On Thu, 30 Mar 2000, David Lesher wrote:
What DOES scare the shit out of me is battery rooms built by idiots; including those who THINK they know what they are doing, as well as the "It's just a few batteries" crowd.
Any battery capable of being recharged SCARES ME TO DEATH. (Well not quite). Doing a fair bit of electronic design in the past, I realize how fragile a circuit can be. All it takes is the wrong thing to short out/go bad and you have boining sulfuric acid and the resulting fumes. The worst story I've heard about this is from a friend who was taking a UPS maintenance class (We're talking the big 3 phase ones here). While he was taking the class, someone came in and asked if anyone in the class had a specific model of UPS installed anywhere. What had happened is that due to bad design, a solder joint would melt and "reflow" onto an ajoining trace and as a result the charger would turn on full, eventually boiling the batteries. I don't even want to think what equipment looks like after it has been through sulfuric acid vapors. - Forrest W. Christian (forrestc@imach.com) KD7EHZ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- iMach, Ltd., P.O. Box 5749, Helena, MT 59604 http://www.imach.com Solutions for your high-tech problems. (406)-442-6648 ----------------------------------------------------------------------