A Switch Mystery?

[Ron Hubbard]

One day I went to turn a room heater up and suddenly noticed that
one of the two power switches was gone! There's only two people in
our household-- my elderly mother and myself-- but the switch was
gone and nowhere to be found.

Does anyone know of an electrical condition that would make a
neon-lit power switch pop apart?

 

[George R. Gonzalez]

"Ron Hubbard" <notat@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:c62kpm$797pb$1@ID-43450.news.uni-berlin.de...

One day I went to turn a room heater up and suddenly noticed that
one of the two power switches was gone! There's only two people in
our household-- my elderly mother and myself-- but the switch was
gone and nowhere to be found.

Does anyone know of an electrical condition that would make a
neon-lit power switch pop apart?

Many of those switches are of rather fragile construction, and under
considerable pressure, as they were "snapped-in" at the factory. It's not
impossible to imagine the plastic getting brittle enough to just fly apart
under the original stresses.

( I've seen resistors disappear, but only after discharging large capacitors
thru them )

BTW, next time you're in a hardware store, look at the ceiling, especially
around the paint department.

 

[Ron Hubbard]

Thanks for the skinny, George. That was the first time I ever saw
a rocker switch just up and disappear.

Ron



"George R. Gonzalez" <grg@umn.edu> wrote in message
news:c63fbv$6r1$1@lenny.tc.umn.edu...

"Ron Hubbard" <notat@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:c62kpm$797pb$1@ID-43450.news.uni-berlin.de...
One day I went to turn a room heater up and suddenly noticed
that
one of the two power switches was gone! There's only two
people in
our household-- my elderly mother and myself-- but the switch
was
gone and nowhere to be found.

Does anyone know of an electrical condition that would make a
neon-lit power switch pop apart?


Many of those switches are of rather fragile construction, and
under
considerable pressure, as they were "snapped-in" at the factory.
It's not
impossible to imagine the plastic getting brittle enough to just
fly apart
under the original stresses.

( I've seen resistors disappear, but only after discharging
large capacitors
thru them )

BTW, next time you're in a hardware store, look at the ceiling,
especially
around the paint department.

 

[N Cook]

"Ron Hubbard" <notat@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:c62kpm$797pb$1@ID-43450.news.uni-berlin.de...

One day I went to turn a room heater up and suddenly noticed that
one of the two power switches was gone! There's only two people in
our household-- my elderly mother and myself-- but the switch was
gone and nowhere to be found.

Does anyone know of an electrical condition that would make a
neon-lit power switch pop apart?

When computers used 5 1/4 inch floppies I one day placed a disk
in each of the 2 drives on the machine at work.
Came to leave and it had swallowed one - totally disappeared.
I ended up getting technical support taking the m/c appart.
It emerged I had managed to place one of the disks in a narrow gap
between the two disk drives and not the drive slot.

electronic hints and repair briefs , schematics/manuals list on
http://homepages.tcp.co.uk/~diverse