I had recently purchased an ender 3 and after setting it up and plugging it in, I received an electrical shock from the power supply. I live in the UK and so I was provided an EU to UK adapter which I used and I set the voltage to 230 V.
Does anyone know why I was shocked and if there is any solution? Was it because EU to UK isn’t grounded (or am I wrong)?
Would an older 10 amp monitor power cable work better as it’s grounded?
The "shock" is likely from noise filtering circuitry at the power supply's input. For filtering, every power supply has a small capacitor that connects the live input wire to ground (a so-called "class Y capacitor"). A small amount of current can flow through this capacitor, which can give an annoying, but otherwise harmless shock/tingle. Grounding the power supply would solve the problem (which you should do anyways, because it is dangerous to run electronics that are supposed to be grounded without ground).
You need to take particular care when using plug adaptors - they are not always made to a high standard, and it is possible that the earth connection is not present. If you suspect that the earth connection won't allow a 13 A fuse to blow, it would be good to destroy the adaptor.
A simple cable (without adaptor) will be better, but is unlikely to solve the problem.
You should also check if your mains supply uses an earth-leakage protection circuit (any modern installation must, but your house may predate this legislation).
An electric shock from a PSU usually means that either the PSU is wired up incorrectly, or the PSU is wired to an ungrounded spot.
Often, Adapters are not grounded or sloppily made. Get yourself a cable with the same ampere rating as the one you want to replace which has a UK plug. If this does not solve the grounding problem, you need to check if the ground wire in the PSU is mounted correctly.
If you can't get a cable rated the same, either use a higher rated one or change the plug on it.
Had a similar problem with my Ender 5, just a 'static like' shock, not continous. Put a multimeter between printer frame & earth with printer switched ON & it read 20+ volts ac continously! With printer OFF there was about 0.5V ac. I connected an additional earth wire from the psu earth terminal to the printer frame & now no more shocks. I can only assume there not a good earth connection between the psu & printer frame but this doesn't explain where the ac voltage is coming from.
ps I also measured current flow between printer frame & earth when the voltage was 20+ V ac & MM showed zero micro amps?
Check the input cable used, I had similar experience when using cable they provided, then I found out that the plug had swapped L and N wires inside, measuring mains voltage between neutral and ground. Swapped cable for known good and the issue was gone.
Yes. The shock from the lack of grounding. Most cheap SMPS (switched mode power supplies) are grounded to the metal casing which, in turn, is connect to the ground terminal where the AC plug is wired.
tl;dr, take the plastic box on the end off an wire in a UK plug that DOES ground the power supply.
Sorry for leaving this so late, I completely forgot about my account until I went through some old emails. In terms of the PSU shock issue, it was fixed through a replacement 13 A cable from an old monitor (so @Green Online and @Sean Houlihane's response worked best I think).
