All the solder/forget to solder/hot end of soldering iron/heat-shrink/wrong side of case from above AND....
The red led that was "somehow" connected to 35V DC that went pop and smacked me in the middle of my forehead (drawing blood).
The $6000 IGBTS we destroyed when commissioning a belt starter [1000VDC] underground (we had the covers off and I was just about to lean forward to actually put them back on when the 6 of them bent BANG! - bits of plastic, and IGBT 'gloop" went every where - lucky for safety glasses).
The 50,000 litres of milk we dumped in a staff car park because in our haste to meet production deadlines we hadn't checked the feedback signals from EVERY valve before the first truck arrived.
The 6 axis - 4 meter reach -robot arm that that had it's control cable severed - and replaced (not by me) that when haywire when turned back on and destroyed just about everything in the room [Mr ABB technician was not on our Christmas card list that year). My mistake was to think that the technician was competent....
I made a stupid cable wiring mistake and kept plugging these very
expensive switching power supply modules into the cable and ruining
them. I was unpopular for a while.
I must be a complete idiot because I have done almost everything I've read on here, some more than once! :-) I must admit that the most common one is forgetting the heat shrink until after I've soldered everything!
Thanks, you've all made me feel less like the only one who could have possibly actually done some of these things!
Trying to solder with a spool of hookup wire. "Why won't this iron get hot enough?! What's that smell..."
Been there, done that. Did not cut romex, just a three wire bundle carrying 220VAC during a deinstall. Missed one stupid breaker....
When I was teaching the new (at the time) replacement CDC disk drive for an ASW system, I put a bug into the seek circuit which essentially gave 0 feedback to the voice coil drive controller. It would drive the heads to the innermost position at warp speed rather than shutting down. Good problem except that the students would press the reset a few times.... guess seeing is believing. At some point during this lab, the heads stayed in the inner position, and the voice coil retracted to the unload position.. permanently.. The senior chief was not amused in the least... Expensive? You betcha..
Frank
P.s. I do not ever forget the heat shrink until after soldering everything, I just happen to remember it after the fact.
Got my nearsighted eyes replaced with distance vision during cataract surgery. Tried to continue to operate by squinting at things for a while. Killed one of my Propeller boards connecting a nice high voltage AC adapter. Resigned myself to getting use to using the tools required to operate with new eyeballs.
I think there's a huge market out there if anyone could figure out how to make split shrink tubing that you could put on "after the fact" and which would mend itself along the seam before you shrink it!
I think there's a huge market out there if anyone could figure out how to make split shrink tubing that you could put on "after the fact" and which would mend itself along the seam before you shrink it!
-Phil
They do, at least for large items. Sold at Ace hardware, called rescue tape. bout 1" wide, self bonding. nice for cables, hoses, all sorts of stuff. Have not tried it in place of shrink tube though it does have an 8kV rating!!
When I first started out in electronics (early 90's), I worked at Ken-Ton Electronics for my first electronics job. They had just gotten a run of two prototype Gun-boards for Laser-Tron that had some problems with a feed through. I was tasked with going over the fairly large schematic and finding the feedthrough that was the problem. After about an hour or two I was so aggravated with the over 200 feedthroughs that I took some 30guage wire and filled in all of the feedthrough holes with it. I found out that I ruined 1 of 2 $200,000 prototype boards. Oooops. I think they learned to never have a new employee work on an advanced prototype.
Lets just say I only remained there about a week after that, and to this day the owner won't even talk to me.
Does attempting to make a pair of electric scissors when I was 4 or 5 count?
I really wanted to play with the electric scissors my older sister's were sewing with, understandably they wouldn't let me.
So I decided to build a pair. I got my safety scissors, a piece of string, and a paper clip, tied them together, and plugged it in.
Promptly sat me on my butt! I walk in the house in a slight daze, my sister asked if I was ok, I say I was and go lay down.
Later I went to collect my invention and remember being ticked that my paper clip burnt thru. I was understandable very appreciative when removing the remains of the paper clip from the outlet.
More recently I smoked a chip and damaged a propeller, both at the same time.
I also melted the headers while attempting to solder the other set of headers on a xbee adapter board...
