What is the worst thing you or a customer has done to a circuit? (smaller photos

[little_grey]

For obvious reasons i am not going to say who i work for, but we get some interesting damage back from customers who have ether blatently damaged something or just not cared for the product very well.
here are some pictures of recent returns with the question of 'is it repairable?'
yeeeaaa maybe, but cheaper to replace.


lets see your photos or hear your stories, do your worst!


My personal favourite, using a serial port as a ground results in a hole in the circuit board (see photo 6)

[PTR_1275]

Didn't take photos, but in my last job we had a electrical contractor order a heap of 12 volt fluro inverters, they were all returned a week later, every single one burnt and charred. Turns out the electricians wired them all up to 240v mains. No idea why they ordered 12 volt ones but they got pretty angry when we didn't give them a refund. Wasn't our problem, we supplied what they ordered, they were labeled as 12v DC, not our problem.

[little_grey]

incredible, always double check the invoice. and the part.

[Tom45]

Years ago we sold a large scanning system to a manufacturing plant in Texas. They left it outside in the weather for weeks before they were ready to install it inside.

They then found it didn't work and wanted us to repair it for free. The conversation went like this:

-- not covered by warranty since you didn't protect it from weather.

-- But we didn't know that was necessary. You should have told us.

-- In the sales contract that you signed it says to protect it from weather

-- Well, you should have told us to read the contract

[Cerebus]

Next time, do us a favour and downscale the photos before posting them. The forum only displays a photo at around 1000 pixels wide, so having originals at 5k wide (7Mb a shot instead of perhaps 150Kb) is just a waste.

Further, it's generally accepted that it's preferable to actually upload to the forum rather than to link to your own content, so if your Google/Photobucket/Whatever account goes away then the content is still there in the thread for as long as the thread is there. (cf breakage caused by Photobucket's recent change in terms and conditions.)

[chriswebb]

-- In the sales contract that you signed it says to protect it from weather

-- Well, you should have told us to read the contract

Please tell me that your company didn't give in, and told them to pound sand but that doesn't make ones customers happy.

[little_grey]

Next time, do us a favour and downscale the photos before posting them. The forum only displays a photo at around 1000 pixels wide, so having originals at 5k wide (7Mb a shot instead of perhaps 150Kb) is just a waste.

Further, it's generally accepted that it's preferable to actually upload to the forum rather than to link to your own content, so if your Google/Photobucket/Whatever account goes away then the content is still there in the thread for as long as the thread is there. (cf breakage caused by Photobucket's recent change in terms and conditions.)

notes, but re-sizing photos to fit into the forums limits is a royal pain. particularly as they are only .3mb over the limit.
i will look into doing it 'properly' however, just for you 

[glarsson]

notes, but re-sizing photos to fit into the forums limits is a royal pain.

One user resizing once or hundreds of users cursing the big images?
I started reading this thread on a phone, sitting on a bench in the forrest. The forrest and the bench was nice, but having the text bouncing around to fit the slowly loading images was not nice.

[IanMacdonald]

Guy who wired a mains plug to a microphone lead and used that to connect power.  Worse, the cable had been damaged and he'd joined it with tape.  Boss threw him out of the shop and told him never to return. When he started to protest, the biggest guy in the place was called on to perform the summary ejection. 

Oh, and the guy who linked out a blown fuse on a piece of audio gear, then when that burned out the mains transformer, he linked the primary to the secondary. Result was a big hole in the PCB, and the amplifier it was connected to had its inputs blown.

It's always a worry with this kind of nonsense going on, that there might be a fire or electrocution,and that if so the guy who last signed-off the item most likely takes the rap. Even if it was safe at that time. Thus I tend not to get involved. As an employee in the past I've had some altercations with employers over my stance on this, but hey, I'd rather have lost my job than ended up in court.

[tggzzz]

For a test set that was protected against overvoltage and reverse voltage input, open circuit and short circuit output, the technician universally known as "Bigfoot" managed to set the PCB on fire.

It was correctly detecting a marginal fault in the unit-under-test (a solenoid switch), but our hero didn't think to believe that.

He had heard that many marginal problems were caused by excessive power supply ripple. He had also heard that ripple was reduced by large capacitors, so he connected an effing big capacitor across the UUT and test box output.

You can make things foolproof, but you can't make them damnfoolproof because damn fools are so ingenious.

