pic: Too Much Tape



Any guesses at what is hidden beneath this mass of tape?

That would appear to be an FRC battery with a DC-AC power inverter attached to it, connected to a charger/power adapter which ironically is also an AC-DC converter.

Uh, Joey, Can you guess what I am thinking? (Cringing while I am typing and no it has nothing to do with robot rules.)

It may not be a robot rule but a rule of nature.:yikes:

If only there was a single electronic component that could step down from 12V to…well…whatever…

If only…

Unfortunately we didn’t have an extra 12v to 5v converter on hand nor the barrel plug to power the radio, so we decided to go with this makeshift solution to get driving. Several of our mentors freaked out after seeing this photo.

(We forgot to turn off the power inverter from Thursday night to Saturday morning, but the radio kept running all Saturday during our demo.)

The one rule to engineering is that you can never use too much tape (Especially if its duct tape). :smiley:

vlad et al,
Some duct tape is made with conductive materials. I found that tape from the same manufacturer had conductive and non-conductive rolls. Never use duct tape for insulation.

Electrical Tape is special. Nothing else can or should be used as Electrical tape.

Colored vinyl tape? That’s not electrical tape. It is marking tape, used to mark things (including wires).

That’s cool. I was actually just kidding because of the stereotype that duct tape can fix anything

Especially short circuits :slight_smile:

Pst. I accidentally used tin duct tape to “insulate” some 5v fan wires. I was wondering why the fan was not working and the wire was getting so hot :wink: