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Being electrocuted by your pinball ? - surprising fix

DRD

DRD

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Now I didn't want to un-necessarily scare folk before the league meeting this weekend. As I fixed this two days before. And everyone made it out alive.

When I bought paragon last year it was electrocuting me when I touched the on off switch. I had upgraded my fuse box and breakers a couple of years earlier so i felt confident that it would not kill me. I just could not understand why i was getting shocks as the earthing strip was in really good order. And resistance between the metal touch points and the earth pin of the plug was low

So I replaced the on off switch and it seemed to cure it. When i destroyed the original one to see what was inside I could find nothing wrong with it. So i just carried on using paragon without incident for months. This was the only game using this wall socket

When I put vector alongside Paragon on Thursday ahead of the league meeting this weekend I was getting electrocuted when I touched both games at once

Received advice from andy and mania and phil at heaven. And cured it. But the fault might surprise you

I ran my voltmeter between the two games and there was ac and dc current passing between them !

I then used a long lead to test against funhouse and it seemed vector was guilty. I checked vector out in terms of continuity of the earthing strip and measuring its resistance to the pin of the plug and could find nothing wrong.

I was about to retire both games for the weekend and drag fathom in from my workshop a an alternate but as a final check i considered whether it might be the mains supply at fault. So i swapped the plugs over in the sockets, and now paragon was the guilty party.

The actual cause was the WALL SOCKET. One of the earths was good. The other wasn't. And it only seemed to happen when running two games.

So I replaced the wall socket with a brand new one and that dealt with the problem.
 
My electrician was supposed to have checked out my whole house when i upgraded my fusebox.

I wonder whether he missed this as it only seemed to happen when two plugs were in this socket, and it was also an intermittent issue.

But when you own pinballs you do become aware of the strange things that can happen with old and/ or imperfect electrical connections
 
Interesting story David, I've never had this problem! Had a few tingles from touching stuff like flipper mechs with a game powered on but nothing major. I've always been told a general rule of thumb is stay away from the transformer and high voltage displays while a game is powered on and you won't be touching anything that can kill you.
 
Yeah, don't go reaching for the transformer fuse when its plugged in ;)
 
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The worst electric shock I ever got was from a game that wasn't even plugged in. I picked up the plug and the bastard kicked me like a mule. Them capacitors can really hold a charge.

The other bad one that probably could have finished me off was indeed from left hand on the transformer while right hand was on the lockdown bar receiver. I suspect that I got over 100V right across my heart so that was a bit of a wake up call.

Be careful out there guys, I've never heard of anyone being killed by a pinball machine electric shock but I have no doubt it musta happened.
 
DRD said:
My electrician was supposed to have checked out my whole house when i upgraded my fusebox.
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About 12 years ago I completed a few electrical C&G courses including inspection and testing, 2 of the guys on the courses with me worked for a small local electrical firm. They said they did one or 2 tests on installations but made most of the results up! ..frightening isn't it?
 
DRD said:
My electrician was supposed to have checked out my whole house when i upgraded my fusebox.

I wonder whether he missed this as it only seemed to happen when two plugs were in this socket, and it was also an intermittent issue.

But when you own pinballs you do become aware of the strange things that can happen with old and/ or imperfect electrical connections
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As you say it was intermittant. The earth could well have been sitting a little loose in the terminal so sometimes was making connection, when you opened it up it popped out. Sparky will do tests at the board, or end of circuits ... he won't open up every single socket/switch unless there is something showing amiss.
 
kevlar said:
About 12 years ago I completed a few electrical C&G courses including inspection and testing, 2 of the guys on the courses with me worked for a small local electrical firm. They said they did one or 2 tests on installations but made most of the results up! ..frightening isn't it?
Click to expand...

The reality is that in all walks of life you get folk who only want two things in a job:
  1. do as little as they can get away with so they get home as early as possible
  2. earn money right now
You may think that your surgeon, solicitor, electrician, builder, garage ...... cares about what they are doing. But in my experience there are a significant number of folk who do not think long term about repeat business, good reputation etc they just want to get paid and go home. These sorts do not give a damn about your circumstances as the internet means that people no longer shop locally, they are used to dealing with folk from all over the place who they have never seen before.

You might well think that this is the mindset of some of the less scrupulous pinball dealer type folk, but I could not possibly comment
 
Also dont forget a little tingle to you and I is nothing but can kill your pet fairly easily.
Cats walking across the machines can get a dart up the front legs and down the back legs!
Might be an idea to keep them off the games tho..........
 
Aye I learned recently that if it's giving you a little shock there's an earth missing somewhere.

I bought 2 cheap travel adaptors for the French games I bought and they were zapping me. Turns out the cheap travel adaptors just don't bother earthing anything and only convert 2 pins :eek:
 
Got a real belter from my first EM that I bought...
Was doing it up at work before i brought it home and unknown to me it had been wired the wrong way with a different flex years ago but all the switch was doing was stopping the neautral so the internals were live...
Anyway, the problem was with the main reset bank where there's a 240v supply at the bottom unknown to me that was live... But to make things worse my left arm was resting on a metal workbench so the current went straight across...
Closest I've been to death, I let out a big war cry of "BASTARD".

BB
 
Was your arm dead for a day, you've not had a proper belt until you can't feel your arm :)
 
Always worth sticking a meter on all metal parts to check for continuity to earth from time to time. Even if the earth braid looks alright it may not be connected. Found this on one side rail, wasn't earthed even though it had earth braid attached. Slight rust on the bolt and washer was breaking the connection.
 
mark9 said:
Found this on one side rail, wasn't earthed even though it had earth braid attached. Slight rust on the bolt and washer was breaking the connection.
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I used to release the coach-head bolts for each of the side rails in order to peel off the protective plastic film used on the rails. It was simply for tidiness at the time, but a scrap of that plastic remaining under the bolt head would affect the earth connection.

In electro-mechanical games, I've found that if wiring has plastic insulation it's carrying mains voltage.
 
cooldan said:
The worst electric shock I ever got was from a game that wasn't even plugged in. I picked up the plug and the bastard kicked me like a mule. Them capacitors can really hold a charge.

The other bad one that probably could have finished me off was indeed from left hand on the transformer while right hand was on the lockdown bar receiver. I suspect that I got over 100V right across my heart so that was a bit of a wake up call.

Be careful out there guys, I've never heard of anyone being killed by a pinball machine electric shock but I have no doubt it musta happened.
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I've had one off the plug hehe , proper wrist-twister !
 
Jb3d said:
Just found this thread. Very helpful,warning. I've just bought one of these testers from eBay today. As someone who mowed through his mower cable last summer...then picked up the live bare wires to inspect them...I'm probably someone who should be careful with this stuff.
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I take it the house electrics aren't RCD protected? In which case I'd def recommend an rcd adaptor for outside tools.



http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B00...cd+adaptor&dpPl=1&dpID=3174XFJ+WVL&ref=plSrch
 
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