[bd139]

I bought a Heathkit counter from the US a number of years ago and forgot for five fatal minutes that it was a 110v device. Helpfully someone had soldered a wire across the fuse in the device and I'd stuck a 5A in the plug. Smoke came out of the sides pretty much instantly. The pass transistor on the main rail said "screw this" and shorted C-E and dumped 24v across the 5v rail leading to mass ejection of magic logic smoke. Nothing in the device wasn't toasted in some way. When I opened it you could hear some of the ICs still crying.

[Smith]

An internal user came in for a 6 amp fuse. I asked why, because users may not replace fuses themselves. He answered because the 2 amp fuses kept blowing. He tried the 4 amp fuse too, but that blew too. I got mad at him and got the device in. 2 transformers where completely toasted burned and cracked. 

[peteb2]

Back in the early 80s i was handed a medical laboratory camera for repair. The repair sheet had a comments section from the customer; "blood kept appearing a brown colour... all screws on internal panels tightened with result no picture at all"...

This was an early single tube colour-camera. Some of you may know about the multiplexing techniques on single colour video tubes back in the day where the tube's target was constructed of different sensor pixels to cover the three primary colours and a related mesh grid internally such that by timing means the correct channels were "clocked" as an output scanned raster... It produced colour pictures but they were very rudimentary.

The tubes were big, 1" format that saw it housed with, scanning and lens C type mount  in one convenient cylinder enclosure with around 7yards of thick multicore going to a Base-station/powersupply. The cylinder would couple to a microscope or with a suitable lens sit hanging above an operating table....

Lineup was a nightmare. There were 1000s of wee trim pots arrays on about 5 circuitboards some daughterboards all for adjusting scanning rates, linearity of picture shape, registration so the pictures all lay ontop of each other. Adjust any and it affected the other 999pots...

The minute i opened the Base-station i found every single trip pot (that had a screw looking head) had been turned a 100 plus times. Some had broken right off and were missing! YES... the owner had sure tightened all the screws.....

[texaspyro]

I fired a 20,000 amp pulse from my CD spot welder  into a 350 mA CREE LED... for some unfathomable reason, they don't like that.  No magic smoke release,  just total vaporization.     Oh, and a sonic boom (Noise Emitting Diode?  Dark Emitting Diode?)  Or maybe a warp in the space-time discontiuum.

[Tom45]

-- In the sales contract that you signed it says to protect it from weather

-- Well, you should have told us to read the contract

Please tell me that your company didn't give in, and told them to pound sand but that doesn't make ones customers happy.

Dealing with issues like this was for management, not techies like me. Anyway, it was over 30 years ago so I don't remember just what came of it. We had to send installation support people for the actual startup anyway, so they probably fixed it during startup.

I would hope that the customer had to pay extra for the work to repair the damage to the system.

[sasa]

Ask Louis Rossmann. He must have a lot to say on this topic.

Apart from a dead bugs...

Some 25-30 years ago, when I worked in one computer company as a young computer software engineer, one customer bring early XT or AT after some time of use  (with high end monochrome Hercules 12", if I remember correctly) , which was partially worked, whatsoever. After opening, first noted inside was a nest made of old papers, with many marks of a small rodent tooths... As there was cold winter, the mouse find a way to enter inside under small  hole in metal case under DIN input (as for some reason early cases had small hole for) and make warm comfortable nest near warm working 24h PSU...

[hs3]

The forum only displays a photo at around 1000 pixels wide, so having originals at 5k wide (7Mb a shot instead of perhaps 150Kb) is just a waste.

Not saying what the correct size is for uploading to the forum but just wanted to comment on this width "limit" that I'm seeing the photos over 3350 pixel wide in my browser and not seeing any 1000 pixel limit here. So if posted at 1000 pixel wide quite a lot of detail might not be there in that case. I have not looked closer into these specific photos and what the "appropriate" size for them would be but just wanted to comment that I'm not aware of hard size limits and it's probably up to the reader's browser window size how large the forum is showing the photos.

[Cerebus]

The forum only displays a photo at around 1000 pixels wide, so having originals at 5k wide (7Mb a shot instead of perhaps 150Kb) is just a waste.

