Make an Earth wire. (British 3 pin plug)

[FAIL_bro777]

Before i start, you'll still need an anti-static wrist/ankle strap in order to be able to ground yourself to the wire. This saves having to have a spare power supply lying around or having to be attached to a radiator (yes, radiators are grounded). 

 

WARNING: Playing with main's electricity can be dangerous (obviously). make sure you have dry hands, and you know your way around the insides of a plug. I will be giving a very rudimentary description as i will be assuming you know what I mean.

 

This is intended to work with BRITSH plugs only, I do not know if the same method would work for an american 3 pin, (although looking at diagrams it would...don't hold me to that)

 

This should work even with the plug switched off.

 

As i say bellow, the plug you use should be able to be unscrewed and opened. 

 

Equipment: 

 

Screwdriver 

Standard 3 pin plug SHOULD BE OPEN-ABLE) 

Spare wires (any length)

Wire strippers

Heat shrink (optional)

Hair dryer/heat gun (also optional)

Crocodile clips

needle nose pliers

 

1) Find a plug. Cut one off of an unused appliance, or buy one from your local hardware shop.

 

2) Open the plug and strip out the wire and dispose of appropriately. If you don't have any spare wires then use this wire you've stripped out, ensure your lenght f wire is long enough to reach from your plug socket to your workstation.

 

3) Take out the fuse, it wont be useful in this plug, however good for spares. 

 

4) Take your spare wire and strip the ends, exposing the metal. If you are using the wire previously stripped from the plug, use the brown wire and trim the other two flush. 

NOTE: if you want to earth more than one thing (IE, a metallic workbench, the case and yourself) use the appropriate number of wires, all steps will be the same. In the case of using the wire stripped from the plug, then trimming of the other two wires is unneeded.

 

5) Twist the end of the wire to make it easy to manipulate and prevent fraying. for multiple wires, twist them together, fusing them into one.

 

6) NOTE: get this bit wrong and you could potentially injure (if not kill) yourself

Take the end on the wire you have just twisted and push it into the EARTH connector. On both British and US 3 pin plugs it is the top one (not paired) on the British one, the pin is slightly longer. screw the screw down to clamp the wire in place. 

 

7) If your wire is too small for the bridge of the plug to clamp on, use some heat shrink to widen it, personally i used 3-4 layers to unsure a good surface contact. The bridge is used to stop the wire from being pulled out of the connector. use the heat gun/hairdryer to shrink it.

 

8) Close the plug. Optionally, heat shrink the first few inches of the wire to prevent eventual splitting of the wire from flexing.

 

9) Use the wire strippers to strip off the other ends of the wires. Place the wire in the end of the crocodile clip (not the clippy side). Use the pliers to crimp the clip. Optionally, use some heat shrink to insulate this and make the clip grippy.

 

DONE

 

So as I warned, if done wrong, you may hurt yourself.  I DO NOT take responsibility if this is the case, the instructions i have laid out are perfectly safe.  If you are not confident with electricity  PLEASE do not do this, get someone else to do it, this is very simple to do, however getting it wrong may be fatal.

 

Thanks for reading, hope this helps some of you.

[The Crazed Child]

lol

[ManWithBeard1990]

Note: plugs with a plastic Earth pin will not work.

[FAIL_bro777]

just buy one from the store

 

I'd love to see where you can get a plug with only the earth pin connected, pretty sure you cant buy one.

 

 

Great now all we need is a tutorial to teach us how to give a damn.

 

 

In fairness, you may not find this useful because you have a spare power supply lying around and doing it the old fashioned way is perfectly alright for you, for people like me who don't have a spare power supply, or simply don't want to have to be connected to a massive box, and would rather cut out the middle man this could be extremely helpful.

 

This method is likely much safer than using a power supply anyway. The capacitors inside the power supply will store energy, a zap from that when you connect up the wrong thing will seriously hurt. This way is connected straight to the way, no live wires come anywhere close to being in contact with you. Hate if you must, but i have made this myself, it reaches perfectly from my socket to my workstation, and I don't have a 2.5kg box to sit on my desk . 

 

If you have nothing constructive to say then don't say anything, I believe there will be a forum rule out there somewhere about that.

[Legion]

Is this so you can earth yourself when building PCs? 

I really don't see the point, I've left PCBs sitting out on my desk on a warm summers day and never had any issues when I went to use them after. 

I'm struggling to see the point in this when 99% of the time touching your case or PSU will do. And the other 1% of the time? RMA it. 

Of course I could be missing the point of this tutorial entirely.

