Properly grounding Astro cab

[pookycade]

Can anyone tell me whether just replacing the 2 prong with a 3 prong plug on the astro and tieing ground to metal on the power supply inside is going to be sufficient. I get slight tingling when I play the cab in my barefeet and touch the control panel.

Thanks

[thegreathopper]

Can anyone tell me whether just replacing the 2 prong with a 3 prong plug on the astro and tieing ground to metal on the power supply inside is going to be sufficient. I get slight tingling when I play the cab in my barefeet and touch the control panel.

Thanks

If you get a tingle when you play you should unplug the cab now until it is sorted, Are you in Europe or the USA? If in Europe you should have earthed power sockets, you need to connect the cabinet to the earth terminal of the socket either by a 3 prong plug or a separate earth cable, the former is the better option.

You also need to link the metal cabinet to the metal control panel in case of any earth faults on the cab/power supply.

If you are in the USA I hear you wrap earth cables around pipes and all sorts of crazy ****.

[dieKatze88]

Can anyone tell me whether just replacing the 2 prong with a 3 prong plug on the astro and tieing ground to metal on the power supply inside is going to be sufficient. I get slight tingling when I play the cab in my barefeet and touch the control panel.

Thanks

If you get a tingle when you play you should unplug the cab now until it is sorted, Are you in Europe or the USA? If in Europe you should have earthed power sockets, you need to connect the cabinet to the earth terminal of the socket either by a 3 prong plug or a separate earth cable, the former is the better option.

You also need to link the metal cabinet to the metal control panel in case of any earth faults on the cab/power supply.

If you are in the USA I hear you wrap earth cables around pipes and all sorts of crazy ****.

I really wish those rumors would go away. 99% of homes in the united states have proper grounding. I live in a house so old that Alexander Graham Bell himself installed the telephone wires in here, and we have a proper ground via a grounding post that was installed LONG before we got here.

For what its worth, most pipes in the USA go directly underground, and if they're metal to begin with (And all the way throughout), that *IS* an acceptable grounding method for low voltage use (read: Battery powered Radios, mostly). I really wish that people would stop doing it however.

So yes, In the USA, we have proper grounding on our outlets.

I've seen Circuit breaker-ed Computer type plugs available at various outlets. If you live in the USA and have a 100/110/120v power supply, then this might be a good idea for you. Wire Hot and Neutral to the approprate pins and ground to some part of the metal chassis. as mentioned previously You need to make sure your CP's block of steel is properly grounded. Lets go to the picture.

I have a New Astro City. Most information should apply:
http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/8093/imag0027a.jpg

that's underneath my CP and you can see all the way on the right there, that 2 pin AMP connector? that is ground on my cabinet. It was on a bunch of other NACs I inspected at TGA, so I'd imagine that this was either pretty standard, or Andy had one of the TGA workers I will not name do a class act job for once.

http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/1995/imag0032w.jpg
if you look closely at the upper left of this image, you'll see a small screw sticking out of the metal CP that you can attach a ground wire to. this lets your CP still be modular .

[pookycade]

In the US..

Yeah, I've kept it unplugged anytime its not in use (and it hasn't hardly been used over the last year or so). Also if I wear shoes, no tingling, but obviously I know it isn't properly grounded

I'm just wondering what people have tied the ground to in their cabs in the US (the power supply, the control panel, etc). The socket in the wall it will be plugging in to has been verified as properly grounded, but as I understand it all these cabs from Japan initially ship with a 2 prong ungrounded plug and then over there a common ground is separately wired to the cab.

[dieKatze88]

In the US..

Yeah, I've kept it unplugged anytime its not in use (and it hasn't hardly been used over the last year or so). Also if I wear shoes, no tingling, but obviously I know it isn't properly grounded

I'm just wondering what people have tied the ground to in their cabs in the US (the power supply, the control panel, etc). The socket in the wall it will be plugging in to has been verified as properly grounded, but as I understand it all these cabs from Japan initially ship with a 2 prong ungrounded plug and then over there a common ground is separately wired to the cab.

