Where did all the magic smoke go?

[efoote868]

So, how my team has let out the magic smoke:

-Fried the ends of alligator clips when a team mate shorted it on a battery
-fried 3 servos, 2 encoder boards when we put 12 volts to them through main breaker panel
-fried a y-cable that was hanging loose and it made contact with a live terminal

thankfully there weren't any victors, spikes or cameras in there... not sure if the RC is damaged, but still seems functional.

So, what has your team done?

[waiakea2024]

fortunatly no magic smoke this year (knocks on wood). Our team has all the newbies and froshies whipped into shape to not create this wonderful magic smoke.

[DarkFlame145]

oh noes teh magic smoke.

We have not released the magic smoke (crosses fingers) this year. Since we pray to the magic smoke gods to make sure it stays in there after it is trapped.

[alex1699]

we jump start lasted year robot....... yesterday

[Boydean]

We got some last Sunday. The electrical guys got a potentiometer soldered up, but they didn't look at the wiring diagram so we plug it in and the smoke came.

Oh yeah, I inverted the - and + on the IR board, but that just smelled bad(and doesn't work anymore). Why did they make - the grey wire and + black!!!

[seanl]

we fried a few pwm cables this year.

[lasereyes]

This is our rookie year and (luckily) there was no magic smoke (yet...)

[popo308]

we had a motor go up in smoke really bad it was like a fog machine went off.... that motor on our lifter has burnt about 4 times.... i think we should order more victors :D

[MasterMkanik]

We havent let any smoke out..... but we did rip the radio port of the robot controller.:(

[PrincessJae]

our yellow spike fuse keeps burning out from the compressor... does that count? =]

[647techangel]

today on the last day of build my great thinking mentor(who graduated 2 years ago) told me 2 hook the IR board in the wrong way and i fried somithing in it because i switchd the polarity:mad:
now its useless:mad:

[EricH]

our yellow spike fuse keeps burning out from the compressor... does that count? =]No. It's preventable. That particular fuse and ONLY that fuse can be replaced with a 20A snap-action circuit breaker. I would suggest you replace it before ship.

[Zack Briggs]

I believe this is our third or fourth magic-smoke free year in a row. We are very diligent in training our electronics team how not to do things, ad we leave the more accident prone things for the more experienced members or mentors.

[Blue_Mist]

Fortunately, no magic smoke. Unfortunately, much ordinary smoke from soldering irons. Although the first time we attempted 2008 OI with 2008 robot (we normally test one at a time with an older, proven functional robot/OI), the OI trim was off a great amount and the joystick ports were switched. I will now choose this moment to mention that I led the OI team. :o

[Daniel Bathgate]

The largest amount of magic smoke we released this year was when a PWM cable came loose from a spike and the negative contacted the positive lead, creating a short through the robot controller and a lot of smoke. Magically, everything but the charred PWM wire was still OK.

[Binome]

Our IR board decided to release its magic smoke, but I packed it back in and it started working:)

Other than that, our bot's stayed smoke free

[boygenius]

the most smoke we let out this year is from our backup battery charger circuit we built we had a solder bridge that fried our zener doide.:ahh:

[Martino]

our first year(2006) we didn't have any... but the last 2 years we have let out the magic smoke last year it was just a PWM cable and this year it was a victor:ahh: i wasn't there when they did it... but i here it was bad!!!

[Andy L]

we fried an FP motor on our elevator because someone doesn't understand "no don't use past years motors and transmissions"

[tacopaco789]

We had our Banebot motor smoke 3 or 4 time when opperating our wrist on the arm. http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=64571

Kyle Jordan
624 Cryptonite Robotics

[Graham Donaldson]

While I wasn't there at the time (and I'm not sure of the exact story), I know that we released the magic smoke this year. We were hooking up a battery to a board (pneumatics test board, I believe) and the member who was plugging the alligator clips had a bunch of cables in his hand...suffice it to say a black cable got put on one terminal, the end of a different cable got attached to the board, and then the first cable was attached to the other terminal...and this was one of the big batteries = lots of smoke and sparks= fused and completely useless wires. thankfully it was an old battery, and no one got hurt.

