Forgotten knowledge: generator load testing

[@gabewacker502]

As a Caterpillar EPG technician. I will tell you the new instructions are nothing more than electronic fire tinder. You’re better off googling half the time.

[@meh-canics9628]

Dont get me started

[@kylerdixon4901]

Seconded by another Cat EPG tech

[@timmcdaniels7083]

Same for the Detroit Diesel stuff for trucks.

[@BY-bj6ic]

GTS, man I use that almost every day. Need the TDS/MSDS? GTS

[@dallaskelly4213]

Can confirm, also a Cat tech. (Mainly HE Field, but have dabbled in EPG and PS) I agree all newer manuals are trash, but those for engines manufactured for Cat by others (Kubota, Perkins, Mitsubishi) and painted yellow, are on a whole new level of useless. More of a "replace this part, if problem still exists replace this part, etc." rather than an actual "check x, y, and z in this order, repeat to verify results" troubleshooting guide.

[@bigclivedotcom]

Liquid rheostat or salt water rheostat. There's an entry for it on Wikipedia. It was part of my training as an apprentice with an electrical engineering company. Used to be used as motor speed regulators, theatre lighting dimmers and dummy loads, and still find many applications where mere electronics would go bang and emit expensive smoke. The worst you can do with a liquid rheostat is boil it. Your breaker has a tripping curve. It will respond instantly (magnetically) to a sudden high current, but for low level overloads it takes time for the bimetallic strip to heat up. At twice the rated current it can take about a minute to trip depending on ambient temperature. For lower overloads it takes much longer - up to hours if at all.

[@afsarmstrongfiresafety7460]

Usually only about 15-20 minutes past when the toaster catches the laminate countertops on fire.

[@jonathanwright5550]

yeah we have slow blow fuses on some of our gear

[@GigsTaggart]

@@afsarmstrongfiresafety7460 the toaster can melt. the wires won't

[@berryreading4809]

I forget the specific brand of panel/breakers that are now defunct which would regularly wind up melting 14ga romex on a 15amp and 12ga on a 20amp with anything besides a dead short at the end of the line. They would eventually trip, but not until it ruined the feed line usually at the tightest radius, or the highest resistance connection in the line 🙆‍♂️ make great workshop panels for worn out high power brushed motors though 😄👍

[@russellhltn1396]

The delay seems fair enough. The whole point of a breaker is to prevent the wiring from overheating and staring a fire. In the same way a minor overload will take time to trip a breaker, it will also take time to heat the wires to a dangerous level.

[@Coniuratio456]

AvE is so skilled in doublespeak and innuendos that when our future Ministry of Truth investigates him they still won't know what the heck is he talking about.

[@loddude5706]

That's easy for you to say . . .

[@carlsonbench1827]

Ain’t no fact checking this.

[@greatwhitenorthlife2327]

Big brother Dew-claw is watching you

[@raymondmucklow3793]

Thats truedo

[@ahensley63]

As someone who has burned out a few kill-a-watts, I'll tell you theres a soldered in 15A fuse inside. I replaced it with a removable fuse holder and bam, new kill-a-watt.

[@chasingcapsaicin]

Just shunt it...

[@Guysm1l3y]

@Roy Bentley The flames means it's working!

[@mc_cpu]

I wanted a tear down of the dead kill a watt ... Please?

[@diesistkeinname795]

@Roy Bentley I mean, there usualy is some kind of breaker in the circit. That is unless you allready shunted the one in the panel or replaced it with a 64A one...

[@tonistaru]

You could make your life easier by replacing the fuse with the thickest nail you find lying around

[@Beam_of_Love]

I see your application to the Darwin Awards was denied once again.

[@victorcotu]

Until mehdi electroboom and styropyro win their own awards I don't think he has any chance.

[@victorcotu]

@@aaronshapiro2542 without a DNA paternity test I don't think they can

[@Blasterxp]

They adviced him to come back, only after he stept into the budget!

[@Fatamus]

Apparently he wasn't a big winner at the 2020 AVN Awards either.

[@atsdroid]

But surely he's working up to an igNobel!

[@erat91]

Mehdi on the electroboom channel just went over why and when breakers trip when they do. More load quicker snap something something.

[@arduinoversusevil2025]

Duly noted!

[@Theinatoriinator]

Its due to the ferromagnetic strip inside if the circuit breaker, if there is a short circuit then the eddy current trip it really fast, and if there is to large of a load it slowly heats up and eventually pulls a trigger from the expansion of the metal, so the more current passing through the faster it warms up.