Not saying what the correct size is for uploading to the forum but just wanted to comment on this width "limit" that I'm seeing the photos over 3350 pixel wide in my browser and not seeing any 1000 pixel limit here. So if posted at 1000 pixel wide quite a lot of detail might not be there in that case. I have not looked closer into these specific photos and what the "appropriate" size for them would be but just wanted to comment that I'm not aware of hard size limits and it's probably up to the reader's browser window size how large the forum is showing the photos.

OK, we get that you've got a nice shiny new 4K screen you want to boast about ( ), but most people will have 1920x1080 screens or thereabouts and won't maximize the window to the full screen and, as has already been pointed out, quite a few will be using phones and tablets. Anyway, that original post has six or seven inline* photos at a few meg each (the random one I picked was 7.1 meg) which is just too much for a few snapshots to make a point. It's not as if it's a microphotograph of a die. To put it into perspective, the forum limit on uploads is 2Mb total per message, 1 Mb per file, and I've never had problems with getting enough information out of photos on the forum that were restricted by those limits. I think the fact that I noticed the size because they were loading slowly on a machine with quad Xeons and 16 Gb of RAM is an indication that perhaps they were a little over the top at 5k pixels wide.

The whole point of having some limits is to avoid chewing up other people's bandwidth by being careless about what you post, or lazy about pre-processing large files to some more appropriate size. While many of us are reading from comfortably fast wired broadband, some of the forums (very international) membership are in places where connectivity isn't so great and is relatively expensive - I know for a fact that there are readers in the rural wilds of India and Pakistan - and it doesn't do any harm to show them a little consideration.

Finally, if you have a photo that *really* needs the resolution it's quite possible to display a down-sized version in the post for reference and provide a link to a full resolution version for the people who need it. Indeed, that's exactly the behaviour you get automatically if you upload the photo to the forum as an attachment.

*i.e. inline implying that there's no discretion about downloading them if you want a closer look, you get served them automatically.

[IanMacdonald]

Some 25-30 years ago, when I worked in one computer company as a young computer software engineer, one customer bring early XT or AT after some time of use  (with high end monochrome Hercules 12", if I remember correctly) , which was partially worked, whatsoever. After opening, first noted inside was a nest made of old papers, with many marks of a small rodent tooths... As there was cold winter, the mouse find a way to enter inside under small  hole in metal case under DIN input (as for some reason early cases had small hole for) and make warm comfortable nest near warm working 24h PSU...

As long as it was a serial one. No ps/2 after all. 

[IanMacdonald]

"The whole point of having some limits is to avoid chewing up other people's bandwidth by being careless about what you post, or lazy about pre-processing large files to some more appropriate size. While many of us are reading from comfortably fast wired broadband, some of the forums (very international) membership are in places where connectivity isn't so great and is relatively expensive - I know for a fact that there are readers in the rural wilds of India and Pakistan - and it doesn't do any harm to show them a little consideration."

Or the Scottish hills, for that matter. A few kbps on a 3G connection sometimes.

These days I think rather than setting a fixed page width on webpage text, it's better make it 100% and to let the user decide how wide to let the browser window be. Those with honkin' great screens won't be using the full width anyway, as you say. Setting a fixed width just restricts the viewer's choice for no good reason. (Though I know why designers do that, it's because they are from typesetting backgrounds where everything is planned to fit on a given paper size, and the idea of an indeterminate size freaks them out.)

There really needs to be some zoom or multisize capability on images though, as what's useful on a phone isn't on a big screen, or vice versa. HTML currently doesn't have any native way of doing that, other than bodges. Maybe it should.

[Electro Detective]

Didn't take photos, but in my last job we had a electrical contractor order a heap of 12 volt fluro inverters, they were all returned a week later, every single one burnt and charred. Turns out the electricians wired them all up to 240v mains. No idea why they ordered 12 volt ones but they got pretty angry when we didn't give them a refund. Wasn't our problem, we supplied what they ordered, they were labeled as 12v DC, not our problem.

That dumbass excuse for an  'electrical contractor'  that did the order should be demoted to digging cable trenches again,
alongside apprentices that would have had a better clue about 12v vs 240v   

Refund ?!!
His parents deserve a 'refund' 

[bd139]

Electricians are the worst. A friend of mine is one and he leisurely informed a couple of weeks ago that his DMM had died about 5 years ago and he hadn't bothered using it since because "stuff works or doesn't" 

[Cerebus]

Or the Scottish hills, for that matter. A few kbps on a 3G connection sometimes.

I was tempted to add a quip about our oviphillic friends in NZ or Wales who probably have similar connectivity, but I managed to resist, until you gave me a good excuse. 

