Use your remotes.
Help me solve static electricity problem
Lately I keep sending my Classe Amp and/or conrad-johnson preamp into protection mode simply by touching anything in my system. A loud pop goes through my speakers and it's very, very disconcerting. I'm smart enough to try to touch something metal before touching my rack, but this does not always work. Apparently I'm not smart enough to solve this condundrum, though. Any ideas????
- ...
- 56 posts total
12-12-10: HeyrazThat's an imaginative thought, but I don't think it would help. Basically a capacitor acts like an impedance whose value decreases as frequency increases. So it would shunt high frequency energy to ground, within the constraints presented by the inductance of the associated wiring. But the safety ground wiring that is already present will do the same thing, except better since it will conduct low frequencies in addition to high frequencies. A device called a Transorb is commonly used for dealing with brief but large voltage spikes, but determining how to best apply one within a particular piece of equipment would be problematical. One approach that I think might work in many cases is a variation of Kijanki's earlier suggestion, about lowering the impedance of the path between each chassis and a common ground point (such as the screw on a wallplate, or the chassis of a power conditioner). But my suggestion would be to do that with braided rf ground straps, rather than heavy gauge wiring, connected in a star pattern as Kijanki suggested. That would present a path for the extraneous currents that is truly low impedance at high frequencies. Industrial distributors such as Digikey carry ground strap material, but typically in large quantities. It is offered in smaller quantities by a number of eBay sellers -- search under "ground strap." Regards, -- Al |
Isn't static at very high voltage? Would a cap simply look like a resistor to a very high voltage...even if the current were essentially zero? We had static problems at work and a bigtime solution in the form of HV electrodes protruding into the airflow...it was a top to bottom 'laminar' flow ROOM. We also had a little gun....called a 'ZeroStat' which was effective in the reduction static charge on say....Teflon Cassettes, used to hold silicon wafers. The static would attract dust like a mad dog. http://www.2spi.com/catalog/photo/zerostat.shtml |
Isn't static at very high voltage?Yes. Would a cap simply look like a resistor to a very high voltage...even if the current were essentially zero?It would look like some combination of capacitance, inductance, and resistance, with various resulting overall impedance magnitudes and phase angles at each of the many frequency components of the static discharge. But since those impedances together with the impedance of the connecting wires would be higher than that of a heavy gauge wire by itself, and much higher than that of a braided ground strap, the capacitor would serve no purpose. Re the Zerostat, keep in mind that what we are trying to de-staticize here is the person! Best regards, -- Al |
- 56 posts total