The AC side should always be connected to the power supply chassis - unless it is of the "double insulated" design where no ungrounded metallic part can come into contact with the human body. Yes, cutting the AC "green wire ground" is a dangerous thing indeed - the entire chassis could rise to the AC mains voltage in the event of a fault.
The power supply negative *can* certainly be floating *if* the designer made provisions for doing that. It requires that all the common connections on the secondary side of the transformer are isolated from ground. As I recall, Astrons are not built that way. 73, Don W3FPR David Woolley (E.L) wrote: > Rich wrote: > >> I had a situation with an older (analog) power supply (that had its negative >> side grounded to the main AC ground) that tripped the Ground Fault Circuit >> Interrupter (GFCI) in one of the bathrooms. Eliminating the bond to ground >> > > I consider this dangerous advice. If you have an ELCB tripping, you do > not treat the problem symptomatically, by creating an unsafer system, > you find out what the real problem is and you fix it. > > I can't tell what the exact wiring configuration is here, but it is very > likely that you have created a situation where there are pieces of metal > in reach which have low impedance paths to very different "earths". > > ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