I must confess to being a little disappointed that there's any mobile signal on the Scottish hills nowadays. It's entirely selfish, as I used to take to the Highlands when i wanted to make sure that nobody could reach me by any faster method than sending a Poste Restante letter. Still, it's probably for the best, as me being incommunicado in the Highlands tends to be bad for the rest of the world. The last two times I took to the hills up there I was in Easter Drumcastle (just south of Drymen) when Lady Di died, and in Glencoe on the 9th September 2001.

[bd139]

You never know but next time you go up there you might avoid the zombie apocalypse

[hs3]

OK, we get that you've got a nice shiny new 4K screen you want to boast about ( ),

Heh, ok. I admit that I was in front of a 4K resolution screen at the time I posted that but not really nice or shiny or new or even expensive one. What I was trying to say was that the original post that I commented to sounded to me like it was suggesting that the forum somehow restricted the image to around 1000 pixels wide and anything above that wouldn't be of any use to anyone.

Also if we go to the bandwidth etc. issues that I specifically didn't mention in my post I get your point about keeping file sizes to a reasonable size that makes sense in the situation. I'm used to browsing internet through wireless connections in an area where there are no decent wired options. Starting with 2G as the primary internet connection when that was the best that was available. Maybe due to that it has become a habit for me to open multiple tabs in the background and let them load before even starting to read them many times and I may not notice the loading time of larger images sometimes.

[aqarwaen]

my worst experience was,then i needed to fix some guy macbook pro from 2015.it had spilled some kind rubber stick or whatever kind stuff to 2015 year macbook pro.it took 12 hours to remove all that sticky rubber stuff from board,instead normal 2 to 4 hour repair.it also had some screw holes filled also with that same thing.ended up cleaning them with one big needle.that's my worst repair experience....

[JPortici]

For obvious reasons i am not going to say who i work for, but we get some interesting damage back from customers who have ether blatently damaged something or just not cared for the product very well.

automotive? don't you love when you use keyed connectors (with multiple keys) and yet there is always another mechanic that "has been doing this for 30 years so he cannot possibly be wrong" who is able to insert them backwards?
Destroyed connectors, mostly..

My most recent idiot moment was some months ago when i was checking out a board from the competition, at some point i put it aside and got back working on mine. Time for a break, disconnect and put the power supply wires aside! Both leads went over the other board, straight over the MCU pins 

ALWAYS CHECK IF POWER IS ENABLED TWICE.
ALWAYS CHECK IF POWER IS ENABLED TWICE.
ALWAYS CHECK IF POWER IS ENABLED TWICE.

at least it was a quite old board.

[Rerouter]

Customer ordered 20 GSM Network connected devices about a year ago (They are already in waterproof containers that are fitted in dry areas!) , one of the customers workers went and potted them in epoxy with the sim cards in place, 2 weeks later another person in there company cancelled all those sims because they found a cheaper provider, and then rung us saying they would like to change them, and that there tech could not understand how to access the old sim. I still dont know how the boss navigated the service level agreement on those ones.

Had plenty of "For warranty" devices returned, still full of LIVE! insects. you pop the lid to access the test mode switch and hundreds of them come pouring forth.. (Makes me shiver)

Not the worst but the most painful, about twice a year someone will come to us with an automotive instrument cluster that they have taken from one car and want to fit in the other, but obviously it doesn't fit in the same hole, so they grab a hacksaw, or a angle grinder and cut the thing to shape, careful to not harm the dial or visible plastic, but tearing off chunks of the PCB's in the process, they then come to us because it doesnt work.  and want us to make it work.

[Samogon]

I think Louis Rossmann has a case where a customer blew up a MacBook with an eBay charger, and the idiot decided to test it with a second MacBook. How, there were not one, but two dead MacBooks. That's how you do it. Blew up one? Then try to blow up another!

Easy,
He connected to one Mac, nothing happened (no sparks, no flames), then he tried on another one, if he would have third, .....

[tooki]

I think Louis Rossmann has a case where a customer blew up a MacBook with an eBay charger, and the idiot decided to test it with a second MacBook. How, there were not one, but two dead MacBooks. That's how you do it. Blew up one? Then try to blow up another!

In all fairness, the customer probably wouldn't have had any way to know that the charger was to blame. And it's standard IT troubleshooting to swap things to isolate the fault -- it was just dumb luck that the charger was actually causing damage.

