(Electrical) Noisy Stepper story
Posted: Sat Feb 07, 2015 5:03 pm
I had my printer printing away happy as a can be (wish it was printing a shell so I could say happy as a clam...Damnit, it's a story I should have just made that part up). Since the printer was in use I decided to start another afternoon project.
My step-daughters electric guitar had un-shielded passive pickups, which leads to some prominent and undesirable and inescapable noise being passed along to amps or whatever she was plugged into, I presume from the cursed CFLs all over my house
. I have previously done this with my bass with good results. After I got done shielding everything and putting it all back together I lugged in an amp and went to test the result of my work.
It was horrible. I was picking up all kinds of noise that wasn't stable either. I look over at my printer humming (the fans are the loudest part now) and realize the noises correlate to the movement of the printer. The blasted stepper motors are spewing EMF all over the room! I think for a second and come to the idea that maybe it's just noise getting sent back over the power supply into the electrical. I move the amp to an outlet on a different circuit and it's lower but still there... Over 10 feet away the pickups in the guitar will play the sound on the amp, I knew these things were noisy, but I didn't expect them to be THAT noisy...
I'm curious if anyone else has run into un-expected reminders originating from their printer. Anyone else got a story to share?
My step-daughters electric guitar had un-shielded passive pickups, which leads to some prominent and undesirable and inescapable noise being passed along to amps or whatever she was plugged into, I presume from the cursed CFLs all over my house
. I have previously done this with my bass with good results. After I got done shielding everything and putting it all back together I lugged in an amp and went to test the result of my work. It was horrible. I was picking up all kinds of noise that wasn't stable either. I look over at my printer humming (the fans are the loudest part now) and realize the noises correlate to the movement of the printer. The blasted stepper motors are spewing EMF all over the room! I think for a second and come to the idea that maybe it's just noise getting sent back over the power supply into the electrical. I move the amp to an outlet on a different circuit and it's lower but still there... Over 10 feet away the pickups in the guitar will play the sound on the amp, I knew these things were noisy, but I didn't expect them to be THAT noisy...
I'm curious if anyone else has run into un-expected reminders originating from their printer. Anyone else got a story to share?