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Unread 27-04-2013, 23:34
DjScribbles DjScribbles is offline
Programming Mentor
AKA: Joe S
FRC #2474 (Team Excel)
Team Role: Mentor
 
Join Date: Oct 2011
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Location: Niles MI
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Fried relay controllers on the Digital Sidecar

So today, our season was brought to an unfortunate end by the poorly timed failure of the relay section of our digital sidecar in our division semi-finals. We tried replacing PWM cables, trying different ports for DIO/Relay, shorting across the pressure gauge switch, the only thing we didn't try was replacing the spike).

In talking to the kids and a mentor from another team, it sounds like this is not an uncommon occurrence.
I'm curious if others have had such issues?
What could be possible causes? My guess is metal shavings, we had just done an emergency repair the previous match, but our DSC is also fairly tucked away, so shavings feels a bit like a cop-out.

But most importantly, is there anything that can be done to protect it, like potting material or something similar (shavings protection) or is it just sensitive to stress, and bound to fail no matter what you do?