On Oct 2, 2:37*pm, Ignoramus23561 ignoramus23...@NOSPAM.
23561.invalid 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

Wow, what excitement. I'm also pretty surprised that none of the 75 or
so responses here suggested that, while blowing them out with
compressed air is a good idea, you should also hold a vacuum cleaner
nozzel nearby to catch the dislodged dust, lest it just settle back
into other (possibly worse) places, your lungs, for instance. While
you're at this, you may want to spend a couple of hours vacuuming any
other horizontal surfaces that may be holding this dust. You really
don't want it raining down off the rafters onto your machinery.