[@TravisTerrell]

Oh yeah, I was pretty surprised to see the mfg curves at the end showing how *long* different loads take to trip! Makes sense; it would suck to have to fight the breaker with motor startup circuits/etc., but I would still think they would trip a _little_ faster.

[@SuperAWaC]

circuit breakers are meant to prevent the wires from melting, if they tripped right at their rating you'd never be able to turn a vacuum cleaner on.

[@TyPalowski]

@@arduinoversusevil2025 I work on programming circuit breaker trip times and got excited when I saw the time current curves for the breaker. See them every day!

[@sixtyfiveford]

I've fried the Kill a Watt a few times. Jump the thermal Fuse inside and she's good to go for another HOT run.

[@Jaspel]

I tried to get one warrantied once. They were a joke but a new one showed up 4 months later. Shorting the fuse helps, I stuck a small breaker on one.

[@73Shakes]

I agree that Kill-a-watt aint done until it gives up the ghost (smokes)! lol

[@Rosher18]

I ordered a trio of replacement fuses when I blew mine out. I was measuring the current used by an RV and the air conditioning went on. Ooooops.

[@caxm666]

and if he wants to test the temperature at which his mains electrical wiring melts, just stick a Canadian peso (US penny) behind the 20a fuse in the box when you replace it.

[@aterack833]

I have two newer dead ones before the company shut down, the death of them was sadly not the fuse but the sensing electronics, power passes through but it doesn’t snitch

[@Bradimus1]

This seems like a really slow way to get the paint off that bucket.

[@thesage1096]

haha

[@lordchickenhawk]

True, but it doesn't attack the plastic at least

[@jbuchholz77]

I think, though I'm no virologist, the names of novel viruses all have the year in them. So like one of the SARS was SARS-2002, and MERS was MERS-2005. I'm not sure of the rules of virus naming-conventions, but given how these things tend to mutate, makes sense that you would have some sort of time-indication in there. I'm as skeptical (cynical?) as the next engineer-turned-lawyer, but the amount of knowledge and the rate at which we are acquiring it in the biological arts is phenomenal. I mean how long did it take to create a polio vaccine, and how long did it take to create three vaccines approved by Western medical authorities for this? It boggles my mind at least..

[@jgulner]

Also, in 2015, the WHO began to advise against naming diseases after the part of the world where they were first noticed. So no more Spanish Flu (which probably arose in the US) or Middle East Respiratory Syndrome

[@DracoOmnia]

He did specify this is the first to become colloquially known for the year in which it debuted...

[@OwenOrsini]

@@DracoOmnia I would bet it's just because just "covid" rolls off the tongue better than the other names it has

[@punchsideiron8502]

I dunno, wuflu or holocough are pretty catchy.

[@kelmor11]

@MrPitjoey See the reason we don't do that anymore is because its largely becomes racist/xenophobic nonsense. For example, the spanish flu was first documented in the US. It did not come from Spain.

[@mduvigneaud]

The rooster says "Cockadoodledoo!" But the hen says "Anycock'lldo!"

[@brandonboulton2776]

Can confirm. Mine do it.

[@hdezn26]

I could say that for a certain "family" member . . .

[@rebelsoul2287]

My old rooster says "acockortwo'lldo" and my hens just walk around saying "fuck off " to everyone

[@andrewradford3953]

An acquaintance has so many dramas on his farm "Sans Hourglas" I swear his roosters are saying cockadoodledont by the lack of luck he has with unfairer sex..

[@SiskinOnUTube]

Or "anycockordildo"

[@kegandemand8728]

What it lacks in skookum it makes up in sketchy

[@x9x9x9x9x9]

"Whats the point project farm" LOL

[@iFixJunk]

I think I also caught a BTTF reference...

[@sobania6095]

"We're gonna test that."

[@ambius2]

I'm hoping that was an allusion to a collusion betweenst them.

[@Edwinhernandez-ec4xy]

Jimi Hendrix reference?? “Excuse me while I kiss this guy” play on words of “excuse my while I kiss the sky”

[@fballbud]

in the words of my friend. There is premarital beer and marital beer. One has a lot of head and the other has very little

[@Guysm1l3y]

Totally agree, the art and science of "technical writing" has been tossed aside like a geriatric nursing home resident whose kids visit once a year and are on their phones for the entire 40 minute visit.

[@prdoohan]

It's super refreshing to read instruction manuals which was clearly written by "a dude". Lawyers shouldn't be allowed to interfere.

[@christhirion9474]

Jip it was a required subject for me manny manny moons ago

[@mkultra4542]

40 minutes.... must feel like eternity.

[@DemonHunter92]

@@kilianortmann9979 So true! Submit 5 pages of documentation, and after the product safety and compliance department gets it, half my wording has been changed and it's now a 20 page monstrocity.

