Author Topic: What's the most dangerous failure's these days ?  (Read 4055 times)

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Offline lordvader88Topic starter

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What's the most dangerous failure's these days ?
« on: July 25, 2019, 10:51:26 pm »
In terms of components failing and burning, even lighting fires, how often is it anymore , assuming the device is new and not full of dust, or made of something super flammable in the early days. For instance a lot of safety work has gone into computer PSU's so that they rarely catch fire anymore.

Over the years, what parts failing do you think lit the most fires ? Caps, transformers, resistors ? ?

 

Offline Nusa

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Re: What's the most dangerous failure's these days ?
« Reply #1 on: July 25, 2019, 11:08:42 pm »
I don't know at the component level. Modern PC boards should be flame-retardant. They can burn, but should be self-extinguishing once the external heat sources consume themselves.

However, when it comes to applying the word "dangerous", that really comes down to engineering, fuses and enclosures more than individual components. Power supplies in metal enclosures are probably not going to destroy much more than themselves. Plastic wall-warts on the other hand...
 

Offline Brumby

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Re: What's the most dangerous failure's these days ?
« Reply #2 on: July 25, 2019, 11:10:52 pm »
I was thinking along the lines of the EE equivalent of PEBKAC.
 
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Online tggzzz

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Re: What's the most dangerous failure's these days ?
« Reply #3 on: July 26, 2019, 12:01:36 am »
Speaking from a personal perspective, greengrocer's apostrophies such as "most dangerous failure's" or "consumer PSU's" are very dangerous. They raise my blood pressure so much I am likely to have an anueryism.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/greengrocer%27s_apostrophe
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Offline garethw

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Re: What's the most dangerous failure's these days ?
« Reply #4 on: July 26, 2019, 07:12:32 am »
Speaking from a personal perspective, greengrocer's apostrophies such as "most dangerous failure's" or "consumer PSU's" are very dangerous. They raise my blood pressure so much I am likely to have an anueryism.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/greengrocer%27s_apostrophe
I get a similar feeling to licking a 9v when I see feral apostrophes. [emoji38]


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Offline Berni

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Re: What's the most dangerous failure's these days ?
« Reply #5 on: July 26, 2019, 10:49:33 am »
Definitely things with lithium ion batteries.

Its possible for a tiny spec of dust to end up between the layers of a lithium battery or some physical stress can harm it, causing a puncture in the very thin layers and starting off a rather existing chain reaction. The local failure can cause enough heat to damage the surrounding area, this damaged area releases even more heat, damaging more of the battery until the entire cell is going into failure, releasing all of that stored energy as heat in a matter of seconds. So much heat builds pressure inside causing the cell to burst and release flammable gas that catches fire and burns anything near by. If other cells are near such as in a battery pack the heat causes those cells to fail too in a cascading failure.

So within a few seconds a harmless looking battery pack can turn into the equivalent of lighting a glass of gasoline on fire. Easily able to light anything flammable near by on fire and the protection electronics can do absolutely nothing about it. Tho bad electronics can help start this catastrophic runaway by allowing the battery to be overcharged, over discharged, unbalanced, overloaded...etc
 

Offline ebastler

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Re: What's the most dangerous failure's these days ?
« Reply #6 on: July 26, 2019, 11:00:49 am »
Speaking from a personal perspective, greengrocer's apostrophies such as "most dangerous failure's" or "consumer PSU's" are very dangerous. They raise my blood pressure so much I am likely to have an anueryism.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/greengrocer%27s_apostrophe

I can relate to that. But "apostrophies" and "anueryism" do the same for me.  :P
 
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Online tggzzz

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Re: What's the most dangerous failure's these days ?
« Reply #7 on: July 26, 2019, 11:17:51 am »
Speaking from a personal perspective, greengrocer's apostrophies such as "most dangerous failure's" or "consumer PSU's" are very dangerous. They raise my blood pressure so much I am likely to have an anueryism.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/greengrocer%27s_apostrophe

