Its a talon with a blown transistor
Pretty sure that’s a Talon that has been burned out…
It looks like a talon, I’ve seen the how its made on them
I didn’t know that was possible… 
Talon Flambe’
It’s what’s for dinner…
Something tells me that the red leads and the black leads went into the wrong spots–the screws are all out of position…
Talon with a blown capacitor. You probably switched the input wires by mistake…
I agree… Q12 leads (4) appear to have experienced high heat surge i.e. they are discolored.
& is likely one of the 4 bridge FETs (H-bridge power switch between input power & motor load)
often the result of a drain-source overvoltage spike “punch thru” which puts the battery across the switch without current limiting… strange thing is 2nd FET does not appeared to have the same damage - as one is tied to +12 other to ground return (-)
The big cap looks fine… debris on it appears to be adhesive or pealed conformal coating
Talons have diodes or something on their input leads to protect from people switching the two
I do not believe that is the case.
Its a talon with busted electrolytic capacitor, the ash/grey dry powdery stuff is the leaked and dried liquid.
That is thermal compound. The cap touches the heat sink.
I can confirm that is not the case!
Been, there, done, that, have the magic smoke and a conversation with Mike Copioli, along with some hush money to get a replacement. No freshmen were harmed during the thermal event, or after I realized what they did. . .
This Talon came off of our 2013 robot. We got in a habit of unplugging the wires to the talons that controlled our climbing arm. I’m not sure the entire story behind it, but the power wires were reconnected with reversed polarity and poof. White smoke in downtown Flint.
It’s a minature model of a futuristic city!
In the future, every city will have 4 buildings that look like terminal screws
Has anyone found a keyed connector that can take 12 gauge wire?
My thought was to mount pigtails on the talons and use two different keyed connectors to help prevent this (happened twice to us).
You can do this with the small Anderson Powerpoles. If you take a close look at the housings, you’ll note that rather than mounting them side by side, you can attach them together with one of the two rotated 90 degrees. If you do that consistently, you’ve effectively made a keyed connector.
I’ve generally found that enforcing color coding and having an experienced second set of eyes check wiring before conducting smoke tests is good enough, but it’s an option.