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did you ever see a plasma ball fly out of a power strip?
coppercone2:
So my power went out and when it came back on this all metal Lowes brand power strip spit out a fireball into the middle of the living room (looked like welding splatter from a dirty job). When I took it apart later it look like a standard damaged MOV type deal. The power strip was on a table facing a wall so it must have shot a fireball into the wall then bounced it off the drywall into the room.
What I don't get is that its pretty well sealed/tight and the MOV is far away from the outlet receptacles. How does something make it all the way there? I feel like an ant could have had trouble getting there through that maze of shit. The seal on the power strip was good tight metal fit, so the only place it coulda came from was the holes.
A triplite also got damaged but I did not see what happened, it just looks really fucked up inside with MOV soot. They shattered/exploded btw
This was ~ 1 year old, contractors grade with the heavy rubber cord, attached to a little bedside table with a lamp and a clock on it. I took apart the clock and looked at the lamp light bulb (its very simple) and there was no problems. I know it was clean because it was attached under the table protected from dust by the table top in an area where normally nothing happens so I know there was nothing in the socket.
The trajectory was really weird too because it must have traveled in like a logarithmic spiral or something.
I have seen videos of I think silicon sparked with alot of energy to make some kinda plasma ball shit so I wanna think maybe the material in the MOV did it. But it was not a menacing white ball, it was like orangeiush and rather small but when I saw it I knew what it was.
this must be the source,
https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/bourns-inc/MOV-20D201K/2799097?utm_adgroup=Circuit%20Protection&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Dynamic%20Search_EN_RLSA_Buyers&utm_term=&utm_content=Circuit%20Protection&gclid=CjwKCAiAhbeCBhBcEiwAkv2cY7Nj-BGjxjWTHtIdaMadEM-j_QlTepGD0Tl-1ReS6YFqvY8u0fT3JBoCX6cQAvD_BwE
it looks like 3 in parallel with 1 blown
SilverSolder:
Wow, sounds like an underwear-replacement-required event... :scared:
coppercone2:
Basically I have a living room/kitchen connected by a open double wide door in this small house
The table and the refrigerator are on the same circuit (it is done according to the wall not the room), I noticed when the power went out I went to go clean because it was like too dirty to wheel the generator out, and I got a little winded moving a snow blower back to the shed up hill, then the power came back but the fridge was off so I flipped the breaker that was off and it either quietly reset or reset while I was walking up the stairs, when I was upstairs my family member was down stairs so I yelled to try to turn it on again (I thought maybe I was being too gentle with the reset or something), and when they did I saw it happen.
It was not scary because it was a little low energy (maybe its just because I have experience with a cheap ass arc welder), but the ramifications of that making it into a box of tissues that I normally keep on the table would be potentially very bad. I did not see exactly where the ball traveled until it was in plain sight in the middle of the living room, because maybe the lights flashed or I was just thinkin about the refrigerator too hard or something
So it must have traveled from the MOV down one of the folded crimps, out the hole, near or bounce off the wall then arc fly to the middle of the room.
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I don't see any signs of arc damage to the contacts when I look down em, and the whole thing is sealed tight. The PCB is far away because it has light pipes going to the LED that are hot glued into place. The bottom of the glue on the light pipes is scorched but not the top. The other possibility is that it maybe made turbulance which made the light pipes deflect down and make a temporary hole for the plasma ball before going back into place but it seems dubious that it can happen. The tripp-lite actually took way more internal damage but it was at my computer bench so I don't know what happened under the table.. I think those are sealed better though. This one has like a long crimp thing that is hollow instead of individual outlets.
The folding of the metla is actually high quality on this, I can assure you that the chassis was tight, it HAD to either some how form outside or travel outside through some complex path. Maybe they skid over a ground plane like a circuit rail gun thingy?
Edit I wanna say I saw it when it was OVER the table the power strip is mounted on but I could not tell where it came from but the only damaged thing is the power strip, the clock works fine and I took it apart and it just has a little transformer anyway and the light bulb is sealed and the lamp is the most simple lamp and it was screwed in tight and it was moving upwards at a lower elevation then the lamp so it could not have came from the lamp. The outlet had 2 plugs so it could not have come from there and the MOV is like shattered so I assume it went from the MOV and out one of the grounding holes.
What do you call this phenomena?
And yea when its screwed in and tight there is still a hole for the ground pin big enough for a large ant. the brand name is PRIME 101418 UTPB 2135
amyk:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_lightning
Pictures please...
coppercone2:
of what? there is a cracked mov and some soot
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