by TLHarrell » Mon Aug 08, 2011 6:06 pm
In High School, a buddy and I built a HeNe laser power supply from a kit. We didn't have it mounted in any enclosure yet while we were testing it out. His little brother decides to go all "Jedi Knight" with the tube on us and my buddy ended up with the power board sitting flat in his hand. Now, this thing was a bank of capacitors the size of a small paving brick, and it was energized. I dove across the room to unplug it as all he could manage were some odd contortions and surprised squeaks passed through a clenched jaw. Took about 2 months for the image of the circuit board traces to fade from the palm of his hand. Fortunately, he was merely stunned from the incident. His younger brother eventually suffered more than my buddy did.
Grounding should not be a major issue. The extrusions all are anodized, but where they are cut, drilled, milled, sanded or screwed they will create a connection. Test this by setting your DVM (Digital Volt Meter) to Ohms (x1) and probing along the frame and to the ground prong on your power cord. The needle should swing practically to 0 at any point where you make actual electrical contact. Test out all grounding connections for the electronics components, any additional ground wires, all bolt connections, etc. The outside anodized part of the frames you will likely not get a connection.
For the electronics, take each piece at a time. All the controls are low voltage stuff. You simply mount the power supply for the low voltage, then run wiring to power each module. Then you run the control wiring (to the motors, between boards, etc.) per the specifications and documents. The high voltage stuff you would basically do last. Even then, it's a matter of properly mounting the components, wiring it per the documentation, making sure everything is set right, then testing. Taken as a whole, the project looks like a lot of work and a lot of complicated stuff, but if you break it down it's not all that difficult if you can follow directions and diagrams. Most stuff here is very well documented, and if you run into anything you do not know you can ask it here.
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