If every single document on electronics is to be believed, simply find a screw that holds two pieces of metal together in your cabinet that doesn't normally carry voltage, unscrew it about a 8th of an inch, stick a ground wire around it, and tighten. Then connect all the other earth grounds to that place.

[grantspain]

yeah you are getting a half mains shock,in the states that would be around 60vac-all the metal of your cab should be linked to the earth in the mains lead

[thegreathopper]

In the US..

Yeah, I've kept it unplugged anytime its not in use (and it hasn't hardly been used over the last year or so). Also if I wear shoes, no tingling, but obviously I know it isn't properly grounded

I'm just wondering what people have tied the ground to in their cabs in the US (the power supply, the control panel, etc). The socket in the wall it will be plugging in to has been verified as properly grounded, but as I understand it all these cabs from Japan initially ship with a 2 prong ungrounded plug and then over there a common ground is separately wired to the cab.

If every single document on electronics is to be believed, simply find a screw that holds two pieces of metal together in your cabinet that doesn't normally carry voltage, unscrew it about a 8th of an inch, stick a ground wire around it, and tighten. Then connect all the other earth grounds to that place.

If it was me doing the job and I would remove the 2 prong cable from the cab and replace it with a 3 prong cable, the extra prong is the earth (ground) connection, connect this to the metal casing of the cab and job done.

I know from the Neo forums that some people in the USA use metal/ water pipes as a earth connection, that used to be a recognized earth connection in the UK also but was stopped in the 1960's due to it being an unreliable earth path. no offence meant I can assure you.

[dieKatze88]

In the US..

Yeah, I've kept it unplugged anytime its not in use (and it hasn't hardly been used over the last year or so). Also if I wear shoes, no tingling, but obviously I know it isn't properly grounded

I'm just wondering what people have tied the ground to in their cabs in the US (the power supply, the control panel, etc). The socket in the wall it will be plugging in to has been verified as properly grounded, but as I understand it all these cabs from Japan initially ship with a 2 prong ungrounded plug and then over there a common ground is separately wired to the cab.

If every single document on electronics is to be believed, simply find a screw that holds two pieces of metal together in your cabinet that doesn't normally carry voltage, unscrew it about a 8th of an inch, stick a ground wire around it, and tighten. Then connect all the other earth grounds to that place.

If it was me doing the job and I would remove the 2 prong cable from the cab and replace it with a 3 prong cable, the extra prong is the earth (ground) connection, connect this to the metal casing of the cab and job done.

I know from the Neo forums that some people in the USA use metal/ water pipes as a earth connection, that used to be a recognized earth connection in the UK also but was stopped in the 1960's due to it being an unreliable earth path. no offence meant I can assure you.

I did suggest in my first post using a Modular plug, Those have some major benefits. They're easy to come by, if you by some small miracle happen to not have one, they're 2.50 at a local electronics store (or free if you happen to know a guy) and They can be removed while moving the cabinet. It was not fun trying to secure my New Astro's plug before hanging it out the back of my Ford Escort Wagon. If the plug was modular it would solve a buncha problems.

Yeah, we no longer use pipes as a reliable ground connection anymore. People who use that trick still are in fact smart enough to go look to make sure that pipe does make it all the way to the ground.

The method I described up there was to get the ground wire off of the 3 prong cable/recpticle to the chassis of the machine, I am most certainly not endorsing the running of a 25 foot ground cable for anything except for a Dance Dance Revolution pad (There's no other clean way to do it, really. I've tried) Not that a Astro City would make a good screen for a DDR machine anyway. It's too low. You'll hurt your back (Trust me. I eventually raised the TV in my living room a good 8 inches for this very reason)

If you have your arcade machine in a basement and want to leave it plugged in, I would suggest buying a GFCI Outlet and mounting it on your wall about 8 foot off the ground. Plug your machine into that. Make sure your machine is grounded (Otherwise GFCI can't do its job). That way if you ever flood, there's a very good chance that your machine will only need to dry out for a few weeks, and will still function normally.

You know... as long as we're on the subject of Mains power, grounding, and electrical saftey.