Smoking Transformer

knightzor · 1545

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Offline knightzor

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on: June 05, 2014, 03:36:02 AM
Hello Kind folk of the bottlehead community!

I've recently assembled my crack, the resistance checks were all as per the manual except for Terminal 13. It reads as 0.54 but since it was labelled as an asterisk, I went ahead with powering it on. When I powered it on, the tubes began to glow so I thought all was all good until about 10 seconds later where I could see smoke coming out of the transformer and so I quickly powered down the crack.

Can anyone advise me what to look for that would cause my transformer to smoke? It's a 240V version as I'm from Australia

I've attached a couple of photos of the transformer. Let me know if there's something more specific I need to highlight
« Last Edit: June 05, 2014, 03:52:04 AM by knightzor »



Offline fullheadofnothing

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Reply #1 on: June 05, 2014, 07:42:46 AM
It looks like the capacitor is not included in the solder joint at 13.

The starred terminals should not read any kind of low resistance (0.54Ω is probably pretty close to what you were reading at the 0Ω terminals, yes?) as that would indicate a miswire. The starred terminals are connected to capacitors that will try to charge themselves off your meter's battery. Exactly how this will be displayed by the meter will vary, hence the asterisk. If they are not showing similar results to what you saw on the other starred terminals, that is a major red flag.

Joshua Harris

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Offline Doc B.

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Reply #2 on: June 05, 2014, 08:51:55 AM
Yeah, I agree with Josh, it sounds like a miswire that is creating a short. Look at the terminals where the black filter capacitors are soldered and see if you spot any unclipped wire lead that might be so long as to touch a terminal next to the one that it is soldered to.

Dan "Doc B." Schmalle
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