[Whitebread]

Is there anything I can use to insulate a steel chassis? Like a sheet of plastic or some kind of non conducting liquid?

 

[Uncle Erik]

Yeah, you can isolate it with non-conductive materials and make sure the components (e.g. RCA jacks, headphone jacks, etc.) are isolated, too.

Why do you want to do this? If you ground properly, there's nothing to worry about. If you have a ground loop, there are ways of dealing with it.

 

[Garbz]

Ground it! You'd need to find a material with sufficient dielectric breakdown, non flamable, something that won't flake off. Essentially it is a whole world of complicated that is easily fixed with a single wire.

 

[Whitebread]

I'm doing it so that I don't have a short between a component and the amp ground. The cases I got are not ideal in size so I have to squeeze some things in, which means putting them closer to the bare metal chassis than I'm comfortable with. I called 6 stores and 3 manufacturers and only one of them had something close to what I wanted in the price I wanted, and only 2 were left! Not to mention, I needed to have the cases within the next week. I was unable to find any kind of dielectric substance that I could spray on, so I think I'm going to put electric tape down in the placs that I'm worried about. And no, I won't be placing them near/under the transformer, they will go near smaller, cooler components, like speaker terminals. Near thing that need to be isolated. Ratshack claims to have tape that has a 10,000 volt dielectric constant, resists all kinds of chemicals and can work up to like 100 degrees C. Hopefully that'll do.

 

[Uncle Erik]

Are you using spaghetti on your leads? I use it on every component. Call it overkill if you want, but I think it's necessary. My "project" output is pretty low, and I don't mind spending another hour or so putting it on every lead. Cost is marginal and safety goes way up. You never know when a rig might get jostled or something will sag into contact with something else.

You can find it at Radio Shack and all electronics stores. A tube of 1/64" is right for most leads, and a 4' length should be around $1. It's worth it. Makes your build look cleaner. Also, you can use it to color code various sections of the circuit. Use red for the power supply, green for ground, etc.

I'd use that, but be sure to put an earth ground on it. Be safe.

 

[amb]

Whitebread, if there is a Tap Plastics store in your neighborhood, they carry plastic sheets that can be used for what you want. They also have a web store: http://www.tapplastics.com Look under "Plastic Sheets & Rolls". A good candidate is the "HDPE M/M Opaque Sheets" which comes in various colors, and is not very expensive.

Other places to look for possible material are hobby and craft stores, hardware stores, or building/supply stores such as Home Depot.

 

[rickcr42]

paint the chassis or use fish paper

 

[tomb]

I just use the non-static plastic bags that some parts come in. Slice it in the proper rectangle to match the inside of the enclosure side/top/bottom, and apply it with double-sticky tape. Then I cut a sheet of that thin craft foam (black) to go over that. If I do have anything still sticking out from under the board, the foam cushions it, and both the foam and the plastic baggie sheet stop the leads from touching the metal enclosure

 

[marin]

Why don't you use shrink tubing on the exposed bare connection points?
It comes in all kinds of colors and diameters, too!
Or did I misunderstand the given problem?
Regards, Marin

 

[NeilR]

I use teflon sheet from Mcmaster-Carr. They have a good selection; I used their part# 8569K18.

 

[Whitebread]

Thanks for the recomendations guys. I'm not sure how I'm doing to set the chassis' up yet so I will review the options later. Thanks!