Equipment grounding

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fisher3

New member
Sir,

I am a Senior Engineer for a Service company. My job is to travel the United States to repair equipment. Over 70% of the Image, computer lock-up and general equipment problems are due to POOR grounds.

My customer's always ask, why am I correcting the electrical grounds.

Thank you,
 

charlie b

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Lockport, IL
Occupation
Retired Electrical Engineer
Re: Equipment grounding

Have you considered including very clear and explicit requirements for system grounding in your installation manual? That way, you could answer that whoever installed your equipment failed to follow the manufacturer?s instructions. It?s a potential preventive measure, not a cure, but that would be an improvement.
 

charlie

Senior Member
Location
Indianapolis
Re: Equipment grounding

When I give a grounding class, I always include the following on a single slide (I believe it to be a true statement.)

Better than 90% of all electronic system failures said to be because of ?dirty power? from the utility were the result of electrical wiring, grounding errors, or were generated by other customer loads.
 

dereckbc

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Plano, TX
Re: Equipment grounding

Fisher3, I do not doubt what you are saying, but can you expand on what you are finding wrong? I too have a similar career function, and am interested.

I suspect you are finding code violations, and conflicting manufacture specifications in regards to code.
 

don_resqcapt19

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Illinois
Occupation
retired electrician
Re: Equipment grounding

fisher3,
Can you expand on the types of equipment involved and the problems that you are finding?
Don
 

tom baker

First Chief Moderator
Staff member
Re: Equipment grounding

Lets be more specific about "grounds".
Are you referring to the grounding electrode system, the equipment grounding conductor, the earth resistance...?
 

brian john

Senior Member
Location
Leesburg, VA
Re: Equipment grounding

I do PQ investigations (and have been for 20 plus years) for the firm I work for and the experience listed in this post has not been my experience. Most of the problems I find are voltage drop issues, software issues and EMF (screen shake)
which actually is a ground issue soooooooooo......... maybe I'm partially wrong.

BUT THE number one reason I hear from Product service engineers is it's harmonics or grounding, then utility power problems.

Had one customer on the 12th floor of a building damning the local utility for their lousy power.

The problem was found to be a voltage drop issue several laser jets, a fax machine and PC's on a no 12 AWG circuit several 100 feet long.
 

jro

Senior Member
Re: Equipment grounding

Fish, what is the proper way to ground the equipment that you are talking about, throw in a nice diagram if you can, your post is interesting.
 

brian john

Senior Member
Location
Leesburg, VA
Re: Equipment grounding

After giving this post some thought I would like to add the majority of problems I see are not grounding issues, but the major issues I see are grounding, usally downstream grounds from the SDS or main service.

What type of equipment?

And where in the distribution system are you correcting these grounding issues?

Had one tech instructing the electrical contractors to isolate the distribution system (lift the GEC on the SDS) this resolved all possible ground issues, systems were operating ungrounded.
 
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