[@GodzillaGoesGaga]

It's not the art that is lost. It's the fact that Engineers/Technical folk don't get paid to write down knowledge any more. Everyone's in a rush to make profit!!

[@TDG2654]

Just so you know, trip time for a breaker at rated current is about 60 - 90 minutes

[@hauuau]

Not sure about North America but circuit breakers in Europe and Japan are actually required to not trip indefinitely at rated current in normal conditions. 60 minutes is usually trip time at about 1.1 to 1.5 of the rated current.

[@wearsjorge55]

In Australia everything up to 40 amps has to be on an Residual current device, on a standard new home the only breaker you'll see now is the main switch

[@stevemorris3710]

@@hauuau In North America, just twist those wire nuts on hope for the best.

[@NOTNOTJON]

Funny story. Buddy of mine and I were installing a doorway (really just cutting a hole in a wall) and in the process adding a light above which meant changing a regular circuit into a 3-switchero. We got the electrical 'done' first and turned on the light and then proceeded to plug in the sawsall to attack the wall. Soon as I pulled the trigger the lightbulb above us dimmed and we knew something was not as planned. Before fixing this my friend mentioned I should try to permanently mount the sawsall into the wall and call it a dimmer. It's not a bug, it's a feature.

[@insiainutorrt259]

@@NOTNOTJON Now thats the kind fo creative home improvement i like.... for other people

[@bobryant442]

Good old fashioned ionizing foot bath what for cleansing your sole of shmoo. I made one of these for my neighbor right before his whole estate got auctioned off .

[@GrahamDallas]

Plugging the angry pixies straight into a bucket of salt water, I'm in. Can't wait to see where this goes.

[@mickenoss]

Old school Theatre light dimmers ...well they were, people kept dying which put the kybosh on that.

[@leerman22]

Prisoners sometimes use makeshift immersion heaters to boil water for cooking (without permission)

[@notchagrandpa8875]

Ah ah ah what have you done did to me fishes??? All me salt water angel fishes are floating and smelling delicious might I add.

[@sonyvegasfxvideos]

If you're in the bucket, get out!

[@the_chomper]

@@leerman22 que @larry lawton

[@ryandunn6865]

How that kill a watt hasn't had a T added to its name, ill never know.

[@U.S.A.1791]

Damn that is a great idea.

[@ConfusedRaccoon]

My first thought was "Kill a Thot??? wha... Ohhhh."

[@petechiarizio1766]

The kilt a watt of Scotland

[@nfdr0kk3rz]

T' Kill a Watt, for those authentic yorkshire angry pixies

[@dmunson4514]

Took me a minute you cleaver little bastard

[@larrylitzinger7441]

When i started welding at marion power shovel , the welders were controlled by raising and lowering a copper rod in a water tank , it was in the sixtys.

[@MrPossumeyes]

Did the rod get lowered into the tank to the point the welders started screaming, then lifted a notch? Was there a Moaning Point where the welders were most efficient? Glad I was in junior school during the 60's, let me tell you!

[@larrylitzinger7441]

@@MrPossumeyes Yep ,you turned crank until the welder groaned for the heat you wanted !

[@larrylitzinger7441]

@@MrPossumeyes There was no OSHA yet , just the union and your common sense for your safety.

[@Murgoh]

When I was in tech school back in the 90:s they had a dynamometer in the engine lab using a generator to load the engine being tested and this kind of a resistor to load the generator. Also I've seen one used as the starting resistor for a 160 kW slip ring motor used on a rock crusher. There was a tank with three cone shaped copper electrodes hanging from the top and another tank with the salt solution stored in it. The electrodes were connected to the three-phase rotor windings through the slip rings. When the start switch was pushed a pump started pumping the solution from the storage tank into the tank with the electrodes and as the fluid level rose the electrodes would get submerged and the resistance would decrease gradually soft-starting the motor. When the starting sequence was complete a time relay would close a contactor short-circuiting the rotor for running and stop the pump. There was an adjustable bleed hole (used also to adjust the rate of filling of the electrode tank and thus the starting time) through which the solution would drain back into the storage tank resetting the system for the next start. It would work fine most of the time but sometimes when it was cold the resistance would not go low enough before the contactor closed which caused the main breaker on the 300 KVA generator to trip necessitating a new start cycle.

[@DracoOmnia]

Glad you asked, PROJECT FARM... yessss

[@icekohl]

"All my tests come from viewer comments".

[@johnmayovsky1298]

Let's find out!

