Quality of Surge Protector?

(John Ellenberger) #1

Out here in blizzard land it is even dryer than normal so of course I lost a 7 hour holiday ornament project about 5 hours into it yesterday. I have the Dewalt grounded and a capacitor on the controller power, but it looks like I really have to ground everything.

In reviewing the various advice snippets again, I became confused by the conflicting advice about whether or not to plug the PC/Controller into one protector or two. Currently I have both in a dedicated single low-end (Depot) surge protector.

It occurred to me that the quality of the protector was a big issue. Nobody seems to talk about this in the posts that I found. Two days ago I lost a job by turning on the drill press. THAT JUST SHOULDN’T HAPPEN. So I am going to invest in a high quality suppressor that can isolate each of the things plug into it and seems to have good suppression qualities overall.

Tripp Lite Isobar 4 Outlet Surge Protector

Anybody else considered this solution as part of the static/surge issue?

(William Adams) #2

It’s managed to become one of the suggestions:

  • if you have a surge protector, please connect the machine through it

I believe that the best arrangement would be:

  • trim router and dust collection in one circuit protector
  • machine and computer in a second

and the idea would be for those two to be plugged into separate circuits if possible, and the latter to be one which has no heavy loads. I believe that’s right, @Jorge?

Another aspect which hasn’t come up much is the overall quality / nature of the power being supplied by the electric company — we actually couldn’t use compact flourescents back when they first came in vogue, they’d go out w/in a year (brand/quality didn’t matter) — it came up in a discussion w/ some neighbors who all had the same problem and when we checked w/ the company it turned out to be a failing transformer, the replacement of which resolved the problem (but we were already buying into LEDs).

(John Ellenberger) #3

Well as several folks have said you often don’t have the luxury of completely separate circuits. In my case the panel has already been replaced once and is full again. No more circuits.

We have a small muni power company and our manager has built one of the most sophisticated monitoring systems in the state. Smart meters. Live grid monitoring map. We have clean power.

Logic tells me that a quality power conditioner and proper grounding (for issues on-board) should prevent these problems. Maybe a clamp-on ferrite core on the USB cable ends.

(Dan Nelson) #4

I use one of these, or very similar:

I plug my PC, SO3, SuperPID (with router attached) into this, but my vacuum is plugged directly into the wall (same outlet, 20 amp).

I run all of my “hot” wires out the right side of my SO3, and all of the signal, steppers, probe, etc., out the left side of my machine, away from each other. I have no other special grounds, ferrite rings, rain dances or anything. I have never had an ESD related disconnect. I have purposely unplugged the whole works with it running and it continued to run without hiccups.

Dan

(John Ellenberger) #5

Darn I missed that one. I put it down as my plan B.