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Connecting a circuit into a live panel? Be careful!
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This is the result of a recent mishandling in my class recently. To make things clear, I am NOT the one who did it XD
One of my classmates was inserting a NMD cable (the supply cable of a lighting circuit to be exact) through a connector into his panel. However since our teachers now ask us to work on LIVE panels (because it represents the real life), he did not pay attention to the cable's ground wire. The ground was touching the connector (which thus was to ground) and came in contact with one of the breakers busbars. This basically sent 120V to ground LOL. I happened to find the connector the last day before holidays, so I thought I could show it to you guys!
You can see the connector literally melted. But that's not all! The panel itself now has a large 3" crown of black soot spikes around one knockout! I wanted to take a pic before Holidays but never got around to it LOL.
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I went down there to shut it off before it shorts out (too late for that), smelled electrical fire, went to the panel and shut the breaker feeding the garage, opened the box where the wires goes into. Saw one of the three wires cut in half, some major black soot inside a gray box.
Ian: As I said in the description, the guy just forgot he was working into a live panel. A lot of my classmates are used to work in panels with the main breaker turned off. I am myself not too nervous when working around live exposed parts, I got used to it pretty fast!
Everyone: I'm going to try to get that pic of the burn marks on the panel when I get back to school!