Is it me or is this a bit misleading?

[rlitman]

That means you had a poor(high resistant) neutral connection either at the stove terminal block or at the panel.

There are thousands of existing 3-wire 120v/240v stove installations, where the frame is bonded to neutral, that do not shock people.

Could be. Probably in fact. Here is where I will point out that you'd never feel the "tingle" unless there was a significant 120V load. IIRC, it was a coffee urn that made me notice it. And I will point out that what I felt was anything but painful, though I could not say for certain if the "shock" was limited by my shoe soles, or perhaps it was only enough voltage to be felt and nothing more. For years, we just learned to not use those outlets.

Anyway the voltage drop across the neutral (which would be equal to the voltage potential between the frame and ground on a 3-wire setup) is proportional to the neutral current, but a 15A 120V load shouldn't have that much of a voltage drop across a conductor sized for a range. Even on 60 year old wiring. The low resistance of the wire limits the voltage drop to levels that are probably safe, unless your range is next to your bath tub, and the people who wrote the code when this was allowed certainly knew Ohm's law well enough to understand this.

But nowadays we frown upon intentionally using the ground path as a current carrying conductor for many good reasons. One of which is that as you pointed out, high resistance can lead to energizing surfaces.

 

[wyliesdiesels]

Could be. Probably in fact. Here is where I will point out that you'd never feel the "tingle" unless there was a significant 120V load. IIRC, it was a coffee urn that made me notice it. And I will point out that what I felt was anything but painful, though I could not say for certain if the "shock" was limited by my shoe soles, or perhaps it was only enough voltage to be felt and nothing more. For years, we just learned to not use those outlets.

Anyway the voltage drop across the neutral (which would be equal to the voltage potential between the frame and ground on a 3-wire setup) is proportional to the neutral current, but a 15A 120V load shouldn't have that much of a voltage drop across a conductor sized for a range. Even on 60 year old wiring. The low resistance of the wire limits the voltage drop to levels that are probably safe, unless your range is next to your bath tub, and the people who wrote the code when this was allowed certainly knew Ohm's law well enough to understand this.

But nowadays we frown upon intentionally using the ground path as a current carrying conductor for many good reasons. One of which is that as you pointed out, high resistance can lead to energizing surfaces.

you have it backwards. Old 3-wire stove and dryer circuits didnt have a grounding pathway. Instead, the neutral was used as a ground bond, hence the reason why the neutral terminal was bonded and the neutral wire was insulated. If you look at the specs for a nema 10-30 or 10-50 outlet or plug, you will see that it is listed as 3-wire 3-pole non grounding.

Under normal operation, the insulated neutral pathway should be of low enough resistance so that current will not take an alternate pathway(through a person). If it is not, then you have a shock potential.

This is the whole reason why 3-wire stove and dryer circuits were banned as of 1996 code change.