Screw connectors to main breaker rusting?

[Maximillian]

During an off season event we mysteriously stopped working due to an electrical problem. The robot would lose power and reboot, we would get communications back and everything appeared to be fine until we tried to run any motor, which would cause us to lose power again.

We pulled every breaker but one and tried to see if it was a short in any of the individual circuits, but every single one of them still caused the robot to reboot. It was concluded that the problem must be the power distribution board so we ended up borrowing one from a local team after the event. We plugged this new one in but got the same results.

We then pulled all the electronics out of the robot and tested them on a table. When doing this we decided to take off the connections to the main breaker to make sure they looked fine.

When investigating the main breaker we discovered that one of the screw on connectors we were using looked rusted/corroded and had melted the electrical tape covering it. We replaced this one connector and it appears the problem is fixed. We then switched back to our own PD board and it still worked.


What do you think caused the connector to become rusted on the screw and melt the electrical tape covering it? We were using a compressed air can held upside down can to cool the breaker so that may have caused the problem. Could the connection being messed up like this cause the behavior that we experienced in the robot?



**Sorry for my phones bad quality photos