[RyanN]

No magic smoke from Fusion this year. We did have a Victor mysteriously decide to stop receiving signals from the RC and our IR board crashed, but that's it.

[ChrisMcK2186]

we avoided the FP motors purely b/c we are highly allergic to anything related to magic: unicorns, pixies, smoke. So far, so good.

We did have some close brushes with potentially magical smoke when some freshman tried wiring the board up backwards to see what would happen. He now asks in triplicate before touching things now...


Chris McKenzie
2186

[RyanN]

we avoided the FP motors purely b/c we are highly allergic to anything related to magic: unicorns, pixies, smoke. So far, so good.

We did have some close brushes with potentially magical smoke when some freshman tried wiring the board up backwards to see what would happen. He now asks in triplicate before touching things now...


Chris McKenzie
2186

We're using a FP motor this year, but we have it staying cool under working conditions using magic... A fan and brake does wonders.

[ReaperGoat]

yeah, 1735 has been very lucky the three years we've been around...haven't fried a single thing (so far)

[David Brinza]

Release of magic smoke is a preventable robot affliction. It's caused most frequently by wiring error, occasionally by inadvertent shorts (from metal shavings, worn insulation, bent connector pins), and rarely by an internal device failure. There are a lot of teams that go for years without frying electrical components.

It starts with a good layout and neat wiring. Carefully crimped wires with labels at each end are routed point-to-point correctly. Wires should be placed without stress from tight bends and avoiding sharp edges. Not only does this look good but will be very reliable and easy to inspect/troubleshoot.

The metal shavings problem can be avoided by covering the electrical board whenever mechanical work (especially cutting/drilling) is being done on the robot. Mechanical work should only be done with the main breaker open.

Before plugging the main battery for the first time, inspect the following:

Every connection against wiring diagram (correct gauge, correct polarity, connector integrity, no pinched wires)
Isolation of chassis from main battery power and ground terminals (at least 100KOhm)
Main breaker is open (OFF)
OI in disabled state

Connect battery and close main breaker.

Verify indicator lights on RC and Victors.
If there's a problem with any of the indicators, turn off the power and inspect the wiring again for the affected components.

The consequences of releasing magic smoke can be painful. A "lesson learned" in competition can wreck your whole day.:( (I know this from the 2006 GTR semi-finals - ouch!)

Taking the time to protect and inspect your electrical board before flipping the power switch is worthwhile.

BTW, the inspection process can be used to familiarize newer team members with the FIRST electrical subsystem - a good learning experience.

[Whisper]

Team 1091 has fried multiple window motors for three years now. We are not lucky at all. For at least two years in a row now, some of our motors have been defective or put together wrong. FOr example, last year we got locktite into one of our drive motors, and this year the gearbox on the drive motor was out of alignment. We also ended up burning out a window motor when we tried to use it as a vacuum for sucking up the trackball. Apparently a little fan on the end of it creates a very large amount of resistance. we also got epoxy into another vacuum mount and the fan blade got stuck on it and burned out the second motor as well.
Also the power cables for the fan on one of our victors came loose, if a mentor hadn't spotted it, we would have ended up frying it. Which is bad.
SO i have no idea what yall are talking bout when you say theres no more magic smoke :(

[RoXmySoX]

Thank bob we didnt let the magic smoke out. (knock on wood) :cool:

[seg9585]

We lost 2 speed controllers due to a faulty CIM motor (shorting). When after the 2nd one blew we replaced the motor and all was well.

[robbrad]

I blew one encoder and would have blown the Robot Controller if I had put the yellow jumpers in the distrobution block earlier than I had.

[The Megan 2207]

Hooray for a magic-smoke-free build season! Last year we (by we I mean Stolte) fried a PWM cable. It was all melty and it smelled really bad.