[@summitlt]

On the note of manuals, not only are newer ones terrible. They're impossible to find, I got a Ford 8N earlier this summer and the book is detailed how to do everything. Plus nearly every bolt is the same size, pretty nice to work on in the field.

[@arduinoversusevil2025]

Now when you order a hard copy manual for $900 (so it works in the cold), it shows up and it's a single sided stack of PDF printouts.

[@SueBobChicVid]

I don't agree. I carry a van full of manuals for my industry in my 3lb laptop. I wouldn't have room for tools if I had printed manuals.

[@Schlimm1969]

A selling point of the Ferguson TO/TE tractors - cousins to the 8N - was that they only required one spanner for all necessary adjustments. The spanner was also marked for measuring the liquid level in the gasoline tank.

[@chrismorris8695]

I bought a 1944 Monarch 16CY lathe in 2019. Monarch is still in business so I called them up with the serial number and they mailed me a manual including a parts list (yes they still have parts support for 70+ year old machines).

[@sheldoniusRex]

@@chrismorris8695 +1 for Monarch.

[@johnmccanntruth]

The tingle in your arm should subside momentarily... if it reaches your toes you’ve dipped it too far.

[@fattony1218]

I think we need a necropsy of the kill-a-watt on the ol' healin' bench!

[@firstlast-xn6ul]

@@gorak9000 Could be. That pallet with the metal chips is over at the workbench, not the CNC.

[@prdoohan]

I learned this while trying to get electroplating to work at home during lockdown. More salt, more chooch!

[@rydplrs71]

To much salt and what you plate isn’t worth wiping your nether regions. A/sq dm...... you need enough salt to conduct you ideal current, but if you exceed it to much you lose the ability to get a mechanically good finish at the ideal current. It goes from inconsistent grain structure to brittle and porous, and skips the Goldilocks zone. Just enough salts make the Goldilocks zone as wide as possible. You have to monitor consumption and byproduct buildup more closely though. Specific gravity often works for byproduct monitoring, depending what metal you are plating. Also, acid clean, DI water rinse and do not let it dry before dunking in the solution. The post plate rinse is less critical, but wiping with IPA instead of air dry will reduce oxidation.

[@TheThethinker101]

Back in the day before silicon controlled rectum fryers or even autotransformers, theatrical lighting controllers were based on rheostats to accomplish dimming effects; raising/lowering rods in salt water pots were one method used. The saltwater would sometimes boil off during a production, especially a dramatic one with lots of dim lighting. Some old crusty stagehands still have initiation tails of being told to top off the "piss pots", not knowing they were live.

[@alberteinstein3078]

Ah load testing, i test my load atleast three times a week!

[@Reach41]

In a fucit bucit?

[@classicwefi]

Release the schmoo 😮😴

[@timshea5158]

I watched the other night. This episode brought back fond memories from 40 yrs ago. When I was in the military I built a salt water load bank for a 3 phase generator. I used 3-55 gallon drums for the salt water. Also added some H2SO4 for added conductivity. Tied a ground rod to a rope and pulley system to lower the ground rods into the 55 gallon drums. All the barrels were wired to L0 on the generator. Each rod was wired to L1, L2, and L3. I was able to load a 60kw generator at 120/208 to about 150%. The generator was struggling and blowing a lot of black exhaust. I had clamp ammeters on each phase wire but I don't remember what the reading was. I only recall a few details.

[@cautionthisissparta]

Breakers won't trip magnetically (~1 cycle) until many times more than the rating, otherwise they trip thermally on the order of tens of seconds to minutes.

[@mfbfreak]

Exactly this! A 20 amp breaker will take a long time to trip if you send 'only' 24a through it. With 40a it will trip within a minute or so. With 80 in a few seconds. With 200 in a few milliseconds. There are datasheets that have switch off times VS current graphs, very informative.

[@davidhintz1806]

The virus is named SARS-Cov2. Its toll varies by national IQ and level of discipline.

[@Experiment4L]

What the hell, the talking hands have feet.

[@dougfraser77]

As they used to say back in the day, a $300 cathode ray tube will sacrifice itself to save a 5 cent fuse every time. Or in this case, your Kill-a-Watt sacrificed itself to save the breaker the hassle of tripping.

[@ronpoor9458]

Witches in Hamlet? You mean MacBeth where they were around the cauldron chewing double-bubble gum?

[@loul7239]

I searched for this....

[@priidik12345]

love the Jimi Hendrix words at some point in the beginning

[@jaykay5369]

6:42 - ElectroBoom has entered the chat 🙃

[@pileofstuff]

He's just down the road. He ought to enter the empire of dirt for some consulting.

[@axelasdf]

His last video was literally trying to trip a breaker.

