
People here
play with power in the form of higher voltages, also in
the form of high energy. Some of those computer supplies designed
to pump out dozens to sometimes hundres of amps of power posess
the capability to melt off a ring (and the encircled finger), watch
Good point... Classic computer PSUs will often supply over 100A on the
5V line (that's only 500W, after all), and that is enough to melt
jewellery, etc.
High voltage, high current is, of course, the worst. A place I worked
at had a very nice bench PSU that could output 0-300V, 0-10A (no,
that's not a typo). It was very useful for sorting out SMPSUs, because
you could set the current limiter low enough to prevent major damage
if the chopper went short-circuit or whatever. But that PSU had enough
power behind it to do serious damage to you if you weren't careful
with it.