Just in time for the Fourth.
So for today I managed to do two things of great significance
A) Call my boss stupid to his face by accident.
B) Get a burning circuit board on video.
So background on both of these incidents. My boss and I were having a polite discussion about several options about how we could possibly get around a certain company and their really annoying (illegally obtained in my opinion) patent of which they have come out and tried to strong arm us by saying they would vigorously defend their intellectual property (they obtained the patent by not disclosing approximately 10 years of prior art to the patent office). Anyhow my boss made the comment that perhaps we could license the rights to use their idea and have them make approximately $10 worth of harnesses for us. I said this sounded like a really stupid idea because of how poor the CEO of the company has treated us (the largest producer of our product). The response to this was, "Well don't go saying that cause it was my idea".
I am not all that particularly worried about this issue because so far every idea that has gone out and come back eventually comes back the original ideas I had set forth and implemented, and had later had to change. This so far has been a large waste of my time and the company's money. These ideas and changes have, of course, come from above both my boss and myself so we both feel equally annoyed and stressed by the lack of foresight our superiors seem to survive on.
So for the second item on the list I actually have several things to show. The story is that this is the only power handling board on my current project and since this project is being forced out of the door faster than I have time to work on it, occasionally I don't get a chance to go through it with a fine tooth comb. Also because there is no pin length associated with ports on a hierarchical block in OrCAD Capture there can be a line between those two pins without it being visible to the designer. Thus what has happened here is the output of two relays were tied together unintentionally, one of which is normally at battery positive voltage, and the other at battery ground. Hence flames ensued.
My coworker of course noticed that things started to sizzle on the board as soon as he plugged it in and was fast enough to pull power before any damage was done. So the first photograph I have is of the internal power plane delamination due to excessive heat because of the current being passed through this trace (approximately 100A to begin with).
I, feeling somewhat irresponsible this afternoon decided that we should connect it back up to the battery and see if we can clear the fault so I don't have to cut into the board to remove the offending trace. I also of course remembered that my digital camera had a video mode. Thus I present you with:
Board on Fire (505kB Windows Media)
And no I have not seen the movie Man on Fire, despite wanting to. And I meant no copyright infrigement by labeling my short snippet similarly. Perhaps I will buy the DVD when it hits Walmart's $5.50 bin.
Just for comparison's sake I also took a photograph of the same board after significant charring
I feel accomplished today.
A) Call my boss stupid to his face by accident.
B) Get a burning circuit board on video.
So background on both of these incidents. My boss and I were having a polite discussion about several options about how we could possibly get around a certain company and their really annoying (illegally obtained in my opinion) patent of which they have come out and tried to strong arm us by saying they would vigorously defend their intellectual property (they obtained the patent by not disclosing approximately 10 years of prior art to the patent office). Anyhow my boss made the comment that perhaps we could license the rights to use their idea and have them make approximately $10 worth of harnesses for us. I said this sounded like a really stupid idea because of how poor the CEO of the company has treated us (the largest producer of our product). The response to this was, "Well don't go saying that cause it was my idea".
I am not all that particularly worried about this issue because so far every idea that has gone out and come back eventually comes back the original ideas I had set forth and implemented, and had later had to change. This so far has been a large waste of my time and the company's money. These ideas and changes have, of course, come from above both my boss and myself so we both feel equally annoyed and stressed by the lack of foresight our superiors seem to survive on.
So for the second item on the list I actually have several things to show. The story is that this is the only power handling board on my current project and since this project is being forced out of the door faster than I have time to work on it, occasionally I don't get a chance to go through it with a fine tooth comb. Also because there is no pin length associated with ports on a hierarchical block in OrCAD Capture there can be a line between those two pins without it being visible to the designer. Thus what has happened here is the output of two relays were tied together unintentionally, one of which is normally at battery positive voltage, and the other at battery ground. Hence flames ensued.
My coworker of course noticed that things started to sizzle on the board as soon as he plugged it in and was fast enough to pull power before any damage was done. So the first photograph I have is of the internal power plane delamination due to excessive heat because of the current being passed through this trace (approximately 100A to begin with).
I, feeling somewhat irresponsible this afternoon decided that we should connect it back up to the battery and see if we can clear the fault so I don't have to cut into the board to remove the offending trace. I also of course remembered that my digital camera had a video mode. Thus I present you with:
Board on Fire (505kB Windows Media)
And no I have not seen the movie Man on Fire, despite wanting to. And I meant no copyright infrigement by labeling my short snippet similarly. Perhaps I will buy the DVD when it hits Walmart's $5.50 bin.
Just for comparison's sake I also took a photograph of the same board after significant charring
I feel accomplished today.
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