It’s important to maintain a safe environment when working with powered electronic equipment. In this video, you’ll learn about electrical safety, equipment grounding, electrical fire protection, and more.
Before we get into the details of this safety video, I want to be very clear that we should be very careful when working around power. If you’re working inside of a computer or some other device, you want to be sure to always remove all power sources before you open that system. When you’re working inside the device, you should be very careful about what you’re touching. And if you aren’t quite certain what a component might be, the best practice is to not touch that component.
We can apply this best practice to the power supplies that are inside of our computers. These power supplies are designed to be enclosed devices, and you can replace the entire supply very easily. You would never want to open up or put any tools inside of a power supply. And in some cases, you may find very high voltages inside of these devices. So if you’re working inside of a server or laser printer, you want to be very careful when working around that much power.
There are a number of electrical safety features built into our electronic devices. One of these is an electrical ground. If there is an electrical fault inside of these devices, that power will be divert it directly that electrical ground and away from you. This also applies to the racks that we’re using to mount all of this equipment. If power was to find its way onto that metal rack, we want to be sure that the racks are also grounded to divert any of that power away from you.
So you want to be sure that all of this equipment is grounded, and you may want to perform occasional checks to ensure that the electrical ground is still in place. In our video on electrostatic discharge, we also mentioned that you should never connect yourself to this electrical ground. If there is an electrical fault, all of that voltage will go into the electrical ground. And if you are connected to that same electrical ground, there is certainly a possibility for being shocked or electrocuted.
This is why we say that you should never connect yourself to any type of electrical grounding system. We often think of ourselves as technologists working at a keyboard and a mouse. But very often, we have to mount equipment into a rack so we’re sometimes lifting very heavy pieces of equipment up and down. One way to protect yourself when performing these lifts is to always lift with your legs and to keep your back straight.
You never want to try to lift something that is oversized or is overweight. Instead, you can use equipment to properly lift all of that equipment in place to be able to mount it into a rack or move it to a different part of the facility. We also have to think about safety in the form of fire control. If there is some type of fire with electrical equipment, we certainly don’t want to use any type of water or foam.
Instead, we should use carbon dioxide FM 200 chemicals or some other type of dry chemical to put out that particular fire. And it’s always a good idea for an electrical fire to remove the power source. If you can’t get close enough to the device because of the fire, you may want to try turning it off at the breaker box. We often find ourselves working around devices where they are small components or chemicals. And one way to protect your eyes is to wear safety goggles.
For example, if you’re working inside of a laser printer, you might want to wear goggles just in case some of that toner happens to splash onto your face. You might also find that some of the computers we work with have a lot of dust inside so wearing an air filter mask might help prevent those particulates from getting inside of your nose and mouth. You may find that some of these safety precautions are part of established law.
There might be regulations in your area that require you to wear safety goggles or to have some type of air mask from working inside of these systems. There’s also regulations built around fire protection and electrical codes. So if you’re making changes to any of those types of systems, make sure you check the building codes. Now most places have laws and regulations around how you should dispose of certain chemicals. So you should always check documentation that is shipped with your batteries, your laser printer toner, or any other chemicals that could be considered hazardous waste.