What is funny is the DVI connector "hardware virus": Here's a story of when it hit Google, but I'm pretty sure I've heard it happened a few different places: https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2012/09/24/dvi/

(Of course, it's not technically limited to Macs, but since few PC laptops ever had DVI connectors and no VGA, it was mostly Macs that got affected.)

[tooki]

I bought a Heathkit counter from the US a number of years ago and forgot for five fatal minutes that it was a 110v device. Helpfully someone had soldered a wire across the fuse in the device and I'd stuck a 5A in the plug. Smoke came out of the sides pretty much instantly. The pass transistor on the main rail said "screw this" and shorted C-E and dumped 24v across the 5v rail leading to mass ejection of magic logic smoke. Nothing in the device wasn't toasted in some way. When I opened it you could hear some of the ICs still crying.

Reminds me of what happened back in 1999 when I was working at an Apple dealer here in Zurich. Back then, Apple did not have its own subsidiary here, so their products were sold via a distributor who applied a very generous markup. As such, there was a thriving industry in gray-market imports from USA. (Believe it or not, in addition to the added air freight shipping and the dealer's own profit margin, it was actually cheaper to then have us pluck off the 23 keycaps that differed off the keyboard and send the keycaps to a refurbisher who'd reprint them with the Swiss layout.  )

Anyway, we'd just gotten a new hire. I had just unpacked a new Power Mac G3 and begun to custom configure it for a customer, but then the boss asked me to do something else and let New Hire do it.

Now, this was still when the PSUs had to be set to the correct input voltage. Apple gear came with a yellow sticker over the IEC input reminding you to verify the correct line voltage. Had the computer been sourced locally, Apple would have had it pre-set to 230V, but since this was from USA, it was pre-set to 120V.

I told the new hire "I was about to switch the voltage to 230V and already took off the warning sticker, so be sure to change it right away!". He acknowledged it specifically, then I moved onto the task I'd just been given.

5 minutes later I hear a puff, followed by "what the? ohhh shiiiiiit..."

New Hire didn't last too long.

[bd139]

That really doesn't surprise me. I was in Zurich a few years ago (my family is actually mostly Swiss, from Bulach) and the prices were absolutely insane on everything. I must have blown about £50 on a reasonable meal for two people (usually £25-30 here in the UK). I spent most of my week walking around with a calculator going "pffffff..." at everything.

I've learned over the years not to subcontract important things out to lower staff. The success rate is very low. At least he got the blame for it and not you. Some companies I worked at, that would have ended up with me in trouble

[tooki]

That really doesn't surprise me. I was in Zurich a few years ago (my family is actually mostly Swiss, from Bulach) and the prices were absolutely insane on everything. I must have blown about £50 on a reasonable meal for two people (usually £25-30 here in the UK). I spent most of my week walking around with a calculator going "pffffff..." at everything.

Well, you know, it's an interesting question. When I first moved to Switzerland in 1992, from the United States, everything in Switzerland cost substantially more. Eating out was easily 3x as expensive, electronics and computers cost almost double. The Swiss routinely ordered from USA and Germany to get things cheaper.

But it's changed. Some things, like groceries, are much cheaper in Germany, but the US has come surprisingly close in this. (Vegetables, for example, can be more expensive in USA than here!!!)

Eating out is similar: whereas it used to be a 3x difference in price, it's now maybe 1.5x. It depends heavily on what it is. The US has far more at the very low end of the price range (so e.g. McDonald's is way more expensive here), but once you get up to haute cuisine, there's not much difference. (One thing where Switzerland needs to get its act together is sushi: you pay double the cost of a decent non-michelin-star-type sushi place in USA, but the quality and selection is awful.)

Now, electronics are a whole different matter. Back in the 90s, in Germany you'd pay about 1.5x the US price, and Switzerland 2x the US price. I don't know what happened to change this, but these days, the price in Germany is still approaching 1.5x the US price, but the price in Switzerland is the same as the US price, give or take 10% either way. For example, take the entry-level iMac that sells in USA for $1099 (all prices checked as of today). In Switzerland, it's CHF1229 ($1264) -- but remember that that includes 8% VAT (~sales tax) and the statutory two-year warranty and a recycling fee, whereas the US price is before any sales tax (anywhere from 0 to over 10%) and with only a 1 year warranty. In Germany, it's €1299 ($1525), including the EU 17% VAT and statutory 2-year warranty.