I can relate to that. But "apostrophies" and "anueryism" do the same for me.  :P

It is a dangerous world out there; let's be careful.
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Online EEVblog

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Re: What's the most dangerous failure's these days ?
« Reply #8 on: July 26, 2019, 12:17:57 pm »
Multi layer ceramic caps can be dangerous with a grunty PSU behind it.
I'm surprised they there aren't more issues than there are with things like motherboards with hundreds of them with people flexing the boards during install.
But lithium ion batteries have to take the cake, they are exothermic if the get going, and they energy density of modern batteries is getting seriously high.
« Last Edit: July 26, 2019, 12:20:10 pm by EEVblog »
 

Offline magic

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Re: What's the most dangerous failure's these days ?
« Reply #9 on: July 26, 2019, 12:37:45 pm »
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I once licked a 19V laptop PSU output. Guess how it felt :P
 

Online ejeffrey

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Re: What's the most dangerous failure's these days ?
« Reply #10 on: July 26, 2019, 05:02:35 pm »
Hmm.  I know one person who burned down his garage with lithium ion batteries, but that was some DIY thing, not consumer electronics so it was likely his fault.  I know one guy who had substantial heat damage to his kitchen cabinets and floor when the SSRs in his oven failed short-circuit while he was on vacation, probably due to lighting or other surge.  My brother also had his oven spontaneously fail on but he was home and able to flip the shut off the breaker before it did any damage.

Counterfit / knockoff / cheap power supplies are also likely a big factor.  I used to work in a university that had a whole batch of computers with ATX power supplies with no fuse and under-rated rectifiers that tended to fail and throw breakers.  DIdn't cause any damage other than turning out the lights.
 

Offline Berni

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Re: What's the most dangerous failure's these days ?
« Reply #11 on: July 26, 2019, 07:16:20 pm »
Wait ovens use solid state relays for all of the heating elements? I know id really prefer a clunking power switch there, at least on the heater selection knob.
 

Offline Siwastaja

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Re: What's the most dangerous failure's these days ?
« Reply #12 on: July 26, 2019, 07:46:52 pm »
Mechanical relays fail short as well.

Both types can be high quality & dimensioned properly so that the failure is very unlikely.

The correct way to deal with the residual risk is thermal fusing.
 

Offline Berni

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Re: What's the most dangerous failure's these days ?
« Reply #13 on: July 26, 2019, 10:35:10 pm »
Well yeah i have seen relays fail short but its usually upon turning on under heavy load.

But i have yet to see any of these big high power rotary switches fail short (That's what is commonly used to select between heating elements in ovens). Usually in those the contacts close under spring force and are pulled apart by the mechanical motion of the knob, so even if they lightly weld together there is a lot of force available to pull them apart upon the next switching operation.

Tho i do agree that its a good idea to have a non resetable thermal fuse in there in case the temperature regulation fails. The old ovens have a bitmetal switch and those could certainly weld (Tho i never seen it happen luckily). But at least it wouldn't turn on by its own, only go out of control once turned on by the user.
 

Offline Psi

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Re: What's the most dangerous failure's these days ?
« Reply #14 on: July 26, 2019, 11:02:07 pm »
Main issue I encounter is pcb assemblers using non genuine parts in critical sections.
Even when told that the part must be genuine
« Last Edit: July 26, 2019, 11:04:47 pm by Psi »
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Offline Siwastaja

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Re: What's the most dangerous failure's these days ?
« Reply #15 on: July 27, 2019, 08:59:50 am »
Main issue I encounter is pcb assemblers using non genuine parts in critical sections.
Even when told that the part must be genuine

Supply all critical parts for these Chinese assembly houses.