[Bluephlame]

None from myself and team 145 this year. Last year however, a PWM got sucked into a Victor fan and started to smoke. Any team wishing to avoid these types of issues should get one of these (http://www.partsforrobots.com/Products/PWM%20Clip/PWM%20Clip.html) for every victor on their robot

[gam3fr3ak1]

I released the magic smoke from a robot battery :yikes:

Someone took the 2 batteries out of the cardboard box, then put them back in the KOP box with all the METAL. I went to get the batteries (ironically to put the connectors on the terminals and cover them with electrical tape), and a piece of steel cable fell over both terminals on the battery.

I had to leave the room coughing for a while....it probably had to do with me standing over the arcing battery trying to get the cable off with my foot..

[Hieb]

Since our arm design was very similar to the one we used last year that released the smoke from 4 motors, we switched to pneumatics--no magic smoke problems as a result.

[Cow Bell Solo]

This year no, thankfully, but...
last year when I was teaching others the electronics I had the circuit hot but earlier that evening pulled out a pwm cable from the victor end only not the RC. So When I went to point to something my hand/arm brushed up against that pwm cable which then one of the ends touched the current that is given to the victors and poof, a mushroom cloud of blue smoke coming out of the electrical board, not good.

I did not fry the RC or anything else, just the PWM cable, check out the pictures of the cable on our website, http://www.whitebearlakerobotics.com/phooneframe.htm

[Optimizer]

I wasn't involved with our HW, but it seems like a team with a name like ours ought to have magic smoke involved in the build process, somehow!! ;)

[Mr. Freeman]

We let the magic smoke out of a black serial cable last year. The positive lead from the battery got disconnected from the terminal block and contacted the chassis. The serial cable was plugged into the program port of the RC, and the end touched the chassis. Dead short through the RC ground on the program port. The cable started smoking like crazy, but somehow the RC survived fully functional.

[ND4SPD]

So, how my team has let out the magic smoke:
-fried a y-cable that was hanging loose and it made contact with a live terminal

So, what has your team done?

Did I do that? :) Note to self: Make sure that there aren't any random y-cables hanging loose before powering on for progging

[SL8]

We have a (now we know) messed up 9v and when we were picking it up to put it on the charger, it slid by the chair legs, zap.

I personally saw to the execution of an extension cord of ours. Guess who got to learn how to fix extension cords?:D

[Uberbots]

we smoked the same IR board with a short ciruit 3 times in a row... and we repaired it every time. surprisingly, its more reliable than the ones that havent burnt (yet)

[scottanderson]

We smoked a Victor this year just before the robot shipped, but didn't realize it (anonymous pop, no traces).

At Kettering we tried debugging a problem with our arm: the Victor showed red/orange/green like it should when the controller told it to go up/neutral/down, but the arm only worked in one direction. We tried replacing the arm motor, debugging the software, etc. but nothing showed up.

Apparently a couple of somethings (diodes or capacs, don't remember) on the Victor had popped, and finally one of our team members figured it out (I wasn't there so I don't know exactly how).

[Rick TYler]

Well, FTC bots don't hold as much magic smoke to start with, but we did have a robot that had the pit crew holding an ice bag on a servo between matches...

[Herodotus]

Though not strictly magic, I did go ahead and almost set fire to a piece of wood I was cutting on a bandsaw. Let's just say I'm lucky I didn't set off the fire alarm.

We also managed to fry a pot by directly running it through a 12v battery and giving it a good twist. Turns out that seems to create a small fusion reaction that produces a small, blinding sun inside the pot.

Now if only we could use alternate power sources on the robot...

[647techangel]

We have a (now we know) messed up 9v and when we were picking it up to put it on the charger, it slid by the chair legs, zap.

I personally saw to the execution of an extension cord of ours. Guess who got to learn how to fix extension cords?:D

i remember that
good times:D

[Jim E]

Herodotus:
We also managed to fry a pot by directly running it through a 12v battery and giving it a good twist. Turns out that seems to create a small fusion reaction that produces a small, blinding sun inside the pot.


I like that description.:)