[@ErikMeike]

I had that happen to my Kill-A-Watt too. There is a fuse inside which is accessible when you take off the back which blows.

[@smithaustin2009]

Man, that does blow! /s

[@radradR0bot]

Begs the question: when you need to clean paint pail, do you clean out the paint, or do you just clean the paint?

[@tedundercarriage8183]

begging the question doesn't mean what you think it means

[@xmerwyndtheroninrogue1097]

FYI, I worked in a shipyard fro many years in new construction and repair. in the electrical shop. Brine tanks were normally used for loading ship generators. Most of the ship's generators were 500 to 750 KW. I was not involved in the testing other than to be placed in the dark when mains tripped. Other shipyards may have used other types of load banks but Atlantic Dry Dock in Jacksonville Fl used brine tanks unless USN contracts required a more modern load. I retired from the shipyards in 2011. I enjoy your videos and humor.

[@sparkyprojects]

So basically a 'scariac' (look it up) :D Or an electrode heater Fun fact, our electrical companies use multiple electric cooker hob elements in a cage with switches for pressure testing supply lines ;)

[@SeanBZA]

Saw a decomissioned lift VSD dump load, which was basically a whole big box filled with oven grill elements, and then a whole collection of contactors connected to the controller to allow the lift controller relay logic to do speed control and braking, using assorted combinations of really big resistive heaters. No microcontroller, just the remains of the big DC motors being chopped up for the copper.

[@htomerif]

Ehh.. Its not a purely resistive load. A lot of things contribute to the non-linearity. As the voltage increases, the available electrochemical reactions increase and the resistivity goes down. As the ampacity goes up (way up) something similar to the Leidenfrost effect occurs just from the sheer amount of gas generated. Stick a variac on it and measure the power factor as you increase the voltage. It ain't gonna be 1. Its relatively linear with respect to electrode surface area but even after a few minutes you'll notice a bunch of white stuff building up. That's aluminum chloride and the reason it looks like antiperspirant is because its antiperspirant. We used to check very high amperage (200A) military radio power supplies using this. And also light fire to the hydrogen that comes off.

[@phoenixnfa]

I want to start a fire but all i got is water, salt and electricity......oh look this video.

[@GAIS414]

When I used to work at Labgruppen (professional audio power amplifier manufacturer) as the head of testing and service dpt. We had some pretty big dummy loads constructed from a large quantity of really expensive power resistors. They were capable of handling about 4000W per channel in short bursts. At that time our biggest amps could put out about 3000W at 2 Ohms per channel. One day of course, the head engineer came up with a mono block that put out close to 10kW. And tested it using a couple of our dummy loads linked. I will not mention his name but that guy was as fearless as he was genius. As I remember, the resistors blew sky high and filled the whole factory (though at the time pretty small by factory standards) with smoke and shrapnel. He and I would have loved this idea. I bet it would be hard to benchmark test amps to a good enough tolerance level. But for brute force proof of concept this is really hard to beat for cost efficiency. Some kind of circuit to trim the resistance more precisely would of course be needed but that would be relatively cheap and easy to build.

[@dogwalker666]

Some old large slip ring motor starters used brine water resistance while starting.

[@PaulOostindie]

Yes I have used few liquid starters in my time. The first one i worked on was for a 5000HP motor. I found later that the dried out the liquid starter needed washing soda not sodium chloride. Anyway on the first start it erupted like Old Faithful. It shot boiling saltwater 60 ft up all over the ceiling in this pulp mill. I quickly learned to put in a lot less soda and no sodium chloride the next time.

[@dogwalker666]

@@PaulOostindie I can imagine the first time I came across one was in a steel mill and the customer had replaced the water with silicon oil the could not get the motor to start. I replaced it with a Rotovar it was only a 1200Amp model.

[@briantaylor9266]

I seem to recall from my days in diesel-electric submarines that passing DC through saltwater produces chlorine gas. Same for AC?

[@jeremiahblatz]

Same for AC, though presumably somewhat less. You could find out how much by measuring the pH of the water. (2 NaCl, 2 H2O > 2 NaOH, Cl2, H2)

[@Ahats5]

That kill-a-watt probably has an internal fuse that can be replaced and put back into service...

[@barrettbreshears]

I don't ever understand what is going on in your videos, but I watch them anyway because it is the american thing to do.

[@tenchi20229]

But...he is in canada...

[@barrettbreshears]

@@tenchi20229 hey we are all in north america buddy

[@willdejong7763]

@@tenchi20229 Just so you know, AvE's acted dumb enough more than often enough that he has already qualified as an Honorary 'Merican. The official process is analogous to tripping circuit breakers. Do something extremely stupid and you're in immediately. Do something that's kind of smart and a little stupid at the same time and you might have to check that box a dozen times or more to qualify.

