Took my first power supply shock yesterday. I was lucky.

[nosaj]

As I wrote that, I was thinking. With modern flat screen technology, most younger folks probably have absolutely no idea what a CRT anode cap is.

You'd think big fat red wire Danger Danger Will Robinson.

nosaj

[catalin gramada]

You wanna funny story? I have one happen at chantier with one of my colleague. The guy welding a structure over head, staying on a metallic folding ladder. At a point he wants to change the electrod but as he keeping the ladder with a hand to keep steady, put the new electrode in the mouth trying to fit it with the other hand in the welding plier. At a point I heard him: What is happen with the lights ? Is flicking. Than we understand his eyes convulsing during AC shocks he get at mains frequency...He was lucky enough to not fall from 5 meters high.

[DrGonz78]

An arc welder runs around 25V. You could probably arc weld with a 12V car battery and jumper cables if you wanted, I haven't tried. But I know you can melt a screwdriver if you short a car battery out.
For a cap to spark at low voltage is not all that surprising, especially big value caps. What surprises me most is how much discharged caps will self charge again, but I guess that too is similar to a car battery recovering after discharge.

I just had the example in my head of a tube amp that I had drained the filter caps. Those caps would be 20-40uf and they are slowly rejuvenating a voltage of 7-10v. It’s almost as if you are detecting a ghost voltage and I would be willing to wager the current source is nearly nothing. Although I totally agree that the Roland or other type solid state amps have filter caps from 2200-1000uf. All of this just intensifies the pain.

[Helmholtz]

The effect is known as dielectric absortion (DA): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dielectric_absorption

[mikepukmel]

I used to work in a rectifier factory. They made rectifiers for military/aerospace applications. They had custom built automated testing rigs, that did fwd v drop, and PIV curve tests (and a bunch of other tests). There was a switch on the back of the tester to put it on "auto repeat" mode. They had some of these testers hooked to automated parts handlers for bulk testing, but quite a few for hand testing small lots. Somebody moved one of the machines and hit the switch so that it was in auto repeat mode. I dropped a part into the clips, pressed the start button, and before I looked at the tester again, grabbed the part to pull it out and put the next one in. It was very low current, but something like 2500 v. It was 28 years ago, but I can still remember the "blip, blip, blip" pulses. I think my hair hurt.

[mikepukmel]

You'd think big fat red wire Danger Danger Will Robinson.

nosaj

oh man, my good friend from my home town, his dad repaired TV's back in the day (late 60's through the 70's). Dirt floor basement, old test equipment piled up all over the place. I got a tour of the shop once and watched him put one hand in his back pocket, and carefully move test probes with the other hand. he explained why, and the voltages involved, so I stood back much further.

[Delta362]

Glad you are ok!