I was doing a bit of tig welding about 6 feet from computer that was drip feeding the EDM. Machine stopped didnt think much about it restarted and kept welding. Stopped again but this time no joy. Computer had red light on and was beeping. Took it in motherboard bad. Old computer so maybe a coincidence just wondering if the tig fried the computer?
Bob
Certainly it can. And probably DID.
"Industry" has been dealing with this as a
high priority since the introduction of the electric telegraph. There are library shelves full of books on it by now.
IF/AS/WHEN a(ny) device is NOT damaged?
It is because many brains and hands have been working for more than 180 years to protect their devices from damage by both internal design, protective devices, inbuilt and add-on, and improvements to the "practice" of site and equipment connecting, shielding, bonding, and grounding.
Read: "highly variable environments result", one to the next.
The physics don't go on holidays.
Some setups are simply more susceptible than others, even with identical equipment.
The equipment is rarely identical, anyway, the wiring even less-so.
"King Kong" and hardest to deal with amongst the roster of pee-bringers is not your welder, nor even kiss-your-equipment-goodbye direct, but very RARE, lightning strikes.
It is the COMMON "air mass thunderstorm" and FAR, FAR more common "
near miss" not-EVEN full-bore lightning strikes that affect points quite a distance up or down the wire. Ben Franklin as his kite and door-key, by all rights should have been a dead man. He got lucky. Very.
You cannot AFFORD
perfection in protection.
Apply common sense. Expect to replace affordable goods "now and then" rather than stick with obsolete technology because...
.. even NASA, DoD, or MoD CANNOT
afford to armour the piss out of every inch of wire ELSE weld only with coal forge and gas torch, motor about in a hand-crank-started compression-ignition Diesel with mechanical injectors and Acetylene headlamps .... just so there IS NO electrical system.
SOME risk is
always involved in "affordable" goods as deliver progress.
"Mostly" even our throwaway-cheap goods are rather good at survival.
More than just the one part-time guy has been working away, those 180-odd years, and damned few were idiots.
Thankfully.
JFDWT with the cost of the odd 'gap' in the armor, be more careful next time.
S**t will still happen, but it need not be often, nor expensive.