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You young guys don't know what excitement you missed with that little blip in history and I think it actually started a little earlier than the article mentions. Most of the time when one acted up it was just annoying with maybe a pop or a bit of smoke. Sometimes a unit acted up but unless something stopped working completely a lot of other times no one even knew there was a problem.

My introduction to the excitement aspect during that plague time was because the company I worked for made an Xray generator in the late 90s with a very large bank of coke can sized electrolytic capacitors. This was in a time when equipment space was at a premium because customers wanted to devote the minimum to anything other than direct patient care. To cut down on the need for extra cabinets, mfgs were trying to stuff any cabinets they had to have full and some did it to the extreme. In this instance an engineer chose to place the capacitor bank in a cabinet that went next to the operator. Apparently some of the faulty units were in the mix of a dozen or so capacitors that made up that bank. The root of this story is one capacitor decided it was time to go and chose to do so just when the operator pushed the exposure button.

When I arrived to service the unit later that day the department was still in an uproar because when the capacitor went it did so with a cloud of smoke and very loud bang heard thruout the dept. I got the story second hand but other staff said the operator was yelling as he out one door and a student tech ran out another door, neither of them in back to work condition as they both went home early. No mention of how the patient fared but fortunately he was some distance away from the action. Apparently someone else came in the room to take him out. It is funny to look back on it now but at the time, not so much. Aside from operators nerves, the mess and damage the exploding capacitor caused inside the cabinet was a pain. Needless to say all other capacitors in the bank were changed out.

Just think of the kind of things you missed out on by being too young for the plague period. 😀

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At my company we test new (and old) equipment with the cabinet doors open to be able to see indicator lights inside the cabinet, etc., which works well except one time someone installed one of those Coke sized capacitors backwards (something like 1000V 2200μF rating) which immediately burst into flames as soon as someone turned on power. Luckily no one was injured because no one was wearing PPE (SOP at our plant unfortunately).

"Can you still get parts for it?"

"Is that a Rolls Royce?"

"How much did that cost?"

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Drive. Hold our beer. Shift gears. Light cigarettes. Dang millennials don't know how hard we had it.


;)