Things Your Electrician Wishes You Knew | Circuit Breaker Parts

Tilt level. The Sony A33 includes a dual-axis level gauge, which helps ensure level horizons and prevent converging verticals in photos. The level gauge can be shown on either the electronic viewfinder or the rear-panel LCD, but only alongside the most basic information overlay — you can’t combine the detailed display overlays with the level gauge. A clever way around it, though, is to set one viewer to the level gauge, and the other to a more informative display, since by default you can set the display modes independently. There’s no way for the user to recalibrate the gauge, if they find the factory default to be inaccurate. The gauge is displayed in a style reminiscent of an aircraft attitude indicator, but with a separation of the roll and pitch indicators. When the camera is perfectly level, the pitch indicators and markings at the end of the roll indicator are illuminated in green.

Leaving their advanced capabilities aside, the Sony A33 and A55 are also remarkably compact cameras. As we’ve noted elsewhere, because the mirror in the camera isn’t used to form a viewfinder image, it can be mounted at a steeper angle than normal, removing some thickness from the camera body as a whole (the flange-sensor distance must obviously remain the same, but there’s more room in the body for the shake-reduction system and other electronics), and the space normally required for the mirror drive system could be trimmed from the sides. As a result, the body is noticeably compact.

There is a huge difference between heater and electric motor when it comes to inrush current. But anyway haven’t seen 600A contactor for switching on 60A motor.

Japan is odd for another reason. The two “halves” of the country are on different frequencies. I believe the West is at 50 Hz and the East and North is 60 Hz. They have a collection of DC interconnects in the middle of the country to facilitate power sharing across this otherwise intransigent gap. Since the shutdown of Fukushima, those interconnects have been under quite a bit of strain, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.

It will only trip the breaker if you have a bonded ground. Soil resistivity has everything to do with it, and is the reason most homes have bonded grounds (the soil resistivity is too high to provide adequate current flow to trip a standard breaker). Unless you have a GFI on that circuit you can still get shocked. Earth ground won’t help you until the voltage gets high enough to cause enough current to flow to trip a standard breaker, and NEC requirements set the limit on earth ground resistivity, the limit they set ends up equaling a voltage of 600 volts required to trip a standard breaker, and that is why most (single family) homes have bonded grounds. Earth ground is only for high voltage transients.

So a 20 amp breaker is designed to take the load shift on startup. A 15 amp breaker will carry the nominal load, but that surge on startup will kick it every time. In the days before switching supplies the input voltage would vary from 108 to 115VAC where I did work. This occasionally caused breaker trips on the unprepared circuit. I learned to spec high enough to minimize that issue and keep a safety factor in play.

• Pick your features: Models come with either a recoil handle (similar to a lawn mower) or electric push-button start, and one or more outlets to plug in extension cords. Some include covered outlets, illuminated control panels or automatic shutdown in case oil runs low. Portables can weigh from 100 to 250 pounds, so you’ll want to buy a wheel kit. With the wheels installed, a generator can be rolled like a wheelbarrow into place.

I typed “bolts” for “volts” in one of my ramblings here, but caught it before clicking Post Comment. Let this be the ROUND(e^23,0) request for the ability to edit our comments, at least for a few minutes after posting. Hell, even WaPo allows it.

The issue with using NEMA 5-15 receptacles is that people will use them stupidly. They will attach extension cords without knowing to properly check them for heat build up at the outlet and along their length. It just encourages bad use, modern EVSEs with heat sensors in the plug won’t work appropriately with an extension cord.

I think it’s just fine and nice to see someone put care and thinking into this sort of thing in an unusual way for HaD. Usually people are either completely terrified or entirely cavalier about mains voltage in projects on here when all that is required is some respect and thoughtfulness like you have quite obviously displayed. Next you can add a power meter so you know how many quarters to give your friend

“Normal” mains voltage heating elements use nichrome (nickel chromium) some time called “resistance wire” because it has a higher resistance for a given surface area.

In case you hadn’t noticed, 2010 is the Year of 3D in the HDTV space, and all the television makers are rushing to add 3D capability across their product lines. Sony has come up with a clever way of capturing 3D images using the same "sweep" technology as in their normal 2D panoramas. As the camera is swept across a scene, it will naturally see various parts of the subject from slightly different angles at different points along its sweep. Sony’s engineers have taken advantage of this to add a 3D Sweep Panorama mode to a number of their cameras, the A33 and A55 included. While the 3D data is apparently stored in a fairly standard file format, viewing the 3D images currently requires connecting the camera’s HDMI output to a Sony 3D-capable television set. Sony’s promised 3D Sweep Panorama playback support for their PS3 game consoles, supposedly coming as early as this September. That’s still a bit limiting, but hopefully as 3D technology matures, various manufacturers will be able to read each others’ 3D formats.