On Aug 18, 2009, at 7:08 AM, M. Adam Davis wrote:

> We're engineers.  If you want to have a discussion that has no
> warnings on it then don't start it here.

Yeah. Some of us are software engineers who get nervous around 110VAC  
and whose knowledge of safety considerations continues to go down as  
the voltage goes up.  In fact, I'd suspect that MOST of us fit in  
that  second category.    How thick does plexiglass have to be to  
safely insulate you from that 1e6V terminal?  How far does it need to  
extend on the sides?  How badly with surface contamination or local  
humidity influence such things?  At what voltage and types of  
capacitors do you have to worry about that self-recharging effect?   
When was the last time you had to worry about leakage via corona  
discharges?  Tesla coils were (at one time) deemed relatively safe to  
discharge through oneself, but I'm pretty sure that's no longer true  
with some of the (10+ foot tall) tesla coils I've seen recently.  I  
see otherwise intelligent people expecting to discharge photoflash- 
class caps (100uF, 300V) using normal pushbuttons FREQUENTLY...

Go ahead and post safety concerns; those to know enough can ignore  
them or argue the details (personally, I find I learn the most from  
PICList discussions if two or more near-experts end up arguing about  
something...)  And you might save some noob's life.

BillW

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