Good Morning All!
Firstly, I am brand new to this community but I can already tell this will be a huge resource for me going forward, and so I thank you all ahead of time for the help I am bound to receive here. Also I have no idea which "section" this would really belong in so please feel free to move this to wherever it should be.
So onto my question:
While ordering a few parts for a test fixture I am building at work, I was looking at a spec sheet for some various connectors that would be wired into this test fixture. My confusion comes from a "Maximum Hands-Free Voltage" rating. For this BANANA JACK it lists a 30/60VDC "Hand-Held Voltage" and a 2500VAC "Hands-Free Voltage". This confused me as there is no insulator involved here, so what could these ratings be based on?
I decided to check a few other non-insulated connectors and found many of them list max voltages despite not having any insulation. (EXAMPLE 2). Now in this application I am currently working on, I am not very concerned with these rating as it will see a maximum of 1kVDC and the currents are between femtoamp and microamp range. But I am also the person who handles high voltage testing of our components with up to 100kVDC. Many of the fixtures in those applications also use things like non-insulated ring terminals and butt connectors which when I look up the data sheets some of which list max voltage ratings like the examples above.
Until this discovery I had adhered to the idea that conductors have amperage ratings, insulators have voltage ratings, and I have based my designs around these ideas and now that this is casting doubt on my understanding of these fundamentals I worry that perhaps I have created a room full of un-safe designs all running tests between 10kVDC and 100kVDC.
What did I miss?
Again, thank you for any advice/information you can provide!
Firstly, I am brand new to this community but I can already tell this will be a huge resource for me going forward, and so I thank you all ahead of time for the help I am bound to receive here. Also I have no idea which "section" this would really belong in so please feel free to move this to wherever it should be.
So onto my question:
While ordering a few parts for a test fixture I am building at work, I was looking at a spec sheet for some various connectors that would be wired into this test fixture. My confusion comes from a "Maximum Hands-Free Voltage" rating. For this BANANA JACK it lists a 30/60VDC "Hand-Held Voltage" and a 2500VAC "Hands-Free Voltage". This confused me as there is no insulator involved here, so what could these ratings be based on?
I decided to check a few other non-insulated connectors and found many of them list max voltages despite not having any insulation. (EXAMPLE 2). Now in this application I am currently working on, I am not very concerned with these rating as it will see a maximum of 1kVDC and the currents are between femtoamp and microamp range. But I am also the person who handles high voltage testing of our components with up to 100kVDC. Many of the fixtures in those applications also use things like non-insulated ring terminals and butt connectors which when I look up the data sheets some of which list max voltage ratings like the examples above.
Until this discovery I had adhered to the idea that conductors have amperage ratings, insulators have voltage ratings, and I have based my designs around these ideas and now that this is casting doubt on my understanding of these fundamentals I worry that perhaps I have created a room full of un-safe designs all running tests between 10kVDC and 100kVDC.
What did I miss?
Again, thank you for any advice/information you can provide!