Arfa Daily wrote:


The permanent staff at their Bath branch are usually pretty
knowlegeable; some of the 'temps' aren't quite so clued-up, but they
are generally enthusiastic. Most importantly, none of them have tried
to pretend they understand things that they don't and nobody has ever
tried to bull**** me.


--
~ Adrian Tuddenham ~


I have to say ditto for the branch near me ...

The weekend before last I needed a 24v DC power supply in a hurry for a
job that had to be installed the following Monday. There wasn't time to
order anything by post so I popped into the Bath branch of Maplins and
bought a plugtop SMPS. I PAT tested it with 500v DC and it appeared OK,
but I wasn't very impressed by the 200mV p/p sawtooth ripple on the
output (it said "low ripple" on the box), so I installed some extra
smoothing in the audio filter which it it powered.

While I was installing it, a colleague touched the metal box of the
filter with one hand and the metal casing of an amplifier with the
other, and received a substantial 'tingle'. I measured 80v rms between
the two and a leakage current of 1.4 mA on short-circuit. The equipment
had to be put into service immediately, so I made sure the two boxes
were properly bonded together and left the PSU working.

When I reported this to Maplins a few days later, the shop-floor staff
promptly referred me to the manager. He took down all the details in
writing and assured me it would be reported to the chief buyer in his
e-mailed report that evening.

The shop staff handled it perfectly properly, but I wait with interest
to see how their head office will deal with it.


--
~ Adrian Tuddenham ~
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www.poppyrecords.co.uk