Sorry,But I just had to laugh at that one!
I once had a tantalum cap explode in flames,fly across the room onto a pile of papers,and set them on fire!
Quick reflexes saved the day.
Sent it to Greg Erskine man.... he made the board and he made the offer.
I cannot help..if you send me the board, then will be blocked by customs...may return to the sender.... sadly my country laws are against the country development..already following ancient rules.
Greg board was very well accepted...many forum guys have etched and assembled.... i have almost 50 pictures of boards built by forum people..others have not sent me pictures...more than 100 have built.
You see that people in China..since a long time ago, was producing boards to sell
Once again..send to Greg...click over his name and select to send private message, then colect his adress to send it to him,
regards,
Carlos
I cannot help..if you send me the board, then will be blocked by customs...may return to the sender.... sadly my country laws are against the country development..already following ancient rules.
Greg board was very well accepted...many forum guys have etched and assembled.... i have almost 50 pictures of boards built by forum people..others have not sent me pictures...more than 100 have built.
You see that people in China..since a long time ago, was producing boards to sell
Once again..send to Greg...click over his name and select to send private message, then colect his adress to send it to him,
regards,
Carlos
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Good to see your going to have another crack at it 
I must have blown my first amplifier up five or six times (and electrocuted myself twice) before I eventually got it working!! It was built on perfboard from a schematic in a magazine, I was using different transistors (because I couldn't get what the design called for) and almost gave up a number of times.
Tenacity is a good thing in this hobby In the end I finally found out what was causing me so many problems. A small detail that I didn't know. The exposed metal bit on the back of TO-220 transistors is in fact live The home made heatsinks I had were shorting together and blowing the amp!! after getting some nylon bolts and mica washers all was well. Unfortunately I didn't gave a forum like this to turn to for help (it was 1983) so just had to figure it out for myself.
I've also had an exploding cap moment. I'd just finished my Playmaster Series 200 amp (1987 cost me $399) Powered it on, and within a couple of seconds BANG! there was also a strange crackling noise like someone screwing up cellophane. The bang was a 1000uf Cap in the preamp power supply installed with the wrong polarity (man that hurt my ears). The strange crackling noise was the torroidal transformer overheating. There was no main fuse on the primary, and the Torroidal had the wiring colours reversed from what they were supposed to be which resulted in me having the two secondaries wired as short circuits!
I replaced the cap and exchanged the transformer under warranty (because I wasn''t sure if it had been damaged), and the amp is still in use. There have been some other interesting adventures with it since, some of which were very frustrating, and documented in threads here at diyAudio) but it has already given me more than 20 years of enjoyment
Cheers,
Tony.
I must have blown my first amplifier up five or six times (and electrocuted myself twice) before I eventually got it working!! It was built on perfboard from a schematic in a magazine, I was using different transistors (because I couldn't get what the design called for) and almost gave up a number of times. Tenacity is a good thing in this hobby
In the end I finally found out what was causing me so many problems. A small detail that I didn't know. The exposed metal bit on the back of TO-220 transistors is in fact live The home made heatsinks I had were shorting together and blowing the amp!! after getting some nylon bolts and mica washers all was well. Unfortunately I didn't gave a forum like this to turn to for help (it was 1983) so just had to figure it out for myself. I've also had an exploding cap moment. I'd just finished my Playmaster Series 200 amp (1987 cost me $399) Powered it on, and within a couple of seconds BANG! there was also a strange crackling noise like someone screwing up cellophane. The bang was a 1000uf Cap in the preamp power supply installed with the wrong polarity (man that hurt my ears). The strange crackling noise was the torroidal transformer overheating. There was no main fuse on the primary, and the Torroidal had the wiring colours reversed from what they were supposed to be which resulted in me having the two secondaries wired as short circuits!
I replaced the cap and exchanged the transformer under warranty (because I wasn''t sure if it had been damaged), and the amp is still in use. There have been some other interesting adventures with it since, some of which were very frustrating, and documented in threads here at diyAudio) but it has already given me more than 20 years of enjoyment
Cheers,
Tony.
I have built around 5000 amplifiers.... i am not sure, but if i can remember
in three units... 2 used to fail.... one finally worked after a couple of hours debugging and other exploded....because my own fault or because wrong magazine schematics... i had not knowledge to see the circuit was wrong.