[@somethingsomeone5440]

Just a heads up there’s a fuse in that meter

[@unherolike]

Somewhere in Canada there is a family terrified that a Homeless man keeps getting into their workshop.

[@shaunkruger]

It’s not a big device, but a tear down video of the kill-a-watt would be interesting.

[@jmmahony]

Years ago in high school I found an old book of science projects in the school library that the safety police had somehow missed. Besides fun stuff like the formula for gunpowder, It had instructions for a DIY carbon arc light- just cut the carbon rods out of a carbon-zinc battery (standard flashlight battery back in the Jurassic, but they're still available) and use a big glass mixing bowl (or plastic bucket) full of salt water as a massive power resistor to limit the current to avoid blowing the circuit breaker. Then I found an old space heater in the attic with a 12" diameter parabolic reflector behind the heater coil, and after a few modifications I had a carbon-arc spotlight that would light up the clouds.

[@truvak]

You know you are doing something right, when old timey mad scientist sounds starts.

[@UncleCotton]

Been watching your videos for a few years now and the level of wit that falls effortlessly from that sweet Canadian chew box of yours still blows my mind.

[@bobster1982]

Flashback to the taken interogation scene with the lights dimming. I guess that was a brine resistive load as well, just with added jumper cables.

[@CPaulCounts]

s/Taken/Lethal Weapon/g

[@missmymountain]

Harley Davidson continues to produce some of the best service manuals out there. They've kept them readily available to anyone. I'll never forget my 8th grade English teacher. He set up a bowl of salt water on his desk and clipped his lamp cord to create a dimmer for the lamp and a deterrent to keep kids away from his desk. He was very interesting and rarely got too deep into the boring English stuff.

[@alibizzle2010]

In it's original draft it was the "military-industrial-congressional-complex" but Eisenhower was advised that to say such a thing would be too politically damaging for his fellow Republicans in the upcoming mid terms. For more on the subject i recommend a book called Bomb Power by Garry Wills

[@knurlgnar24]

Probably lot of comments on this, but a 20A breaker normally doesn't trip until around 25A at room temp so they can support 20A at elevated electrical room temps. And even then they need 10's of minutes to trip. A 20A breaker will normally happily supply 40A for 10s or so. They only instantly trip at something like 6x the rated current depending on the class of the breaker.

[@hatchhonda19]

Won't it create hydrogen gas and chlorine gas?

[@diesistkeinname795]

Yea, just don't do it indoors for long and it's fine.

[@jamesbromstead4949]

When the AvE vijos stop coming we know he has gassed himself to the other side of the polar graph(i.e. from the Real to the Imaginary)

[@Broken_Yugo]

I think the AC mitigates the electrolysis to a great extent, could be wrong though.

[@honthirty_]

@@Broken_Yugo You are.

[@smithaustin2009]

@@honthirty_ Part of me wonders what a "pubic pool" might be should it exist, and the rest of me doesn't want to let my mind wander in that direction.

[@JayRSwan]

Forgotten because its dangerous AF! I love it!!!! Can't wait for the tests to roll in.

[@michaelmolter6180]

The green ground wire makes me feel more safe.

[@sethalump]

I remember seeing a tech test the genset for the datacenter one day. Guy had what seemed to be a massive space heater, like 10'x10' on it's own trailer. Kept the smoking area nice and warm on a fall day.

[@bulko89]

Seen these on my job too, I was surprised how small a 1MW load cell was. Moves quite some air tho.

[@TheJohnsorenson]

You're gonna have to go to Spain to update your macafee. He's still in jail there awaiting extradition

[@ShedTV]

Thirty years ago, when I was just starting out as a theatre electrician in London an old boy told me about the resistance dimmers he remembered in some ancient theatre. He said they were brine filled glass tubes and a plunger controlled the intensity of the stage lights. They were situated in the orchestra pit and he claimed that drunken musicians, presumably if they had not been overcome by the chlorine coming off the dimmers, risked further injury by relieving themselves into the tubes. I wonder if it affected the light level on stage.

[@gavster89]

Wouldn't it better with a half wave or full wave rectum frier..?

[@jrb_sland5066]

I did much the same experiment with a soup-bowl of salt water and the stripped ends of an ordinary lamp cord. I was probably eight years old [in 1956]. Heard the same buzzing, saw the same bubbles, and the copper wire looked unhappy. Glad I survived - I likely had no real understanding of the risks, but was well on my way to a life of electrical/electronic experimentation and construction...Thanks for the reminder!