A different example, the Nikon D7500 DSLR body:
USA (Amazon): $1247, plus tax, 1 year warranty
Germany (Amazon.de): €1301 ($1530) including tax and 2 year statutory warranty (1 year + 100-week warranty as promo through end of year)
Switzerland (cheapest authorized dealer, online): CHF1393 ($1432), including tax and three-year warranty

Finally, though, "expensive" is relative. For example, a Big Mac sandwich costs CHF6.50 ($6.70) in Switzerland and about $5 in USA. But how long does a McD's worker have to work to pay for one? In USA, at $7.50/h, that sandwich represents about 40 mins of labor, pretending there were no income tax. In Switzerland, a McD's line worker earns between CHF18-21/h ($18.50-21.60/h), so that sandwich represents at most 22 minutes of labor. So while Switzerland is undoubtedly expensive for visitors, it's not actually that bad for people who live and work there. Currency exchange rates are reallty bad at capturing these issues.

I've learned over the years not to subcontract important things out to lower staff. The success rate is very low. At least he got the blame for it and not you. Some companies I worked at, that would have ended up with me in trouble

Well, the thing is, I didn't delegate as such, the boss reassigned. But yeah, a crappy boss might have misassigned the blame!

[senso]

Next time, do us a favour and downscale the photos before posting them. The forum only displays a photo at around 1000 pixels wide, so having originals at 5k wide (7Mb a shot instead of perhaps 150Kb) is just a waste.

Further, it's generally accepted that it's preferable to actually upload to the forum rather than to link to your own content, so if your Google/Photobucket/Whatever account goes away then the content is still there in the thread for as long as the thread is there. (cf breakage caused by Photobucket's recent change in terms and conditions.)

Very hard to open them with paint, press resize, input new dimension, save as png, if still too big, go for jpeg..

notes, but re-sizing photos to fit into the forums limits is a royal pain. particularly as they are only .3mb over the limit.
i will look into doing it 'properly' however, just for you 

[Samogon]

Resizing photos is three mouse clicks operation. At least on windows OS

Open it in paint
Ctrl+w
Set widh 30% (keep aspect ratio is enabled by default)
Save as ... give it new name.

Linux
convert image.jpg -resize 600x400\> image.jpg

[macboy]

Next time, do us a favour and downscale the photos before posting them. The forum only displays a photo at around 1000 pixels wide, so having originals at 5k wide (7Mb a shot instead of perhaps 150Kb) is just a waste.

Further, it's generally accepted that it's preferable to actually upload to the forum rather than to link to your own content, so if your Google/Photobucket/Whatever account goes away then the content is still there in the thread for as long as the thread is there. (cf breakage caused by Photobucket's recent change in terms and conditions.)

notes, but re-sizing photos to fit into the forums limits is a royal pain. particularly as they are only .3mb over the limit.
i will look into doing it 'properly' however, just for you 

Yeah right, one user.
If I had opened this on mobile network instead of WiFi, I'd have used most of my monthly data just loading your ridiculous photos. The forum normally doesn't load any photos on mobile devices unless clicked, but you worked-around that with direct linking of absurdly large photos.

[little_grey]

to you and other Haters. Photos are now uploaded into the forum format.

and to whoever said, 'just save them in paint' you lied, lied terribly.

[tooki]

In all fairness, the customer probably wouldn't have had any way to know that the charger was to blame. And it's standard IT troubleshooting to swap things to isolate the fault -- it was just dumb luck that the charger was actually causing damage.

A 9-ball BGA blew its one ball away along with the pad on PCB, and the silicon WLCSP itself has discoloration (you won't have this for under 600C). I bet some magic smoke must have been released.

Probably true, but if the machine was off or asleep (and thus no fan running), I doubt the smoke would have made it out of the case immediately.

And people are oblivious anyway.

[mzacharias]

I'm still trying to crack the code of posting an image to this forum. I click on "attachments and other options" I click "Browse", navigate to my image, say, on my desktop. The file name appears where previously it said "No file selected" but no clue where to go from there.

I was able to post a couple pics a couple years ago, but don't remember now.

I've got a good one for this thread.

[Cerebus]

Probably true, but if the machine was off or asleep (and thus no fan running), I doubt the smoke would have made it out of the case immediately.