When I was 4 I saw my grandfather checking the outlets in the house with a pigtail light socket. I decided to do the same so I twisted 2 pieces of wire together and stuck the other ends in the outlet. When I got up off the floor all the lights in the house were out so I went and hid under the bed. I guess that's what sparked my interest in things electrical.
Ha My parents were trying to inspire a little engineer and gave me old radios, clocks and tools to play with. Apparently when I was 4 I placed a piece of copper wire between active and neutral, turned it on and ran out to my mum saying " blue flash mummy". What I remember of it was my parents yelling at eachother that night and the dissapointment of not being able to keep the old power switch!
After that there was always plastic plugs in the outlets. I guess that could have easily been my first and last electrical mistake.
Once, when I was 4 or 5, before I new anything about electrical safety or the dangers of live wiring, I lived by one rule that my parents set very firmly: DON'T PLAY WITH THE ELECTRICITY FROM THE WALL!!!! I once disobeyed that rule, trying to make my own extension cord from a clock radio's power cord. I did not get shocked, but the wires accidentally touched when connected to a night light. There was a bang and a few sparks went flying onto the rug. To this day, there are two black marks on the carpet. Afterwards, my parents took away the power cord and I couldn't use any of my electronics for two weeks.
I think there's a huge market out there if anyone could figure out how to make split shrink tubing that you could put on "after the fact" and which would mend itself along the seam before you shrink it!
-Phil
Yea, I call it "Hot glue"....
"I am NOT desoldering all that to put on the stupid heat shrink I forgot the first time, screw it! where's my hot glue gun??"
How long would you think it would take a reasonably intelligent adult to realize (from selection, thru ordering, to installation) they've bought 128 Kilobit EEPROMs instead of 128 Kilobyte.
I imagine the actual realization was near instantaneous. DOH!
It's the time and effort you took to cleverly set the trap for yourself that's impressive.
I can only say this because I've done similar things in multiple disciplines!
1. I was given an old 240Vac indicator light from a washing machine. It had two bare barrels with scre connections. I went to my old valve radio that I was using for parts and took the 2 wire plug and cable from it, with suitably stripped wire ends. I realised I could not hold them and switch on the power point at the same time. So I switched on the power point first, then grabbed the 2 wires to hold onto the light - and to my amazement I ended up on the other side of the room. Tried it for a second time and the same thing happened. At least I then connected the bare wires with a screwdriver before turning on the power and the light glowed red. Nice. Very fortunate I did not tell my parents or they would have banned me from electrics/electronics. I was probably about 6 or 7!
2. After high school I went to college to study electronics. One of the practical lessons involved tuning radios so I brought my newly rebuilt 52MHz valve transceiver to tune the transmitter. We had been told it was the "mills" that "kills". My new power inverter provided 400V DC at 100-200mA. While tuning the plate current, I realised the "Avo8" meter was reversed, so I reached to switch off the power supply with the cable in the other hand. I grazed the metal handle on the front of the transceiver, and voila... my hand clamped severly around the handle - 400V DC 100-200mA from one hand to the other. The only thing to do was to drag it all off the bench and onto the floor. I am still here over 40 years later!
3. My mate decided to teach his wife to solder prototype pcbs for us. He taught her to solder parts using old pcbs and cheap parts. Then he packed all the parts (thru hole back then) and took them home. He explained where the parts went and gave her an example pcb. He forgot to tell her that not all 14 DIP packages were the same. You know the rest... BTW Once she understood the difference she was fine. But she still used to refer to the parts as little yellow pillows, little blue pillows and blue combs.
1. I was given an old 240Vac indicator light from a washing machine. It had two bare barrels with scre connections. I went to my old valve radio that I was using for parts and took the 2 wire plug and cable from it, with suitably stripped wire ends. I realised I could not hold them and switch on the power point at the same time. So I switched on the power point first, then grabbed the 2 wires to hold onto the light - and to my amazement I ended up on the other side of the room. Tried it for a second time and the same thing happened. At least I then connected the bare wires with a screwdriver before turning on the power and the light glowed red. Nice. Very fortunate I did not tell my parents or they would have banned me from electrics/electronics. I was probably about 6 or 7!
