On 2011-10-02, Tim Wescott wrote:
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?

No, it was a "female connector".

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".


Well, I kept it. Going through all of them means a few wasted
hours. But I guess I have to bite the bullet and do it.

i