Interesting Phenomena

[Skywatcher]

Greetings All

Have an almost new Poulan Pro snow blower in my shop, problem ended up being a plugged breather in the fuel cap, easy fix. What I did find interesting though, is after the machine was fixed, I gave it a test run in the dark and noticed a constant blue arcing between the discharge chute and the chute rotator assembly.

The discharge chute is metal and sits on a plastic ring so is insulated from the frame. The rotator assembly is metal and the gap between the two is about ½ to ¾". I had not realized that blowing snow created so much static electricity. Outside temperature was -28ºC (-18ºF) and relative humidity was at 64%. The more snow that was being put through the machine, the brighter the arc. "Fascinating Jim" All the best,

Sky

[rogerf]

Hallo Sky

I used to earn a living involved in communications and later in EMC testing. It is not at all unusual to find very high voltages produced by moving almost anything. Add low flash points (any sort of fuel), powdered material (wood dust, flour, coal dust etc) and you're on the way to an explosion.

The fuel industry used to use non-conductive hoses when pumping fuel, now you will notice conductive fuel hoses used almost everywhere and especially at service stations. Using conductive hoses reduces the probability of a spark and consequent explosion of fuel vapour. If you notice a conveyor system with a grounding system on many of the rollers you can be sure that static has caused problems - quite often in the control and measuring electronics.

If you go into a high speed printing shop using a 'continuous' paper supply at night with the lights out or dim you will see a blue glow around much of the machinery - very pretty!

Cheers,
Roger

[bobodu]

My advice to you would be to submit a grant to study capturing that alternative energy.....23 million would be a good staring point...

[NevadaWalrus]

Sky, I know Stihl has added grounding devices in blower tubes or fan housings to ground away that static elec. as it was causing diodes to pop in their multi stage ignition coils. Result was the coils would be froze in start up retard and never rev above idle.

[stienut13]

Same as in a woodworking shop. There will be copper wires running thru the suction tubes and grounded, just to keep you from getting plowed by the static electricity. not to mention the possibility of "exploding" dust".Especially bad on colder, dry days.

Merry Christmas,

Jim

[38racing]

My advice to you would be to submit a grant to study capturing that alternative energy.....23 million would be a good staring point...

shush. our Ontario government will pay millions to replace our efficient generation with that. we will have electricity as long as the wind is blowing or it is snowing. and i hate blowing snow.

[belvedere]

That is so strange! The other night, I had my Poulan Pro out, and I noticed the exact same thing! I had never noticed it before, and I've had mine since Feb. 2008. The only difference is that the gap on mine was smaller than yours. It was a nice blue spark, just like you'd see on a spark plug. It did it for awhile (maybe 10 min), then stopped.