[@MattLitkeRacing]

Who wants to see the new F-150 inverter tested with AvE Werks Resist-O-Matic?

[@OneTrippin]

Thats a spendy peice of vehicular hardware. I think he prefers his vehicles with a little more vintage, mostly rust by weight, and bairly working.

[@5roundsrapid263]

@user9823598246 A stock F150 isn’t that bad. I saw an F350 lifted up 24” the other day. Now that just screams “DOUCHEBAG!”. 🙄

[@classicwefi]

@@5roundsrapid263 we call those bro dozers in my neck of the woods.

[@5roundsrapid263]

@@classicwefi I’ve heard that expression before.

[@Flap999]

Eisenhower was spot on. Too many shenanigans going on to be coincidental.

[@gggggggggggd1]

We need a book compiling all knowledge that AvE has on his mind

[@gggggggggggd1]

@@muaddib667 the Aveminicon

[@RandomActsOfMusic1]

my cabin(home) is warmed by the very same regency wood stove! Irronically cleaning the door and redoing my seals and reburner tubes while your video came on and reminded me of how us men can share our mutual affinity for working on simple things and getting dirty. Thank you for the entertainment!

[@jajwarehouse1]

The beginnings of a nice H2 & O2 separator you have there.

[@rcdieselrc]

Sudden recombination into H2O in the workshop could get interesting.

[@JamesRPatrick]

My first thought.

[@redsquirrelftw]

Great testing device for hydrogen detectors too! I've done this to test the one in my server room lol. Small cup and two nails as electrodes, plugged right into a GFCI outlet. A little sketch but it works. The GFCI outlet at least gives it some resemblance of being safe. :P

[@tek4]

Depending on the tempture of the breaker, the trip current will change. The bi metallic strip that controls the over current side of the mechanism needs to reach a tempture before breaking contact. The solenoid will work under short circuit conditions to pull the breaker open. If you however use a fuse, you will get better resolution to the current trip point since tempture has less effect

[@goodfortune6399]

We had a rig like that to test our ground support generators they were 400hz. 1000 amps will boil the water out of a 55gal drum pretty fast😀

[@jamesclark3119]

Used a larger version to test ship's gen sets. About 200 gallons of brine and about a dozen steel plates for each phase. 1000kw really got things bubbling and the smell of chlorine made it a bit dangerous. Modern version is a semi trailer full of resistors and a nerd with a confuser and printer.

[@thomas316]

@@jamesclark3119 Beautiful, Chlorine gas always brings a tear to my eye.

[@mastertravelerseenitall298]

I believe this is called a "scariac". Instead of a kill-a-watt, consider a DMM shunt. Great vid!

[@unknown-ql1fk]

Your 20 amp breaker, pulling 30 amps will still take like 2 mins to thermal trip

[@redsquirrelftw]

Even longer if it's a FPE Stab Lok!

[@bigjohn3495]

@@redsquirrelftw and maybe never

[@PaulOostindie]

Remember some breakers are often designed to hold 20Amp and only trip when the current is 110% and some thermal breakers can take 110% for a few minutes. You need to look at the manufacturer's trip curve to know for sure. Unless it is an FPE breaker as a few have people have already pointed out. Half of the FPE breakers will never trip.

[@johndeerdrew]

Between you and project farm, I'll never buy the wrong tool ever again.

[@Love2Destroy]

Keep your poutine heating implements far away from your bathtubs with breakers like that

[@anan0moose]

Circuit breakers are generally inverse time breakers, they will trip instantly with a short circuit. The time they trip from an overload varies with how much over the rated current is applied. I've seen a 20 amp breaker carry a 22 amp load for 15 minutes.

[@woodcrafter7361]

2:12 Sounds like a healthy flow too me AvE

[@Kamal_AL-Hinai]

This is gold hahaha

[@michaellitscher9456]

Once upon a time, I wrote the firmware to control a 3-phase powered high current DC power supply. It's purpose was to be hooked up to a carbon doughnut while the doughnut was being compressed in order to make industrial diamonds. Our test load was a 10-foot length of water pipe, into which we ran cold water in one end, and watched steam come out the other.

[@guyh3403]

Besides heat, where does the hydrogen gas go?

[@dogwalker666]

Into the room

[@KillerSpud]

Load banks can be handy. I've got a 500kw one at work, and boy it feels like a giant hair dryer when we really push it. I'd suggest trying to find a big roll of nichrome wire and a fan over a salty bucket, or at least put the bucket outside where the hydrogen will just blow away.

[@m10653]

Killed the kill-a-watt with one too many Watts

[@thepvporg]

You can use a similar idea for load testing transmitters only they use an oil tank.

