What happened?

[JakeC]

Hi all, trying to understand what I did wrong or what caused my volt meter tip to arc, ruin my tester and trip out rcd & mcb. I had a fluke t100 and have been fault finding a tumble drier. I probed L2 onto heat element to check voltage was present and blew the tip off. What caused this? Cheers

 

[LankyWill]

maybe capacitance? was the dryer plugged in and turned on?

 

[telectrix]

meter set on ohms?

 

[davesparks]

Contact between L and N or E will have caused it (or L to L if TP)

 

[Leesparkykent]

jekyll from flebay?

 

[R G]

Possibly touched the earth and the live at the same time with the tip....

Dave beat me to it ....lol.....

 

[JakeC]

I used a fluke t100 volt meter so not a case of wrong settings it's all automatic and I'm sure I didn't short :thinking:

 

[davesparks]

I used a fluke t100 volt meter so not a case of wrong settings it's all automatic and I'm sure I didn't short :thinking:

For an arc to have occurred there must have been conductors at two different potentials making loose contact.

 

[Leesparkykent]

I will post photo of where I probed tomorrow :nopity:

haha..

 

[sparksburnout]

I will post photo of where I probed tomorrow :nopity:

I could do with a good probe myself, I'm looking forward to this. If you don't have any luck we will make do with the tumble dryer.

 

[telectrix]

seems to have been a bit of a fluke.

 

[ruston]

Maybe your test lead was snagged in an earthed sharp edge. Have you checked the leads.

 

[telectrix]

should have used the correct tool for repairing a fumble dryer.

 

[sparksburnout]

Sounds like a load of cold air to me

 

[telectrix]

funny, coz i just had to fix our dryer. think i posted about it last week. bloody thing tripped RCD an hour before we went away for new year,

 

[Marvo]

Did you do a risk assessment before testing a machine that was live and I'm guessing actually operating?

Here's my guess what happened.....

 

[davesparks]

That couldn't possibly have happened because, as you pointed out, he would have carried out a risk assessment for the live testing procedure and as a result used shrouded probes in accordance with gs38

 

[telectrix]

That couldn't possibly have happened because, as you pointed out, he would have carried out a risk assessment for the live testing procedure and as a result used shrouded probes in accordance with gs38

and the pope is married.....

 

[PEG]

This is why Zorro gave up testing :smile5: