How To Discharge An Arcade Game Monitor (The Phillips Gameroom: Episode - 15) 

@@vcpd nothing to worry about as long as you discharge it properly

On the crt …yes

No, unplug the game before doing anything

@@PhillipsVision So how does the voltage discharge to ground if the unit isn't plugged in?

@@picklerism I struggled with these concepts, too. I'll try framing this a few different ways and hopefully one will help point you in the right direction, simplifying not to be condescending but to help the ideas stick. It may be helpful to think of "ground" as a destination for stored-up energy. More of a principle regarding potential energy than something that specifically exists in a wall outlet. You could say that ground is where the stored energy *isn't*, so it's a reference to how much stored energy there *is*. The monitor chassis can be ground, so can your body, so can the third hole in the wall outlet. In the case of the ground that's in the wall outlet, that's designed as a safety feature, basically so electrical energy that's found a way out of its intended circuit will (hopefully) end up taking that path instead of your body. Not a great analogy, but maybe think of a rubber band, loose and floppy, as ground ... then pull back on the rubber band and hold it, so you've filled it with potential energy, like voltage. Ground is like the state of equilibrium that the rubber band under tension is trying to get back to. So "discharging voltage to ground" has more to do with controlling the rubber band as it releases the stored up energy on its way to being loose again. Think of static electricity, how your feet rubbing on a carpet or clothes rubbing on a car seat builds up charge, potential energy, and the next metal object you touch you get a small shock. That conductive metal object you touched "grounded" the potential energy, the static charge, by giving it a destination to discharge into. So it doesn't need to come from the wall outlet. Electricity is everywhere. The kind that comes from an outlet is simply harnessed and contained as a resource that we can put to work. And even after pulling the plug, there can still be energy stored that's waiting for a path to discharge into. In the case of these arcade monitors (and microwaves and other devices), even after unplugging them from the outlet, the components inside can still retain huge amounts of potential energy. A capacitor, for instance, is designed to store energy and release it at a certain rate (like a battery) once given a path to do so. Whereas the chassis, although conductive metal, is not designed to store energy. So when you connect a capacitor full of energy to the ground plane (chassis), this provides a path for the stored energy to travel along (instead of your body). The metal chassis isn't storing the charge, isn't like a battery, so the energy can discharge and dissipate. The potentially-fatal rubber band under tension, as it were, is now loose again, and all the energy it released went somewhere other than your body. Hope that helps. 👍

Awesome, glad it helped👍

The tube holds the charge under the anode cap. Holds about 20,000 to 30,000 volts I believe depending on the monitor