"Chuck Harris" <cfharris@...> writes:
If you are in the USA, you will probably never witness
a Schaffner filter fail. If you are in 220-240V land, you
may not be so lucky.
When the filters fail, the worst that happens is they release
a little foul smoke, and sometimes a little tar. Both problems
are pretty easy to clean up... if they happen.
Being in the US, my policy is to leave them alone, and to
fix any that fail, when they fail. If I were in 220-240V land,
I would replace them on sight. The rivets are a simple problem.
Center punch them, drill them out, and use a fresh pop rivet
when you replace the filter.
I'm started to exchange these filters immediately before even connecting
devices to power. I'm often buying TE in the US, and what happend
several times now is that i thought "lets connect it for a short time
and see whether it works". I had it already two times that the filters
blew up a few seconds after i connected the devices. Likely because they
picked up moisture during shipment. I'm living in Germany which is 230V Land,
these days we have often 235V-240V line voltage.
In total i think i've seen now 5 filter blowing up. Not sure how many
filters i had in total, maybe 10.
Given that the filter is connected directly without any fuse to the
power outlet which usually has a 16A circuit breaker, i'm also a bit
afraid of the fire hazard.
/Sven