And people are oblivious anyway.

Also, not everybody recognises 'that' smell. You or I might be going "It smells like some electronics have blown or about to catch fire in here.", other people might just say "There was a peculiar smell in here earlier, but it's gone now.". Furthermore, some people have a very blunted sense of smell compared to others.

[tooki]

I'm still trying to crack the code of posting an image to this forum. I click on "attachments and other options" I click "Browse", navigate to my image, say, on my desktop. The file name appears where previously it said "No file selected" but no clue where to go from there.

Do that and then post the post. The image will upload as an attachment. To display it inline (which you should only do if absolutely necessary for clarity in a text), then you must take click the posted attachment to zoom it in, right-click to copy the URL of the image, then edit the post to add img tags with the image URL inside.

[mzacharias]

Here's one that came in my shop. I couldn't believe it. A Marantz 2325 butchered.

[GreyWoolfe]

Years ago, the father of a friend was working on cleaning out a building prior to renovation and found an old computer system, complete with 8" floppy drives, basically a station wagon (shooting brake for those on the other side of the pond)full of stuff.  He was playing with it and called me about a problem.  Turns out he had manhandled the AT power connectors on the motherboard in reverse and powered the beast up, magic smoke released.  When he asked if it was repairable, I said no.

By the way, I use Ifranview to resize any photos I post anywhere on the web.  Free and easy.

[tggzzz]

basically a station wagon (shooting brake for those on the other side of the pond)

I've never heard the term "shooting brake" until now! I'd have guessed a shooting brake would have been pulled by horses Estate car is the usual generic term in the UK, but most people would understand station wagon.

[little_grey]

its getting more common over here.
I thought for a while it was a particular style of estate car, but no, just sounds 'sexier' or something

[jmelson]

Sold 35 units of a $150 resolver to digital converter to a company.  The units run from a 5 V supply, it has 5 V written on the board, and all over the literature.  They tried one out on the bench, worked fine.  Then, they built the whole system and powered it up, smoke came out.  They had wired 30 of the units to 24 V DC.  Then they threw them all in a pile with the ones that had not been used yet.  They were NOT real happy, but all I could do was sort the fried ones from the unassaulted untis, and then make them another batch.

Jon

[schmitt trigger]

An internal user came in for a 6 amp fuse. I asked why, because users may not replace fuses themselves. He answered because the 2 amp fuses kept blowing. He tried the 4 amp fuse too, but that blew too.

Along these fuse stories, one customer required a 5 amp fuse, which he did not have.
What he DID have were 10 amp fuses.

You can guess what he did next: Wired a pair of 10 amp fuses in series!!

Because, you know, if you wire two equal-value caps in series, the total capacitance will be halved.  Fuses must behave the same, correct?

[mariush]

not quite "you or customer" but i posted it a while ago, this is the worst i've seen :

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/beginners/horrible-solder-job-buyer-wants-money-back-after-butchering-kit-with-his-skill/

[jmelson]

not quite "you or customer" but i posted it a while ago, this is the worst i've seen :

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/beginners/horrible-solder-job-buyer-wants-money-back-after-butchering-kit-with-his-skill/

OK, that IS pretty legendary!  I've seen bad soldering, but I'm actually impressed.  I never knew it could get THAT bad!

Jon

[StillTrying]

I'd forgotten about 'that kit'.    Reminds me of this https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/worst-pcb-ever/

[vk6zgo]

"Caramello koala" chocolate bar in a Commodore 64 keyboard!

[cdev]

A very long time in a galaxy far away I worked for a while doing very basic repair of audio/video equipment and electronic musical instruments. It was quite routine to have customers come in with vcrs and stereo equipment that had become a favored resting spot of their cats, which led to them becoming clogged with fur.

Whenever starting one of these repairs because the customers would rarely believe what would happen particularly with VCRs unless we showed them, we would take a small cardboard box and put all the fur from that specific repair into the box. Several times there was such a substantial amount of fur that it filled a fairly large box. I remember fixing a gentleman's Betamax VCR that had many many handfuls of extremely fluffy fur in it.

It is amazing that they didn't fail sooner.

[little_grey]

back in the days where i was probably posting toast or cookies into the VCR slot

[IanMacdonald]

Oh, and there was the medical center server that had one more data volume than visible disks.    Opened it and found the additional disk sellotaped to the chassis. 