Another reason I supply the parts by myself is the lead time and availability risk, which often applies to the very same critical, non-replaceable parts. Any part can be suddenly unavailable with 6 months of lead time. If you ask your assembler to source, that 6 months starts when you pay for your order. When you stock the parts yourself, you can order them as soon as your approximate schematic and proof-of-concept prototypes show you are going to use those particular parts.
 

Offline ddavidebor

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Re: What's the most dangerous failure's these days ?
« Reply #16 on: July 27, 2019, 01:25:33 pm »
Multi layer ceramic caps can be dangerous with a grunty PSU behind it.
I'm surprised they there aren't more issues than there are with things like motherboards with hundreds of them with people flexing the boards during install.
But lithium ion batteries have to take the cake, they are exothermic if the get going, and they energy density of modern batteries is getting seriously high.

Well motherboards are very thick and most of the MLCCs are very small (small = strong, counterintuitively)
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Offline aandrew

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Re: What's the most dangerous failure's these days ?
« Reply #17 on: July 27, 2019, 02:15:03 pm »
feral apostrophe

My new favourite name for them. Brilliant!
 
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Online Zero999

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Re: What's the most dangerous failure's these days ?
« Reply #18 on: July 28, 2019, 07:55:55 am »
Hmm.  I know one person who burned down his garage with lithium ion batteries, but that was some DIY thing, not consumer electronics so it was likely his fault.  I know one guy who had substantial heat damage to his kitchen cabinets and floor when the SSRs in his oven failed short-circuit while he was on vacation, probably due to lighting or other surge.  My brother also had his oven spontaneously fail on but he was home and able to flip the shut off the breaker before it did any damage.
That sounds like very bad design. There should be a thermal fuse to cut the power to the element if the switch jammed on.
 

Offline soldar

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Re: What's the most dangerous failure's these days ?
« Reply #19 on: July 28, 2019, 08:30:43 am »
Speaking from a personal perspective, greengrocer's apostrophies such as "most dangerous failure's" or "consumer PSU's" are very dangerous.
People who do that kind of thing should be analyzed.

And while we are at it, another thing I see more and more often is people who drop the final d or ed from verbs. Like writing "That is not what is being ask" instead of "that is not what is being asked". I see it more and more and it really gets to me. Is their brain so lazy or fuzzy they don't know the difference? People who do that should be analyzed.  You know what I mean.
All my posts are made with 100% recycled electrons and bare traces of grey matter.
 

Offline Psi

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Re: What's the most dangerous failure's these days ?
« Reply #20 on: July 28, 2019, 01:52:58 pm »
Main issue I encounter is pcb assemblers using non genuine parts in critical sections.
Even when told that the part must be genuine

Supply all critical parts for these Chinese assembly houses.


They'd probably just resell your good parts and still buy the cheap ones.
Greek letter 'Psi' (not Pounds per Square Inch)
 

Offline Siwastaja

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Re: What's the most dangerous failure's these days ?
« Reply #21 on: July 28, 2019, 02:56:52 pm »
Main issue I encounter is pcb assemblers using non genuine parts in critical sections.
Even when told that the part must be genuine

Supply all critical parts for these Chinese assembly houses.


They'd probably just resell your good parts and still buy the cheap ones.

Not happened to me. Yes it's possible, but requires a lot more resources from their part, making it less profitable. They need to identify the parts, change them, they need a market connection to sell the parts for profit, quickly...

And it's much harder to explain to the customer, it's feels like a much more serious kind of fraud than just "accidentally" buying from a wrong source.
 

Offline radiolistener

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Re: What's the most dangerous failure's these days ?
« Reply #22 on: July 28, 2019, 05:20:14 pm »
Over the years, what parts failing do you think lit the most fires ? Caps, transformers, resistors ? ?

li-ion accumulators
 

Offline Gyro

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Re: What's the most dangerous failure's these days ?
« Reply #23 on: July 28, 2019, 05:34:19 pm »
li-ion accumulators

As in people who accumulate dodgy Li-ion cells?  ;D
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