Hi, there's no earth ground in my plugs at home. Driving a stake into the ground is not an option and nulling in the box outside is not allowed.
If this is what you had to work with:
1) How would you connect test gear and power supplies that ought to be grounded to earth? What would you do with their chassis grounds?
2) What are some practices you'd adopt around handling static sensitive components from the moment they arrive in the post?
3) Are there some types of projects you wouldn't do in this earth-deficient "lab", like mains connected power amp repairs?
My concern is the safety of my components, my gear, and myself. I have a relatively nice power supply and oscilloscope, and I'm in the market for a good function generator, but I'm not sure how much I should try to do here. Failing logic ICs I can handle, but I'd be sad to see any of my gear blow up.
I mostly play around with breadboards and the occasional PCB. My main interest is basic battery powered amplifiers, CMOS logic, playing around with MCUs. For a year I haven't had anything fail on me so I wonder how much is theory and how much is practice.
Thanks!
Well there likely is an earth of sorts. The neutral is (effectively) connected to ground, the ground (at the substation and at the local address). But the ground/earth wiring is meant to be distinct from neutral, and have the capacity to endure large currents in the event of short circuit faults.
In a situation like you describe, I wonder whether it would be prudent to connect your equipment not to the wall outlets, but to a
1:1 isolating transformer (which eliminates galvanic current flow to the outside electricity system).
Then, if you were standing on the floor even wet floor in bare feet, you'd not get a jolt if you did accidentally touch a metal exposed part of equipment that had accidental come into contact (internally) with the "live". No current could flow "to ground" in such a setup, so its safe. (So long as the equipment itself has no exposed metal that could ever come into contact with live internally).
I was thinking of getting something like that myself for repair of some old tube radios I have here, a simple 1:1 ratio isolating transformer.
Another advantage of isolation too, is that transformers have a very high impedance to HF signals, noise and spikes so you'd be reducing any of that getting through to your equipment.