Questions tagged [component-failure]
For questions about what causes components to fail, how to prevent component failure, and component failure modes (e.g. fail open or fail short).
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Why is my fluorescent tube orange on one side, white on the other and dark in the middle?
I have a ~60 cm fluorescent tube light that is failing. ~10 cm on one end glows orange, ~10 cm on the other end glows blue-white (normal fluorescent light color) and the middle 40 cm is dark.
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Can a relay failure mode be like that?
I was fixing my dishwasher control board, and diagnosed a bad relay. Its coil is still within specifications, but the relay will not close its contacts. It is an easy fix ok, but my question concerns ...
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Why might a 40 year old single chip processor have failed?
I've had a Fluke 8050A bench multimeter sitting on a shelf in my cold, damp garage for about 30 years. It was new in 1981, last powered up in the 1980s, and the display was dead. I came across these ...
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Why did my LED drivers blow up?
I recently designed my first PCB, which houses LED driver circuitry for some custom lighting. I fastidiously followed the driver's datasheet (Diodes Inc AL8862QSP-13) in designing the circuit: making ...
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MOSFET failure in a high power AC-DC SMPS buck converter
I've made a AC-DC step down buck converter that converts 220 VAC to a variable 45 to 70 VDC at 5 to 10 A to charge a Li-Ion battery. I'm currently using ESP32 to drive a MOSFET driver (IR2110) to ...
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Burned motor controllers: possible root causes analysis
On a submarine robot we built, during an operation, we recently had 3 defect thruster motors (the internal power PCBs have many burnt components, 2 of the motors cracked open due to internal pressure)....
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Failure of LEDs in the wet -- what's going on at the semiconductor level?
Recently I've come across two very different LEDs that have failed due to a soaking, but with interesting and almost identical failure behaviour. I'd like to understand what's going on inside.
Once ...
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Schottky diode failure
TLDR:
What are possible failure sources for a schottky diode? Overheating, overvoltage, overcurrent (leading to overheating) anything else?
Long version
I am currently measuring our new prototype ...
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Which components can be labelled as "BD" on a printed circuit board?
In the process of repairing some consumer electronics, I encountered some SMDs labelled BD on the silkscreen:
As this one has clearly blown, I'm interested in ...
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DC-DC converter failure after adding a capacitor to the circuit
simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab
The above schematic is used to heat a 2.4-ohm load. I am using a power supply from Meanwell GST280A24 280W at 24V. In the MCU it is ...
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PWM Dimming of a Low-Voltage DC Incandescent Filament (Thermal Shock?)
I plan on driving some Numitron tube filaments from an IV-16 tube (datasheet here). For ease of access I'll give the key specs here:
Nominal filament voltage: 3.15V
Max filament voltage (steady-state)...
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Why is only one channel of my dual H-bridge motor driver design failing?
I have a dual motor driver board I designed for driving 2 linear actuators with 48V and each one has as rated full load current of 3.5 amps. I can expect up to 10 amp short duration on startup, but ...
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Electrolytic capacitor failure mode
In a project we're working on, we had an electrolytic capacitor explode on us. It was a surface mount device, UCM1H470MCL1GS from Nichicon:
So far, we've seen our project run for many hundreds of ...
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Electronic wearing of a printed circuit board?
I was told that electronic components and printed circuit boards have a limited lifetime. This is backed by several questions and answers:
https://www.quora.com/Do-circuit-boards-have-a-useful-life
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2N7000 Mosfet destroyed during soldering?
I have been having problems with 2N7000 mosfets that perform perfectly on the breadboard, but when moved to a perfboard start failing. I'm on my third iteration now, replacing all mosfets, between ...
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Did I kill my STM?
I have (had?) an STM32F429ZI. I was working with the ADC on PC0 and due to a hardware malfunction, 12V ran through the pin when the maximum voltage an ADC pin supports is 3V. Since then, whenever I ...
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MOSFET driver blows out in half-bridge DC motor PWM controller
EDIT: I've redone the MOSFET circuit diagram; it now represents what my actual layout is. I wanted to spare myself redrawing the circuit but ended up confusing everything, I hope it's clearer now!
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Help with FBL Z803 chip identification
I have a component on my D5 EVO electric gate motor PCB which was shorting both ends to GND. This resulted in the PCB not powering on.
After removing this component the PCB now powers on, but part of ...
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What's causing my buck converter's switching node to oscillate only some of the time?
We got an order of 24 PCBs recently, and one of them doesn't work. I'm trying to track down the point of failure, and it seems to be our 3V regulator circuit:
At ~180ms intervals, the 3V output rail ...
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What could have caused my power supply to fail?
I made a dual +/- 12 V power supply for synthesizer circuits using a schematic by Moritz Klein (image below). The input of the supply is from a 12 VAC transformer.
After soldering the circuit on a ...
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LED lighting that lasts longer than me [closed]
My research has indicated that failure in LED lighting (incandescent replacements) results from failure in the support components rather than the actual LEDS themselves. How can I build and/or modify ...
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Can a surface-mount ceramic capacitor fail partially and intermittently?
My focus is on surface-mount ceramic capacitors. The obvious failure extremes are open and short. Other than these extremes, can the failure be that the effective value of the capacitor is either ...
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relay contact fails (suspect sparking)
I have a relay which is rated for 30 VDC @ 10 A or 28 VDC @ 10 A (which appears on this relay module) and I am running 12 V @ 6 A through the relay and this solenoid.
After a short amount of time (...
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What's the physics behind LEDs wearing out?
Short version: I'm thinking about running LEDs in a potential over-current setup, but with a PWM-based supply. Will the LEDs suffer an early death? Said otherwise, do LED die of overheating, or really ...
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1
answer
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Mitigating FET current spikes in an SMPS buck converter
I'm currently designing an SMPS buck converter that converts 311VDC to 60VDC at 10 Amps maximum load. I'm using ESP32 for the PWM control, and IR2110 for the switching driver. The switch I'm currently ...
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1
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SMPS Regulator keeps blowing
First Time for me posting here.
Recently I decided to perform a recap on an 20 y/o old SMPS, which is used in a digital mixer. The recap went without any complications. I followed the guide I found ...
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Power supply board failure: could it have been cause by a misoriented triac?
I have this power supply board from a Honeywell HPA300 air filter that has a burned out triac (BT3) in this row of 4 side by side triacs (...
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1
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Physics behind component failure
So I understand that high current through a conductor generates heat, and too high heat can melt things or cause components to fail. Short circuits are frequent causes of overcurrent, no?
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Help needed identifying SMD component (capacitor? power switching diode?)
Any help is appreciated!
I though it could be power switching diode but confused with no cathode marking or a capacitor. The device turns on intermittently (1 out 100 reset attempts).
Shape: ...
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Swapping CANH and CANL kills my power converter
I got the first set of these CAN boards I designed and I plugged one into my test setup consisting of a two CAN dev boards as seen below. The first time I plugged my board in I didn't realize I had ...
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