Where did all the magic smoke go?

[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 for every victor on their robot

[gam3fr3ak1]

I released the magic smoke from a robot battery

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.

Originally Posted by efoote868

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?

[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]

Originally Posted by 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?

i remember that
good times

[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.