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What Piece of Gear did You Blow Up Lately?
Dec 11, 2007 at 2:58 AM Thread Starter Post #1 of 67
Lazarus Short

Lazarus Short

Headphoneus Supremus
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You knew this was going to happen - these kinds of threads are multiplying on the Lounge, so I decided to branch out. Blow up any project lately? Post it here. Sympathy may ensue.

I'll start:

The other day, I took my car battery out, toted it into the shop and put it on the charger. You see, I had left the headlights on all night, the night before. Later, I put it back in. I was tired. I was hungry. I was thinking of where I was going to drive, and what I would eat when I got there. I was NOT thinking of battery polarity. "Now, why is that negative clamp so tight?" ZAP!! I got to DIY my 80 amp alternator fuse. Maybe you see why I don't DIY much anymore...

Laz
 
Dec 11, 2007 at 3:27 AM Post #2 of 67
The last thing I fried was a set of AD8610's for my PPAV2.

Installed them backwards on the browndog adapters.

3am soldering often leads to new unplanned digikey orders.
frown.gif
 
Dec 11, 2007 at 4:03 AM Post #4 of 67
not directly audio related persay but ill pass it off as "source" related. my $350 dollar Western Digital Raptor 150gb 10K rpm harddrive (my baby) just totally crapped out on me the other day. no longer even recognized by my OS to be able to delete the old partition and reformat etc....never a good sign needless to say...
 
Dec 11, 2007 at 4:15 AM Post #5 of 67
Quote:

Originally Posted by el_matt0 /img/forum/go_quote.gif
not directly audio related persay but ill pass it off as "source" related. my $350 dollar Western Digital Raptor 150gb 10K rpm harddrive (my baby) just totally crapped out on me the other day. no longer even recognized by my OS to be able to delete the old partition and reformat etc....never a good sign needless to say...


You have my sympathy - that's literally 100X the cost of my new fuse.

Laz
 
Dec 11, 2007 at 4:39 AM Post #6 of 67
I'm gonna be a selfish person and mention that for once I worked on a power supply without blowing anything up. I repaired a Phast Landmark 16x16 switch this afternoon (PSU was putting out 1/2 normal voltage) for a customer who is hosting a Christmas party tomorrow evening and needed the music system running ASAP. Just gotta go reinstall it tomorrow morning and I get to be the hero.
biggrin.gif
 
Dec 11, 2007 at 4:56 AM Post #7 of 67
Quote:

Originally Posted by Fitz /img/forum/go_quote.gif
I'm gonna be a selfish person and mention that for once I worked on a power supply without blowing anything up. I repaired a Phast Landmark 16x16 switch this afternoon (PSU was putting out 1/2 normal voltage) for a customer who is hosting a Christmas party tomorrow evening and needed the music system running ASAP. Just gotta go reinstall it tomorrow morning and I get to be the hero.
biggrin.gif



you still have plenty of time to screw something up.

i am int eh habbit of not putting ANY of my tools away until i have "tested" whatever im working on. its been a while since a catastrophic failure, but im superstitious...
 
Dec 11, 2007 at 5:12 AM Post #8 of 67
Well it's been a while but it was rather spectacular. I built a dynahi power supply on a home etched board and powered it up first time without a hitch. However under load it was overheating, So I added bigger heatsinks which sadly shorted out a 12.6V tube heater tap and before I knew it the whole thing went up in smoke. I have never seen a chunk of IC physically blow off .... until then. ..dB
 
Dec 11, 2007 at 6:26 AM Post #10 of 67
Not quite blown up, but drained to near-death:

Last weekend I was testing my dac in the car, and towards the end of the day I noticed the amp fading in and out. Turns out that when you work on the car all day with the music playing for most of the time, the battery WILL run out. Who would've thought?!
tongue.gif
 
Dec 11, 2007 at 7:19 AM Post #11 of 67
Had an old radio start smoking on the bench once and I've had old tubes cook off from bad was/paper caps.

Not much of note since picking up the Variac, though. Everything gets brought up slowly now. I can usually catch problems before anything drastic happens.
 
Dec 11, 2007 at 7:45 AM Post #12 of 67
I once put an AD8066 opamp (on a browndog) the wrong way around in a socket. it still works, but it has developed a considerable noise floor. it's now serving its duty in a cmoy for my radio (it's a rack-style radio without any amp inside of it). 95% of the time the hiss of the radio is bigger anyway
 
Dec 11, 2007 at 6:54 PM Post #13 of 67
The last thing I blew up on my own was a Sony NE300 CDP, and a pair of JBL IEMs. I was playing around with my headphone amp, and somehow managed to drop the left channel line out RCA from the CDP onto the +15V terminal of the amp. The amp is DC coupled throughout, so I totally destroyed the CDP, as well as blowing the left channel of the IEM.

Confession time: The IEMs were only a week old, so I returned them to Staples with some vague explanation like "The left channel just quit working." They refunded my money, no questions asked.

I've worked in electronics for almost 30 years, and I've seen plenty of spectacular destructions. Switching power supplies, especially prototypes, are great for watching parts get blown up.
 
Dec 13, 2007 at 2:22 AM Post #14 of 67
My Alien DAC.

It's left channel suddenly stopped working on me. I have no idea what causes this after several months of usage. And this is the second AlienDAC do this on me. What is wrong with it? Anyways, I had to go back to my on-board sound for the time being, and it is hurting my ears.
 
Dec 13, 2007 at 2:38 AM Post #15 of 67
A 7912 regulator.
While protoboarding a SOHA, the not-so-sturdy helping hands took a bit of a dip right onto a set of needlenose pliers and ZAP - Like DBel84, my first time witnessing an IC actually 'blow up' with a couple of pieces flying
across the room -
 
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