Who has released the Magic Smoke!!!

[Lavapicker]

But he does read the posts...magic smoke eh? I did see the wire that looked like insulation had been burnt off. Good job it didn't set off the fire alarms in the library! That would have been a great end to robotic season???

[Christian]

A couple of days ago, we magic smoked two rs-540s, it wasn't just wisps, it was complete smoke, almost flames (our arm was too heavy). Then there was the switch. The signal cut out, the switch caught on fire, and the robot went running and crashing into the practice rack, on fire.... it still gets pretty hot, maybe a defective switch... I don't know, but it was funny, sad and scary at the same time.

[billbo911]

Did you know that PWM cables contain a very LARGE amount of magic smoke? This is what they can look like after you let it out.
This happened when the PWM cable pulled out of the Victor it was attached to and the ground wire slipped into the +12 vdc connector feeding the Victor.

[Dan_Karol]

We smoked our bane bots motor with attached gear box the day of ship .
we should have a replacement by our regional along with code to prevent it from happening again.

-Dan Karol

[Mike]

Originally Posted by NumBeast

I was having troubles with our backup battery. The charger seemed to drain the battery when the robot was turned off and I had lost our last battery. I finally got tierd of it all and connected the main battery directly to the backup battery port, not realizing I was adding an extra 2.8 volts.

Wow the smoke was awesome. we made smoke signals to each other and had lots of fun with our no longer functioning RC

As a programmer I truly empathize with that RC.

[Vikesrock]

We let out some magic smoke from one set of analog inputs on the RC after some excess winch cable shorted between some uninsulated spike terminals and some analog pins. Good thing we aren't using them all anyway!

[waiakea2024]

We finally have this past Monday. Luckily nothing was damaged. The wire that shorted looked really bad though.

[savage301]

We toasted both of our small banebot motors. We ended up not using them anyway. I like the Keyangs much better.

[devaaki]

Cool, it's team 2024 in hawai'i... greetings from 2025 from Minnesota!!

I was hooking up the y-cable PWM to the camera when the other side of the y dropped onto the 120amp breaker nut and grouded out. The ground cable shot up a huge cloud of fetid yellow smoke.

Then a few days later an RS-540 fried itself because our arm dropped down past the limit of travel... turned the insides nice and charcoaly.

[Orominuialwen]

I released the magic smoke for the first time in a very unusual way several weeks ago. A friend and I were drilling holes in spring steel (used for deploying our ramp & platform) with a block of wood clamped underneath it for stability. The spring steel and wood released the magic smoke on every single one of the eight or so holes we drilled, but fortunately spring steel can still function just fine without its magic smoke.

Unfortunately, spring steel also feeds on the blood of Mechanical Team members, which we can attest to by all of our sliced fingers. We actuallly ended up briefly running out of bandaids in our first aid kit, that spring steel was so hungry.

[FIRST Rocks]

About a week before ship day, I attached a PWM cable to the relay port on the RC so it would be ready to connect to the spike relay when it was mounted. I foolishly left the wire hanging loose. A few days later, the loose end slipped into the backup battery ground terminal. The wire was laying across the RC, so when the magic smoke came out of the wire (lots of it), I thought it was coming from the RC!

[efoote868]

Our old battery boy was the magician of all magic smokes. He set a record of producing it 3 times at competitions. (and we still won safety awards... makes me wonder what all the other teams were doing wrong)

While demonstrating the power of the big cim to our freshmen, our of our victors blew its magic smoke. an arc about 4 inches long, and a bunch of scared freshmen. Now they all believe in magic smoke...

[ChristinaC]

One of our victors released its magic smoke.

And I believe the RC did as well, but it still worked afterwards. Not bad...

[pogg]

Team 540 has realesed the Magic Smoke one or twice during the build season.

[Tom Line]

Sorry Kyle - I couldn't resist.

One of our electrical team members this year decided to power one of the larger muffin fans directly from the battery.

He must have misread the amperage rating. mA != A.

It melted the positive wire in half, and spot-welded the free end of the wire to the battery. There were little pieces of charge wire everywhere on the floor.

I've never seen him move so fast....