There is some confusion running rampant here...
Current can kill you, yes. But without voltage there is NO current.
The only current that kills you is the current that runs through your body and specifically across your heart.
You need about 5mA running across your heart to cause fibrillation which is a mis-beating heart that pumps no blood. This needs to be avoided... For obvious reasons.
How much current a source can provide is completely immaterial with respect to how dangerous that source is. That is - if the source can supply more than 5mA. It doesn't matter if it can supply a million amps it is not even vaguely hazardous if it can't force 5mA of those million amps through your chest cavity.
You are no more than wet resistor to a voltage source. The resistance of your body is squarely in the equation of electrocution.
What is your body's resistance situation? Well, your innards are a wet goop of salt water. A great conductor. Through your chest cavity probably a measly 1 to 10 ohms. Luckily our skin is a very different story. Skin is about 25,000 ohms. So what do we have? 25k + 25k +10 = 50,010k ohms. Lets just stick with 50k.
You can walk up to your car battery and grab both terminals and what do we get? Let's keep in mind that a typical car battery can dish out 800A, but it's at only 12V. Using Ohms law which COMPLETELY describes what will happen we get:
12V / 50,000 ohms = 0.24mA. Chances are you will not feel it at all. I will point out that you actually can feel it but only through your forearms and just at the skin surface.
Note that even though 800A are available nobody is dying. Current availability is un-important with regard to
electrocution danger level. Why? Again. Because without the voltage there is no way to drive
any current
anywhere.
Let's move on to our 48V current drivers. Manage to hook yourself up to one in the worst possible way and Ohms law tells us that we could get (at most): 48V / 50,000 ohms = 1mA running through our meat-sack. You will feel that... It's like someone overhands you with a tennis racket in the chest. But statistics and a 100 years of electricity, tells us that won't kill anyone. (your mileage may vary)
Moving on to these 230V drivers.. The story changes here.
230V / 50,000 ohms gets you the magic number.. 5mA! Since the drive is up for supplying 700mA it certainly has no problem loaning someone's chest 5mA.
It should be noted that the 50k People Resistance is heavily dependent on your skin at the time. If your hands are dry and recently washed in something like dish soap your skin resistance will be much higher. This reduces the amount of current that can flow through you. If your hands are a little greasy and you've been handling a bunch of metal and touching this and that during a build your skin resistance will be a little lower and shock severity will increase.
Unfortunately in our hobby we go a whole lotta steps further and end up with soggy, wrinkled hands, dripping with salt water. This severely dumps our skin resistance in the toilet. Perhaps down around 10k, greatly, increasing shock hazards. Moving many cases that would normally be a shock to a very painful shock, and something that was a painful shock into a painful
episode for your surviving relatives.
It's the voltage folks. The voltage when hitched to any current availability that's greater and 5mA.
This is why I suggest that unless you're a consummate electrical assembler you don't dabble in these high voltage LED drivers. The result of an accident is just not worth the piddly savings of a few resistors and terminal blocks needed to have a
relatively hazard free build.
Heli has done a really clean job here building a very nice fixture. He's been very fastidious in his build and made it as safe as possible. I won't expect to see his name in the obituaries because of his nice fixture - unless it falls on him. :lol:
I, wouldn't want to go to that much effort just so I can avoid some terminal blocks and paralleling. Without a doubt, 50V is below immediately fatal voltage levels to someone working on their fixture in the typical situation. Two hundred and thirty volts is most definitely not.
