My 5F1 build nearly caught fire due to a single bad ground joint

I was testing my first complete champ clone in my garage last Saturday night. Everything was humming along fine until I smelled that weird burnt electronics smell. Then I saw one of the filter cap can resistors glowing red hot through the chassis vents before I could hit the power switch. Turns out I had used a too long lead dress on the ground bus and it barely touched the chassis at one point. The joint looked solid but after I scraped away the solder blob, there was basically no connection underneath. I spent Sunday redoing all my ground connections with a proper star washer setup and filing the chassis points clean. Has anyone else had a sneaky bad ground cause weird behavior like motorboating or hum that comes and goes?

2 comments

2 Comments

hugo_ellis22d ago

Think you meant filter cap resistor, not cap can resistor.

holly_gonzalez6121d ago

Is it really that big of a mix up though? I've seen people call them filter cap cans and resistor caps and nobody cared. It's basically just a capacitor with a resistor on top, not a whole new part.

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