[lutewan]

this is the first time i have ever heard it as earth maybe its a usa thing here we say ground or its grounded

[FAIL_bro777]

this is the first time i have ever heard it as earth maybe its a usa thing here we say ground or its grounded

 

Its kinda to be honest, the actual wire is known as earth, but the procedure of doing it it grounding i guess.

 

 

Is this so you can earth yourself when building PCs? 

I really don't see the point, I've left PCBs sitting out on my desk on a warm summers day and never had any issues when I went to use them after. 

I'm struggling to see the point in this when 99% of the time touching your case or PSU will do. And the other 1% of the time? RMA it. 

Of course I could be missing the point of this tutorial entirely.

 

Yeah, but better safe than sorry right? frying £4k worth of mobo/GPU is the least thing you want to do just cuz you were charged with a bit of static from your carpet you're standing on eh?

[Legion]

Its kinda to be honest, the actual wire is known as earth, but the procedure of doing it it grounding i guess.

Yeah, but better safe than sorry right? frying £4k worth of mobo/GPU is the least thing you want to do just cuz you were charged with a bit of static from your carpet you're standing on eh?

Don't build on carpet then

[Midnight]

In fairness, you may not find this useful because you have a spare power supply lying around and doing it the old fashioned way is perfectly alright for you, for people like me who don't have a spare power supply, or simply don't want to have to be connected to a massive box, and would rather cut out the middle man this could be extremely helpful.

 

This method is likely much safer than using a power supply anyway. The capacitors inside the power supply will store energy, a zap from that when you connect up the wrong thing will seriously hurt. This way is connected straight to the way, no live wires come anywhere close to being in contact with you. Hate if you must, but i have made this myself, it reaches perfectly from my socket to my workstation, and I don't have a 2.5kg box to sit on my desk . 

 

If you have nothing constructive to say then don't say anything, I believe there will be a forum rule out there somewhere about that.

 

A spare power supply is really not needed; you just need something metal, like the case or the power supply in the case. Also, the energy inside the power supply's capacitors will dissipate very quickly once you shut the power off, so this is not a big concern either.

 

I fail to see the point of doing this as it is completely unnecessary. The reason you ground yourself is that the voltage difference among you and all other components is zero, so the charge does not jump from one place to another too quickly. Hence, touching the metal part of your case or the power supply attached to the case is sufficient because you are putting the components in it...

[ThomasD]

this is the first time i have ever heard it as earth maybe its a usa thing here we say ground or its grounded

 

The term Earth, or (more typically) Earth bond is commonly used here in the US to differentiates a zero potential ground from other sorts of grounds, ie. if it is not Earthed then any ground is only floating.  On a schematic a floating ground is shown as either an inverted pyramid of parallel lines for power, or an inverted triangle for signal ground,  while an earth bond is indicated by a rake.  Typically there is only one earth bond, and many devices (e.g. the switch mode power supply for a laptop) wont even have one.

 

Floating grounds can be a source of noise in high impedance systems and can be a source of pain or death in high voltage systems. 

[Godlygamer23]

I'd love to see where you can get a plug with only the earth pin connected, pretty sure you cant buy one.

 

 

 

 

In fairness, you may not find this useful because you have a spare power supply lying around and doing it the old fashioned way is perfectly alright for you, for people like me who don't have a spare power supply, or simply don't want to have to be connected to a massive box, and would rather cut out the middle man this could be extremely helpful.

 

This method is likely much safer than using a power supply anyway. The capacitors inside the power supply will store energy, a zap from that when you connect up the wrong thing will seriously hurt. This way is connected straight to the way, no live wires come anywhere close to being in contact with you. Hate if you must, but i have made this myself, it reaches perfectly from my socket to my workstation, and I don't have a 2.5kg box to sit on my desk . 

 

If you have nothing constructive to say then don't say anything, I believe there will be a forum rule out there somewhere about that.

A power supply that's been sitting for a while will have no charge build up. A power supply's casing is very safe to touch. If it wasn't, there would need to be warnings on the outside about touching the unit while it's operating. The fear that surrounds touching a power supply annoys me sometimes. If you don't go around snooping inside the unit and you don't touch any pins or prongs, there is almost no way for you to get zapped.

[GzeroD]

.  

Just wanted too add this. your use of brown lettering where you mentioned you grounding/earthing connection got me worried that someone might not read it closely enough.

The default brown wire in many cords will be a live wire while the earth/grounded wire will commonly be green or green and yellow. (In a british plug it will be the screw attached to the blade that is perpendicular to the other 2 blades)