Warning: Nearly smoked my phone charger with a backwards diode

I was out in my garage in Austin last summer soldering up a solar charge controller for an old phone battery pack. Forgot to check the polarity on the diode and hooked it up backwards - tiny little puff of smoke came off the board and I thought I killed the whole project. After letting it sit for an hour I swapped the diode right way around and it actually still works fine for charging my phone, though I keep a fire extinguisher nearby now. Anyone else had a brain fart with a component that ended up being recoverable?

2 comments

2 Comments

verab281d ago

That "tiny little puff of smoke" is the exact same thing that happened to me with a voltage regulator last year, and I still keep that board on my workbench as a reminder to double check my polarity before I solder anything. It's wild how many components can survive a brief backward voltage if you catch it fast enough and let them dry out.

parker_campbell1d ago

and now i just sit there staring at it every time i solder like "remember that time you almost created a smoke machine?" honestly half my workbench is just graveyard boards with blown caps and melted plastic that i keep around for the horror stories. the worst one i had was a little 5v reg that popped and shot a tiny piece of metal straight into my coffee mug. didn't even have time to be mad i was just impressed at the trajectory. but yeah you're right about the survival thing though, i had a cap that got hooked up backwards for like a full second and it's still running three years later in a test rig. i swear some components just have a built in "i didn't sign up for this" tolerance.