Stupid story of the day (at least it didn't blow up....)

[Blue Jinn]

Well, was testing out a psu. I've wired capacitors backwards, (and caught my mistake before I applied any power...)

This time I put about 100v on a capacitor rated at 35v. It didn't blow up, but it got hot enough for an ouch....the transformer got a little warm too...Oh actually on that same power supply I made the *same* mistake earlier, and put 150v across that same capacitor, so this was the *second* time and it *still* didn't blow up. (I was misreading the terminal position)  Elna capacitor. Apparently they make "idiot tolerance 75%" part of the design criteria....  :-[ :-[ :-[ :-[

Maybe there is a little demon in me that just wants to see something blow up....

 

[JohnRoberts]

Be thankful you didn't experience the cap explosion, up close and personal.

Modern wet electrolytic caps have pressure relief built into the rubber bung, but I've still blown them up, and one time I blew up a decent sized film cap that was damping transient spikes across a transformer inside an early ('60s)  DC to DC switcher. Luckily for me I was away from my bench and across the room when this one blew up, as it made a huge mess and sounded like a gun going off.  It looked a little like snow covering my bench. 

JR

 

[bruno2000]

Been there, done that.......
Have you ever seen a large LED explode?
Best,
Bruno2000

 

[Blue Jinn]

Been there, done that.......
Have you ever seen a large LED explode?
Best,
Bruno2000

A small one, oddly enough the smell was kinda sweet.

 

[Kingston]

Been there, done that.......
Have you ever seen a large LED explode?
Best,
Bruno2000

A small one, oddly enough the smell was kinda sweet.

And to think of the exotic cancer possibilities of that exposure.

Reminds me of a friend who works in the graphics printing industry. They call their mentors of the old age who got exposed to a bit too much of the unknown [chemicals] the "huh?"-guys... 

 

[pucho812]

when I first started the new gig last year one of the first things I had to do was debug a proto unit power supply. This was a smpsu with  a filter section that was after the SMPSU.  The issue was one of the rails had  the first  filter cap always blowing up, and it was left almoe for a while. Well a minute with a continuity meter yielded the following: whoever hand soldered the  demo PCB soldered the 2 pin polarized connector for the filter input backwards on that one rail.  This ment that coming from the smpsu into the filter section for that rail that all the caps were in backwards. it was behaving as if all the caps were in backwards, the first one blew up as it should and is best described as old faithful erupting. Next there would be no output for that rail. Once I  had that figured out it was a matter of de-soldering the connector and putting it back in in the right orientation followed by replacing the cap, but, the first power up  before debugging and after just replacing the cap was something I would not want any one to experience unless your into that sort of sadistic torture.

 

[ruffrecords]

When I was a lad I was really into fireworks and explosions. One of my many stupid exploits was connecting 240V AC mains right across 10V rated electolytics just to watch them blow up. Oh, the follies of youth.

Cheers

ian

 

[okgb]

Similar , I remember sticking Christmas lights into the A.C. socket , popped pretty quickly .......
My last cap encounter at only 12v had the electrolytic doing a sizzle noise and leaking out the top
[ the adapter was the wrong polarity ]

 

[Indecline]

First time a cap blew on me was at 2am after a VP26 build. My buddy and I did the "smoke" test and he looked really hard in the lunchbox to see the smoke. He turned to me and said "no smoke!" Then WHAMMO!!

Scared the crap out of us.. I was pretty new to diy and am glad he still has both his peep holes.

 

[bitman]

When I was about 7 I wired a 6 x 9 car speaker to 110 vac.

BANG!

I snuck down the stairs so quietly expecting my newspaper reading dad to be waiting to kill me for doing whatever would make that bang. He never looked up from his paper. The only sound that quiet Sunday afternoon was the tick tick tick of an antique clock and the Pound Pound Pound of my heart in my ears as I casually (as a guilty 7 year old could) walked by him and went outside to collect myself.

This was my first attempt at an amplifier. Heck my older brother had a VOX. Why not me.....