2. After high school I went to college to study electronics. One of the practical lessons involved tuning radios so I brought my newly rebuilt 52MHz valve transceiver to tune the transmitter. We had been told it was the "mills" that "kills". My new power inverter provided 400V DC at 100-200mA. While tuning the plate current, I realised the "Avo8" meter was reversed, so I reached to switch off the power supply with the cable in the other hand. I grazed the metal handle on the front of the transceiver, and voila... my hand clamped severly around the handle - 400V DC 100-200mA from one hand to the other. The only thing to do was to drag it all off the bench and onto the floor. I am still here over 40 years later!
3. My mate decided to teach his wife to solder prototype pcbs for us. He taught her to solder parts using old pcbs and cheap parts. Then he packed all the parts (thru hole back then) and took them home. He explained where the parts went and gave her an example pcb. He forgot to tell her that not all 14 DIP packages were the same. You know the rest... BTW Once she understood the difference she was fine. But she still used to refer to the parts as little yellow pillows, little blue pillows and blue combs.
O M G a two time Darwin award looser!!!! Don't bother with any lottery or other things of chance, I do believe you are seriously overdrawn on your account at the Bank of Good Luck!!!
Not my most destructive, but way up on the clueless scale... always forgetting one of the most important lessons of electronics: A cold soldering iron looks exactly like a hot soldering iron! :-|
My fondest mistake would have to be my first attempt at a dc motor controller that I (incorrectly) modeled from one of the engineer's mini notebooks. After witnessing the flame and whistling noise shoot out of the top of the SCR like a mini jet engine on the breadboard I sat back, got ahold of my thoughts and erupted with enthusiasm!!!!!! Been hooked ever since.
My least favorite has to be letting myself be rushed by an impatient customer while adjusting a static phase converter. One time forgetting to turn off the disconnect and wammo! 480 to ground. If I would have grabbed two phases I probably would not be telling this story right now. (Nobody has ever rushed me since that day.)
This one was my own stupid. Did not allow enough time for a 300 hp VFD's capacitors to discharge before putting a ratchet on the input lugs to disconnect the wires. Not as bad as it sounds but still, that was dumb.
As far as the heatshrink goes, when underground cable is cut it usally requires a short piece of cable to make up the distance between the cut wire. That amounts to two crimps and two heatshrink insulations per cable splice. I'm not going to go into detail here, but rest assured after you make your first double connection with 500 MCM and forget the heatshrink, you remember it from then on.
I could continue, but I think I done enough self defamation for one night.....
Where do I start, my hobby in electronics or my job as an electrician. I start with my job as an electrician.
I was working on a job site and was wiring up single pole switches and installed them upside-down "no - ffo" when it should've been right-side up "on - off". I didn't do one, I did 10 of them until the job foreman said something and I was the lead electrician on this site. Even the leads make mistakes.
Don't try wiring up a 120vac ballast on a 277vac it doesn't work and made this mistake as well.
Now my hobby. I was hooking a RC-4 SCR board that I bought from Parallax (when they were selling them and sold by EFX-TEK now) and plugged the servo cable the worng way and end up putting 5vdc on the serial I/O line. Of, course the magic blue smoke came out to say hi.
I also made the heat shrink mistake as well when making cables and found that electrical tape saves me everytime.
One thing, I can say is that once you make one mistake for one thing, you don't normally make them again and you learn from it.
This pertains to electrical instead of "electronics". I have two of them.
In my early days, while performing electrical work on a new residence, the heating and air guys were in the basement banging on their tin and driving me bonkers. However, I got even when I decided to push a metal fish tape towards the panel. Upon arriving at the panel, the metal fish tape hit the buss bar and let out a "BIG BANG". Scared the bejeezers out of those tin guys and put a nice melt mark on the buss
On another job, I was working inside of 100 amp main lug sub panel, which had a 100 amp breaker inside the sub to shut off power to the buss. The 100 amp breaker had to be relocated to a different position within the panel. I had this breaker shut off while performing other work within the panel. When it came time to move the breaker, I simply removed the wires from the lugs, forgetting that they were still actually hot. While moving stuff around, one of the live wires grounded to the cabinet and we had our second "BIG BANG".
Inquisitive minds need to know... I was just testing my own theory of relativity
When I was about nine years old, I was fascinated with receiving out of town A.M. radio stations at night. So I took my 120 volt tube type radio apart and attempted to provide a better ground and antenna as I heard that would improve reception.
I'm not sure what I did but at one point I blew the main circuit breaker for the house (lot's of sparks). My dad was so mad because he had run outside to try to catch the kids who had previously been playing pranks by flipping our circuit breaker and running.
