I Was Electrically Shocked Today

It happened by accident. Nobody would expect to get a dreadful electric shock ever in their life, so was I. I experienced it before but all those were just small charges compared to this time which was about 380V terribly going thru my fingers and causing the skin slightly burnt. Oh SHIT!

I was doing a development testing on a new product this afternoon. I programed the chip on the power module, and then plugged in the 240 AC voltages to turn the unit on in order to carry out the following testing. It was nearly 400V generated in the unit. The assembly code was programed onto the IC thru a kit. The data was read back again by the computer for some verification purpose before the unit could be qualified for next step.

After that, as usual, I turned off the input supply and electronic load together. Usually I would just turn off the input supply but left the electronic load at on state.

Very unlikely, without any alert or even looking at the unit, I grabbed it nonchalantly on next to remove it from the test fixture. I guess I must be absent-minded when that moment. I touched on the component leads without aware of the big caps were still doing the discharging process slowly.

For God’s sake, huge voltage passing thru my skin instantly between the sudden contact and my fingers were strongly contracted on the board like a power magnet and could not let go for a few seconds. I screamed and immediately dragged my hand away from the contact. A little part of the skin burnt and my fingers felt numb and pain. Thanks God. On top of those, it did not injure much on me otherwise I could not imagine what would be going on.

This was the first time I experienced such a miserably huge electric shock. No more again!!