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| Workbench electrical safety advice |
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| l9o:
I'm currently setting up a workshop with a workbench for developing, debugging and reverse engineering electronics. Pretty standard stuff: an oscilloscope, power supply, function generator, etc. I have an electrician redoing my basement electrical, so this feels like a good time to think about safety of my workshop. What is some advice you would give to someone who is setting up a bench from scratch? Do I need GFCI outlets? An AFCI breaker? Something I should do to ground my workbench? Anything else? Currently I have planned: 1. A separate 20A breaker for the workshop area, shared between lights and all the outlets in the room 2. On top of the workbench, 4 outlets: so I can plug in DUTs and other temporary devices like soldering iron. I might add a wall switch for these 4 outlets, just for peace of mind. 3. On the bottom of the workbench, 2 outlets: so I can leave a few instrumentation devices plugged in all the time (mostly power supply and oscilloscope) 4. On another corner of the workshop I also have outlets for computer, etc - though I don't expect those to be using DUTs all that often For context, I'm a Software Engineer who likes to play with electronics and radio/SDR, so mostly low voltage stuff. I would imagine I want to protect myself and my gear from ground loops, issues with scope grounding and accidental fuck ups I might do with the DUTs like shorts. If there are any EEVBlog videos or other material that you find useful, feel free to send my way - I tried searching for this but mostly just found material about electrical safety in general, not a whole lot of advice for an electronics lab. Would be glad to get recommendations of any products as well. |
| themadhippy:
--- Quote ---A separate 20A breaker for the workshop area, shared between lights and all the outlets in the room --- End quote --- might want to consider putting the lights on a different circuit to your bench supply,that way when something goes bang your not plunged into darkness. |
| rstofer:
--- Quote from: l9o on December 16, 2022, 03:44:51 pm ---What is some advice you would give to someone who is setting up a bench from scratch? Do I need GFCI outlets? An AFCI breaker? Something I should do to ground my workbench? Anything else? --- End quote --- There are outlets which combine both AFCI and GFCI features. I would use them... |
| Brianf:
You don't have enough outlets. My workshop (well the one I'm in now) has 16 of them easily accessible for occasional kit, soldering irons, and similar. Then there's the two 9-way strips behind the test equipment shelf. There are then another 12 under the PC bench for PC stuff. |
| rstofer:
I would mount a long multi-outlet strip to the bench or to the wall behind the bench. You can't have too many outlets. I might put one down low and one at the table top. You really can't have too many outlets. Most strips have the outlets so close together that a wall-wart uses up 2 or 3 spaces so right away you have less outlets than you bought. I get around the problem with short extension cords: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09Y1SXW3J |
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