3. My mate decided to teach his wife to solder prototype pcbs for us. He taught her to solder parts using old pcbs and cheap parts. Then he packed all the parts (thru hole back then) and took them home. He explained where the parts went and gave her an example pcb. He forgot to tell her that not all 14 DIP packages were the same. You know the rest... BTW Once she understood the difference she was fine. But she still used to refer to the parts as little yellow pillows, little blue pillows and blue combs.
Your friend had a wife who would solder PCBs for him?!?! AND your PCBs as well?!? Lucky man!
Hmm... My biggest mistake was leaving a couple un-fused low voltage connectors uncapped at the other end of the boat with my 6 year old son nearby. He promptly helped by connecting the pigtails in reverse resulting in two shorting circuits and instant billows of smoke from one end of the boat to the other. The last words I hear before the smoke were "Here Dad, you left these unplugged"
Comments
I wondered why it took so long for my heat shrink tubing to do its thing.
All the solder/forget to solder/hot end of soldering iron/heat-shrink/wrong side of case from above AND....
The red led that was "somehow" connected to 35V DC that went pop and smacked me in the middle of my forehead (drawing blood).
The $6000 IGBTS we destroyed when commissioning a belt starter [1000VDC] underground (we had the covers off and I was just about to lean forward to actually put them back on when the 6 of them bent BANG! - bits of plastic, and IGBT 'gloop" went every where - lucky for safety glasses).
The 50,000 litres of milk we dumped in a staff car park because in our haste to meet production deadlines we hadn't checked the feedback signals from EVERY valve before the first truck arrived.
The 6 axis - 4 meter reach -robot arm that that had it's control cable severed - and replaced (not by me) that when haywire when turned back on and destroyed just about everything in the room [Mr ABB technician was not on our Christmas card list that year). My mistake was to think that the technician was competent....
The list goes on and on...
(now how can I change my login name....??}
expensive switching power supply modules into the cable and ruining
them. I was unpopular for a while.
OMG
I hope you have a hot air rework station.
It would be hard to use solder wick to remove
all those parts. :-(
Thanks, you've all made me feel less like the only one who could have possibly actually done some of these things!
Dave
Been there, done that. Did not cut romex, just a three wire bundle carrying 220VAC during a deinstall. Missed one stupid breaker....
When I was teaching the new (at the time) replacement CDC disk drive for an ASW system, I put a bug into the seek circuit which essentially gave 0 feedback to the voice coil drive controller. It would drive the heads to the innermost position at warp speed rather than shutting down. Good problem except that the students would press the reset a few times.... guess seeing is believing. At some point during this lab, the heads stayed in the inner position, and the voice coil retracted to the unload position.. permanently..
Frank
P.s. I do not ever forget the heat shrink until after soldering everything, I just happen to remember it after the fact.
OBC
-Phil
Frank
Lets just say I only remained there about a week after that, and to this day the owner won't even talk to me.
I really wanted to play with the electric scissors my older sister's were sewing with, understandably they wouldn't let me.
So I decided to build a pair. I got my safety scissors, a piece of string, and a paper clip, tied them together, and plugged it in.
Promptly sat me on my butt! I walk in the house in a slight daze, my sister asked if I was ok, I say I was and go lay down.
Later I went to collect my invention and remember being ticked that my paper clip burnt thru. I was understandable very appreciative when removing the remains of the paper clip from the outlet.
More recently I smoked a chip and damaged a propeller, both at the same time.
I also melted the headers while attempting to solder the other set of headers on a xbee adapter board...
Jay
After that there was always plastic plugs in the outlets. I guess that could have easily been my first and last electrical mistake.
OBC's avatar always gives me a smile :-)
Asking for on-line help, but not being prepared with good information.
Yea, I call it "Hot glue"....
"I am NOT desoldering all that to put on the stupid heat shrink I forgot the first time, screw it! where's my hot glue gun??"
Edit. Well not forgetting just getting so involved that I didn't notice it.
It's the time and effort you took to cleverly set the trap for yourself that's impressive.
I can only say this because I've done similar things in multiple disciplines!
