Well, this is quite a story. I’ve been ready to kick off our new “Era of Hydrogen” and start filling the “Big Boy” last weekend. It was pretty rainy and so I’ve opened door to our shed to let in some fresh air before we’ll kick off. Still I needed to drive Sebi to his Saxophone lesson, together with a stopover to JayCar to get a new circuit breaker ($9.95) & thermal switch 70C ($6.50) for our new cooling cycle.
All shopping and transportation went well, but still I couldn’t resist and got my afternoon nap. I woke up quite suddenly as it seemed that our neighbours are having a fun with a shooting from a pistol. Always two loud blasts in a sequence, followed by couple minutes of aiming. Quite unusual for a Sunday afternoon in Australian quiet residential area and honestly bit annoying but hey, I am last to throw a stone here.
Anyway it took me a while to get properly awake, while shooting continued with the same frequency. I didn’t bother and stick to my plan, finally decided to go on with our project. When I’ve approached our workshop – two loud consequent blasts came straight from its door! I ran in and instantly ripped all electric devices from its sockets – Battery chargers + our awesome Bitcoin mining 1850W PSU!
Being bit naive about all that situation we brought a heater and let it to dry our PSU for 5 minutes and plugged it in again. Instant big sparks joined by two loud blasts make me almost soil myself – I’ve been getting really scared!
It took Sebi couple minutes to open the case and locate our problem just with nose (I made sure that all capacitors are discharged).
See that burnt part between the capacitor (black & white cylinder) and something looking as a fat resistor (probably a diode) above.
Feeling really bad about all that (this is our third PSU) I instantly got in a touch with Vlada and started working on a fix. Capacitors still looked healthy so I started removing all those burnt pieces + more of that isolation, hoping that we’ll be able to fix that short circuit in there.
I had a good feeling about this and when Vlada said that dry air is the best isolation, I didn’t want to leave any chance for an error and jumped in a car to grab “50g Silicone Dielectric Grease” from Altronic ($17.75).
I applied a really thick layer on that particular part + spread it all around to make sure that it is all fixed now.
Still scared of those blasts, I used our longest power extension which allowed me to power that fixed PSU from behind a corner. Two consequent blasts which came out almost instantly made me very sad. I’ve practically spent whole afternoon and $17.75 to lower that those initial blasts into reasonable flat bumps. No matter what – another PSU is dead. 🙁
Shopping list updated.