Failure
The failure of a bleeder resistor prevents the discharge of the capacitors, resulting in dangerous voltages being retained for many days. This is one of several reasons for the typical warning on most equipment: "Warning - No user-serviceable parts inside". An un-suspecting user may get an electrical shock from opened equipment due to failure of a bleeder resistor, or the common practice of not fitting them, long after the device has been turned off or unplugged.
Safe design suggests mounting a bleeder close to a dangerous capacitor, ideally directly to the capacitor terminals, and not through any connectors, so that it is difficult to disconnect the bleeder accidentally.
Despite the presence of a bleeder, it is wise to prove that any potentially dangerous capacitors are discharged, perhaps by shorting their terminals (or through a suitable low resistance for high energy capacitors), before working on any circuit.
Read more about this topic: Bleeder Resistor
Famous quotes containing the word failure:
“The failure of academic feminists to recognize difference as a crucial strength is a failure to reach beyond the first patriarchal lesson. In our world, divide and conquer must become define and empower.”
—Audre Lorde (1934–1992)
“I am dead against art’s being self-expression. I see an inherent failure in any story which fails to detach itself from the author—detach itself in the sense that a well-blown soap-bubble detaches itself from the bowl of the blower’s pipe and spherically takes off into the air as a new, whole, pure, iridescent world. Whereas the ill-blown bubble, as children know, timidly adheres to the bowl’s lip, then either bursts or sinks flatly back again.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)
“In the deeper layers of the modern consciousness ... every attempt to succeed is an act of aggression, leaving one alone and guilty and defenseless among enemies: one is punished for success. This is our intolerable dilemma: that failure is a kind of death and success is evil and dangerous, is—ultimately—impossible.”
—Robert Warshow (1917–1955)