2. After high school I went to college to study electronics. One of the practical lessons involved tuning radios so I brought my newly rebuilt 52MHz valve transceiver to tune the transmitter. We had been told it was the "mills" that "kills". My new power inverter provided 400V DC at 100-200mA. While tuning the plate current, I realised the "Avo8" meter was reversed, so I reached to switch off the power supply with the cable in the other hand. I grazed the metal handle on the front of the transceiver, and voila... my hand clamped severly around the handle - 400V DC 100-200mA from one hand to the other. The only thing to do was to drag it all off the bench and onto the floor. I am still here over 40 years later!
3. My mate decided to teach his wife to solder prototype pcbs for us. He taught her to solder parts using old pcbs and cheap parts. Then he packed all the parts (thru hole back then) and took them home. He explained where the parts went and gave her an example pcb. He forgot to tell her that not all 14 DIP packages were the same. You know the rest... BTW Once she understood the difference she was fine. But she still used to refer to the parts as little yellow pillows, little blue pillows and blue combs.
"Oh yeah, I need to test out some 128KB EEPROMS... ACK! Digikey's shipping cutoff is in 10 minutes!"
(So in fact, very little effort.)
O M G a two time Darwin award looser!!!! Don't bother with any lottery or other things of chance, I do believe you are seriously overdrawn on your account at the Bank of Good Luck!!!
Frank
My fondest mistake would have to be my first attempt at a dc motor controller that I (incorrectly) modeled from one of the engineer's mini notebooks. After witnessing the flame and whistling noise shoot out of the top of the SCR like a mini jet engine on the breadboard I sat back, got ahold of my thoughts and erupted with enthusiasm!!!!!! Been hooked ever since.
My least favorite has to be letting myself be rushed by an impatient customer while adjusting a static phase converter. One time forgetting to turn off the disconnect and wammo! 480 to ground. If I would have grabbed two phases I probably would not be telling this story right now. (Nobody has ever rushed me since that day.)
This one was my own stupid. Did not allow enough time for a 300 hp VFD's capacitors to discharge before putting a ratchet on the input lugs to disconnect the wires. Not as bad as it sounds but still, that was dumb.
As far as the heatshrink goes, when underground cable is cut it usally requires a short piece of cable to make up the distance between the cut wire. That amounts to two crimps and two heatshrink insulations per cable splice. I'm not going to go into detail here, but rest assured after you make your first double connection with 500 MCM and forget the heatshrink, you remember it from then on.
I could continue, but I think I done enough self defamation for one night.....
traVis
I was working on a job site and was wiring up single pole switches and installed them upside-down "no - ffo" when it should've been right-side up "on - off". I didn't do one, I did 10 of them until the job foreman said something and I was the lead electrician on this site. Even the leads make mistakes.
Don't try wiring up a 120vac ballast on a 277vac it doesn't work and made this mistake as well.
Now my hobby. I was hooking a RC-4 SCR board that I bought from Parallax (when they were selling them and sold by EFX-TEK now) and plugged the servo cable the worng way and end up putting 5vdc on the serial I/O line. Of, course the magic blue smoke came out to say hi.
I also made the heat shrink mistake as well when making cables and found that electrical tape saves me everytime.
One thing, I can say is that once you make one mistake for one thing, you don't normally make them again and you learn from it.
In my early days, while performing electrical work on a new residence, the heating and air guys were in the basement banging on their tin and driving me bonkers. However, I got even when I decided to push a metal fish tape towards the panel. Upon arriving at the panel, the metal fish tape hit the buss bar and let out a "BIG BANG". Scared the bejeezers out of those tin guys and put a nice melt mark on the buss
On another job, I was working inside of 100 amp main lug sub panel, which had a 100 amp breaker inside the sub to shut off power to the buss. The 100 amp breaker had to be relocated to a different position within the panel. I had this breaker shut off while performing other work within the panel. When it came time to move the breaker, I simply removed the wires from the lugs, forgetting that they were still actually hot. While moving stuff around, one of the live wires grounded to the cabinet and we had our second "BIG BANG".
Inquisitive minds need to know... I was just testing my own theory of relativity
I'm not sure what I did but at one point I blew the main circuit breaker for the house (lot's of sparks). My dad was so mad because he had run outside to try to catch the kids who had previously been playing pranks by flipping our circuit breaker and running.
Your friend had a wife who would solder PCBs for him?!?! AND your PCBs as well?!? Lucky man!