Who has released the Magic Smoke!!!

[Mister_Juggles]

Well, we were *originally* going to use the BaneBots motor to lift our arm... Need I say more?

[Monochron]

We released the smoke while testing our electronics. There was a short in a motor controller and when we tried touching wires to it from the motors to make sure they worked someone got a hot reception and our robot lost its smoke virginity....*tear* they grow up so fast....

[Rapt0r9]

I actually released magic smoke from a USB Flash Drive. I broke off the USB connector and decided to open it and solder on new connection wires. I read the pinout backwards and the drive stopped working for some reason.

Our team burnned out a camera last year and we have burned 18 AWG alligator clips by using them as battery leads.

[JBotAlan]

I am proud to announce that we have not released any magic smoke this year.

We (a freshman, actually) wired an Anderson pair reverse-polarity, though, making for popping circuit breakers and a whole lot of confusion.

And then there's last year's doozie:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/24374

I did see a plume of magic white smoke rise from a pit at GLR this year...forgot who, but I do remember we all stood back and clapped.

We still have IRI, so who knows what might happen...

JBot

[Adam Y.]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

Magic Smoke is what makes electrical devices work. It's put inside them when they are manufactured. If it ever escapes, the device stops working.

This is similar to the Magic Noise which makes mechanical devices work. If too much noise comes out of something like a planetary gearbox, it too stops working.

Don't forget the magic explosives because sometimes when you hook something up incorrectly it doesn't just smoke. It goes boom. Quite interesting how a blown out MOSFET looks likes. It's a melted goo.

[cire]

We have never let out the magic smoke in our 5 years, I guess we have a cautious electrical team. We also have never used the FP or banebot motors..

[dtape]

1686 released alot of magic smoke at Beantown Blitz

[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by dtape

1686 released alot of magic smoke at Beantown Blitz

yes they most certainly did! and they came back running no problme their next match

[Qbranch]

Originally Posted by meatmanek

Magic smoke from alligator clips does not count, unless you vaporize the wires themselves (possible.)

Well, once I did create some firewire on my old Lionel model train set... burned right through my styrofoam base, then into the old pingpong table underneath, shortly after part of the wire turned to ash.

Also had some sparks and fireworks (along with some welded aluminum) come out of an ill-fated battery clip I used on a slapped together pair of robots for a demo... was something like a ford Pinto, blew up on a rear end collision. but... well most of you herd about that one already... my right hand sure doesnt let me forget about it... oh and I always wear heat resistant mechanix gloves often now whenever near a robot...

-q

[Protronie]

Originally Posted by Qbranch

oh and I always wear heat resistant mechanix gloves often now whenever near a robot...

-q

With YOUR safety record... I'd suggest a full fire proof close prox suit and hood with SCBA!
Maybe with some knee and elbow pads.

[Zyik]

One of the freshmen plugged a battery in backwards and it exploded... I hope thats all the magic smoke for this year.

[Bomberofdoom]

Sigh, we had a major Magic Smoke that cost us a....can't remember the name of the motor, but it was something like a mitsubishi or something.... anyway, we tried our Jacks program on one of the "legs" and the program didn't seem to want to stop the motor from running while at it's maximum...
There goes a $100 motor that took us 3 weeks to get.
Eventually we didn't get to use it too much in the comptetition, but except that and a slight smoke from our arm globe, nothing else, we were fine.

Oh yeah, and it was a programming team guy who did those both msitakes.

[Aroki]

We had magic smoke come out of one of our banebots during the Buckeye Regional practice match 3.

Also we were doing some "amputations" to our robot and got a bunch of metal shavings in our cRio/power distribution board. Luckily another team saw and warned us to vacuum it out before someone turned the robot on.

[Gregor]

Woh holy thread revival!

And, everyone has released the Magic Smoke.

[Saberbot]

A few of us on the rookie row at Galileo last year got magic smoke from all of our chargers. Somebody hit the power drop with a robot cart and shorted out the three phase.
It was pretty scary when six pits all started smoking in sync. Thankfully, the electric company bought us all new chargers.