[@juststeve5542]

Erm... Let me think... Fizzy at cathode... Hydrogen... Fizzy at anode... Chlorine. So what happens first, does AvE poison himself or blow the place up?

[@hyperboloidofonesheet1036]

It'll be alternating current, so hydrogen and chlorine from both electrodes. I'm sure that won't irritate anything. :)

[@artiem5262]

I don't know if it's "forgotten knowledge'' or knowledge that was carried to the grave -- quickly and with a loud humming/buzzing sound... Hey, throw a few bay leaves and a lobster or two into that bucket while you're testing. Then you've got a snack for those what live through the tests. You are an inspiration to us all!

[@tanner882]

Isn’t there hydrogen being created in the bubbles in the water? In that case that could be a way to even power something 🤔

[@PaulOostindie]

Hydrogen on one electrode and chlorine gas at the other electrode. One is explosive the other is toxic, what the hell could go wrong Darwin?

[@tanner882]

@@PaulOostindie so your sayin there’s a chance! 👍

[@jaredbissen2659]

Old school locomotive repair manuals talk about load banking the engines for static testing. One of the methods outlined was using a drum or vat of water with conductors in the water hooked up to the generator on the locomotive. They did not talk about salt or any other additive in the water, just straight water, but salt makes sense. This would have been back in the 50's and 60s, and it would have been DC current.

[@_Gortron]

"glad you asked that project farm" Hahahah

[@ultron6931]

Brings back memories as this was the only way to test larger generators quickly. Most would do 100-500 kw in a 55 gallon barrel. If you start with just water and sprinkle salt over the plates you will see the salt create an arc in the water and an orange burst of light to further have fun with the bucket.

[@julias-shed]

Dipping it in the salty schmoo what could possibly go wrong 🤣

[@Vipelez]

You sir make the world a more bearable place to be in with your witty and clever videos. Thanks!

[@thomaspatnode7053]

Nothing's so broke that it cant be fixed, but some stuff ain't worth fixin neither. But partner, maybe you don't mind losing a percent or two of YOUR family, I hope you won't mind if I disagree. A quarter million dead folks can't be wrong, and I'd like to keep my mother alive if you don't mind. That's one more lottery I don't want to play with.

[@peterhaan9068]

During my tour in Vietnam I visited a US Army Stratcom sight. These sites, usually on top of a mountain, had huge generator farms that powered equipment to bounce radio signals off the stratosphere between, in this case, Vietnam and the US. Each of these sites had their own power generating facilities. Outside this particular generating facility sat 2 very large metal boxes, maybe 5 feet deep, 6 feet long and 6 foot wide, with the tops missing. Inside were moveable panels, that could be raised or lowered, of what looked like sheets of extruded metal sitting bathed in some liquid concoction. One of these tanks was in use load testing a generator and believe you me the liquid inside that tank had a life of its own! That was as close as I ever wanted to come to a boiling witches cauldron!

[@RJENDRO]

HHO cell to feed the gen

[@dibira1979]

Sat in front of the wood stove, no beer in hand, no moose sausages on the stove?! You changed man

[@phasm42]

Oxyhydrogen generator, probably best stick to running it outdoors 😅

[@0xbaadf00d]

Maybe just burn the stuff. If he plans on running a long test I doubt even outdoors is enough.

[@IrishSkruffles]

Not entirely sure but I think electrolysis only happens with DC not AC

[@phasm42]

@@IrishSkruffles maybe you're thinking of electroplating?

[@0xbaadf00d]

@@IrishSkruffles The simplest proof, bubbles. The water was not boiling either.

[@IrishSkruffles]

Seems like AC electrolysis is possible but is far less efficient than DC, that explains why there's not many bubbles formed too (compared to DC) www.scienceforums.net/topic/23400-electrolysis-with-ac/

[@gordslater]

Thanks pal. I just spent 15 FN minutes repeatedly pausing the video to look for a rogue rooster in my neighbourhood at 1am

[@iker42]

2:13 Suddenly have to pee

[@5roundsrapid263]

Don’t pee in the bucket, it’s like an electric fence, but worse!

[@GavCritchley]

I wondered if that cockrell was going to get load tested at some point.

"HANDS UP! STOP RESISTING STOP RESISTING STOPPPPPPP RESISTINK COMRADE!"

[@barmpity]

This seems very similar to something the "king of random" made and called a Scaryac. Essentially a variac using the distance between source and ground logs in water as the current limiter. Seems like you could use the same lever action to precisely calibrate the amount of resister in the water bath and keep some additional insulator between the gorillas and the pixies what use the darned thing.