On Sun, 02 Oct 2011 13:37:04 -0500, Ignoramus23561 wrote:

I had a little bit of a new experience today.

My new place has cables dropped from the ceiling, with receptacles
hanging somewhat above my height.

I was moving a crane and bumped into one of them, nothing big, just a
minor bump. Then I saw that the receptacle was on fire (or rather,
flames were coming out from inside), with small explosions inside.

I ran to the electrical control panel and turned off electricity to the
whole building. The fire stopped.

After a short while, I opened up the receptacle. It turned out that it
was full of grinding dust (! -- how did it get inside) -- and,
apparently, the dust shifted and shorted the contacts. It was a short
circuit, but with a lot of resistance from the dust, so it caught fire,
but did not trip a breaker.

I cut it off and taped the individual wires, but I am now thinking that
I need to take all of those things apart and blow them out with
compressed air.

Comments?

i

So was it was one of those hanging metal box thingies, with an ordinary
receptacle mounted in the box?

If so then whacking the whole thing off was probably more than was
necessary: replacing the receptacle and blowing out the dust (and the
dust in all the other receptacles as well) is probably more "right".

--
www.wescottdesign.com