Smoking Quicksand

[oguinn]

I didn't think it was possible, but I had an error somewhere that caused the Quicksand I built to, I assume, make the batteries hot enough that they melted the holders. It could have made the contacts that hot, I suppose.

Anyway, two questions:

• I found a stray piece of wire that appears to have shorted across the VCC and GND pads on the PC board. See the photo attached. Is it safe to assume that likely caused this to happen?
• I have to replace the battery holders because they melted. How can I tell if I wrecked any of the rest of the parts?

[Paul Birkeland]

Yeah, that will destroy the battery holders.

I think you need to take a step back and compare the bottom of your PC board to what's shown in the manual.  All of your component leads look really long, and it may be that you need to buy a proper pair of side cutters to get them trimmed back a bit.

[oguinn]

Fair criticism. I'll take a pass at cleaning it up.

Do you think I destroyed any of the PC board components? Any way to know short of replacing the harnesses and trying again after I've cleaned these things up?

[Paul Birkeland]

You'll have to clean it up and see how it works.  You had the power supply shorted out completely, so the board never actually saw power.

[oguinn]

Got it. I've got new battery holders on order from Mouser (thanks to Eileen for pointing me to the right part numbers!), so I'll clean it up and try again when they arrive.

In the meantime, here's an important note to anyone working on circuits: maybe don't do it while you're crazy jet-lagged from a trip to India.