[gfiber]

30 years ago I was working as a tech at a Marine Electronics shop. A customer came in and asked if I could look at his brand new King 7000 VHF Marine radio as it would not power up. The King 7000 was a very small 25 Watt Marine VHF transceiver. This customer wanted to mount it on the boats overhead and thought it would look better by not using the mounting bracket. The top of the radio was reverse able to make it easier to operate when mounted above. The top fastened with 4 mounting screws. So this customer and his buddy decided to just drill 1/4 inch holes through the radio where the mounting bolts fastened the top onto the radio. Then they could use wood screws to attach it to the overhead.

They very apparently never removed the top, just drilled right through. When I opened that radio the drill bit had grabbed the PC Traces that were near the 4 holes and tore them off the circuit board. I just looked, shook my head and handed it back to them after pointing out their mistake. So much damage it could not be repaired.

[mikerj]

For obvious reasons i am not going to say who i work for,

Having owned a couple of Austin Rover products in my past I know of Pektron

[innkeeper]

Worst thing?

A customer had a go at an older switching power supply that screw terminal caps that bolted directly to the pcb.
They re-attached them backwards before sending it to us for repair.
My buddy on the bench next to me powered it up on a variac, not knowing they were in backwards. he had enough time to yell duck.
after the explosion, there was confetti in the air and 2 holes in the acrostic ceiling where the two cans of the caps blew a hole in them and many ringing ears.

[little_grey]

well that puts my latest to shame.

I did something wrong, still working out exactly what.

it blew up, not quite as dramatically but it certainly made me jump

[CJay]

Back in the days of top loader VCRs, man had been to pub, returned home, found wife had gone to sleep, decided to watch a film, knelt down to load tape into machine, just as he was about to push the lid down, the night's intake of Guinness decided to make a reappearance.

VCR flooded, Tape left in, machine delivered to us for repair, in a bin bag.

When he told us what had happened, it left again in the same bin bag.

[CJay]

well that puts my latest to shame.

I did something wrong, still working out exactly what.

it blew up, not quite as dramatically but it certainly made me jump

used to be a guy who contributed to Television Magazine, Steve Czynski I think (massive apologies as I'm sure i've spelled that wrong) who had a scar on his face from a lump of epoxy that embedded itself in his face when he froze a frame output IC that had gone into thermal shutdown.

[little_grey]

Turned out the boss gave me the wrong wiring diagram.
i only had an image of the chip legs so looked fine.

ended up creating a dead short from the voltage regulator into ground.
after that several components must have given up. got several tracks blown off the board too.

oh well, safety glasses in future.

[carl_lab]

Turned out the boss gave me the wrong wiring diagram.

Of course, the boss... 

[tszaboo]

They blow it up, of course.

[little_grey]

Turned out the boss gave me the wrong wiring diagram.

Of course, the boss... 

yeeaa the boss 
but i should have double checked the part numbers
i will in future

[schmitt trigger]

oh well, safety glasses in future.

I witnessed a similar accident, and it has made me a believer of using safety glasses when dealing with high power stuff. Specifically batteries.

Turns out this technician dropped a screwdriver on an UPS battery bank. Even though his face was perhaps 3 to 4 feet away from the batteries, the ensuing explosion spewed enough metal that a tiny metal shaving made it all the way into its cornea.

Did not lose the eye, but he had to endure a couple of surgeries and had to wear glasses afterwards.

[Cerebus]

oh well, safety glasses in future.

I witnessed a similar accident, and it has made me a believer of using safety glasses when dealing with high power stuff. Specifically batteries.

Turns out this technician dropped a screwdriver on an UPS battery bank. Even though his face was perhaps 3 to 4 feet away from the batteries, the ensuing explosion spewed enough metal that a tiny metal shaving made it all the way into its cornea.

Did not lose the eye, but he had to endure a couple of surgeries and had to wear glasses afterwards.

I used to have a 1950's vintage book on industrial accidents. One plate showed the cauterised hole in a man's shoulder, above the lung but below his collar bone, where the spanner that he'd dropped onto a submarine battery bank went through him after it had become a lump of high velocity molten metal. After seeing that I started treating lead acid accumulators with more respect than I had previously.

[Gyro]

Ouch, Submarine batteries... There are tales of people having witnessed instances of ball lightning from the switchgear on those!

[little_grey]

ball lightning is still something which completely alludes my understanding
i just cant see how its possible