Major equipment damage here caused by an overcurrent condition?

This image comes from the Southern California area, and was on a CD I exchanged with an Instructor some time ago, so I don't have the particulars here.

"Confiscate my stapler? That'll teach 'em!"

"Holy ----! They're going to seriously dock my paycheck for this one...."

++

It looks like that rack went up in flames.....the wall in the back looks scorched.

[This message has been edited by SvenNYC (edited 11-12-2003).]

whats with the yellow warning tape here? dont tell me that stuff is still on power?

If they had shut it down, there wouldn't be any light to take the picture!

Regardless of the wording on the tape, I imagine there is substantial physical risk around the area. Likely the electrician taped it off and that's all he had.

Whew—my cubicle’s AOL access and coffee pot still work. I say the $60,000 I saved the plant on that silly thermographic scanning last month is so much the better!




[This message has been edited by Bjarney (edited 11-13-2003).]

The Yellow tape ? " Well why does it read,' Crime scene'.

tom

Thomas: the yellow tape looks like it says "High Voltage", however it is upside-down and must therefore mean "Low voltage".

Bump ....

OMG! Does this pic qualify for 'pic of the day'?

What was he thinking?

"I'm glad I was not here when that happened!"

So does anybody know what this was, besides cooked, looks like an ATS or something along those lines.

"The Yellow tape ? " Well why does it read,' Crime scene'." If it did say that, he'd be thinking, "Shhhh, don't tell anyone that I'm involved."

Ian A.

Bump

Well, since the top tape is upside down, and the bottom tape is right side up, there is only one logical answer:

It's Medium-Voltage Switchgear!

This looks surprisingly like the remains of some industrial gear which was given "Destructive testing."

Many years ago in a trade mag, they showed the before and after pics of switchgear that underwent such testing. Beautiful copper busses as big as one's leg (think 3 times the size of the ones in this pic) were twisted and broken free from the supports, lots of flash damage, etc. The test pad is outdoors, everything controlled from within a bunker. (Think like in the old nuke test films.)

The blast was so powerful it reportedly knocked the engineers out of thier chairs.

The test current was IIRC in excess of 5 million amps! Test voltage was 4kv.

[I digress here to let everyone know that from here on the smiley at the head of my post doesn't apply at all to the following:]

It also reminds me of the complete failure of an MCC at a plant in Long Beach some years ago. I was working for a company servicing cinemas and CCTV cameras, we had a call that some cameras were out. One in particular was mounted on the end of a 6" pipe about 20' out and 50' above a driveway. [I hate heights!]

The sr. tech and I were on our way up to the roof when I noticed a lot of SO cords snaking up the stairs from 2nd floor up. Around 3rd floor I caught a wiff of that familiar smell. Round the corner of the 4th, the cords turned into the room. I walked in the see an entire wall about 40' by 10' high completely charred and melted metal remains. The entire room had smoke/flash damage and melted metal sprayed everywhere. An inquiry to the plant enginer revealed that they had been acid washing the floor above, it followed some bad sealing of conduits into the MCC. (I think it was 480v) As the first fault killed some motors, two workers came in to investigate. As a third person entered the room the whole thing let go. Tragically, one person was killed instantly and the other two were severely burned. The fault cascaded into a panel which killed the feed to the transformer serving the circuit our cameras were on.

It made both of us think twice about how we work around live panels and switchgear.

[This message has been edited by mxslick (edited 08-16-2005).]

Bumpa-bumpa....

the look on your boses face when he sa your handy work go up in flames. "PRICLESS"

for a new switch gear "VISA"

26% interest on the balance.
Ruthless.

I don't think this was a test. The fronts of the breakers look like someone tried to put the fire out with a fire extinguisher. Kind of like putting a bandaid on a shotgun wound.



[This message has been edited by electure (edited 09-09-2006).]

Relocated from the Violations Photo Area

[This message has been edited by electure (edited 09-09-2006).]

Just think of all the ozone that burnt up too! Has anyone else ever heard of that expression? A journeyman I used to work with when I was still an apprentice used to say that when there was an arc flash. Makes sense to me.

"Whut oh! Um, I'm going to lunch!"

Maybe this was a fault on equipment start-up. The wall behind the guy walking looks like new sheetrock with the joints taped. Or maybe just bad lighting.