So i have lost, almost 1500 by explosions and almost 1500 gave me a hard time...this is statistics... my evaluation about..not precise... i think, in reality i have made much more than that.
Now a days i am building 3 each week.... i became slow and lazy because becoming old... doing 3 each week represents 7200 along 50 years .... so...my statistics are carefull.
What i wanna say using my own diy life as an example.... we make more mistakes then we make correct things.. and this happens in all life sectors, not only electronics....we humans use to learn by our mistakes.....we don't care about skilled folks advises...
It seems to me i have not learned how to have more attention, as i continue to make several stupid mistakes now a days...very basic mistakes alike to invert supply wires.... foolish we believe will happens with beginners.
It is better to make mistakes, to fail, then to do nothing..to spend whole life thinking to do something and never moving.
regards,
Carlos
in three units... 2 used to fail.... one finally worked after a couple of hours debugging and other exploded....because my own fault or because wrong magazine schematics... i had not knowledge to see the circuit was wrong.
So i have lost, almost 1500 by explosions and almost 1500 gave me a hard time...this is statistics... my evaluation about..not precise... i think, in reality i have made much more than that.
Now a days i am building 3 each week.... i became slow and lazy because becoming old... doing 3 each week represents 7200 along 50 years .... so...my statistics are carefull.
What i wanna say using my own diy life as an example.... we make more mistakes then we make correct things.. and this happens in all life sectors, not only electronics....we humans use to learn by our mistakes.....we don't care about skilled folks advises...
It seems to me i have not learned how to have more attention, as i continue to make several stupid mistakes now a days...very basic mistakes alike to invert supply wires.... foolish we believe will happens with beginners.
It is better to make mistakes, to fail, then to do nothing..to spend whole life thinking to do something and never moving.
regards,
Carlos
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Hi Carlos,
You realize it through your age, it is good for you.
Humans are weak, poor, fragile, full mistakes and sins. Troublesome at every they move. They always need their God for everything, to forgive him, to care him, to help him, etc.
Biggest mistakes is when someone not realize it, then he cannot distinguishing Rightness from guiltiness. And not accepting human mistakes.
You realize it through your age, it is good for you.
Humans are weak, poor, fragile, full mistakes and sins. Troublesome at every they move. They always need their God for everything, to forgive him, to care him, to help him, etc.
Biggest mistakes is when someone not realize it, then he cannot distinguishing Rightness from guiltiness. And not accepting human mistakes.
Hello
20 years ago I was doing my first preamp using a opamp, that thing did a nice biiizzzzz poofff, I did not use decoupling cap on the voltage rail... so it become a nice oscillator !
But even with more experiences I still do dumb errors, one years ago I was at a friend home helping him to build a TDA7294 chip amp, in his home diy-shop there was only 15 ohm 5 watt resistors that I could use in serial with the amp rail inputs to protect it, I did check everything but still do the error to connected the power supply rail inverted, so minus to the plus of the rail, etc.., hopefully I ad a amp meter on the rail, to much high amp reading, outch !!! ... poor chip amp it took quite a shock for about two minutes... but after connecting the power supply correctly the chip amp was fonctionning ok, except a small retard to ligh up on one channel.
Even wen buying parts wen need to check, a years ans half ago, I've encounted one pack of resistors who was wrong value marked on the resistors, it the was marked as 10 ohm but the real value was 1000 ohm.
Those resistors was to be use for the output transistors base resistors of an amp, one pack was good but only one left and it goes on the lower output base, but from the wrong value marked pack of resistors, one defect resistor goes on the upper output base, I was not suspecting that there was one defect resistor and on scope all was wrong, and distortion sky-high, it took me testing all transistors, connection, etc to finally decide to test all resistors and capacitors to find the bad resitor wen the meter showed 1000 ohm, so there was 10 ohm on the lower output base and 1000 ohm on the upper one... I was quite angry, the store who sell it to me never mind about that and about all those trouble it gave me.
Now, I test all parts before using them.
Bye
Gaetan
20 years ago I was doing my first preamp using a opamp, that thing did a nice biiizzzzz poofff, I did not use decoupling cap on the voltage rail... so it become a nice oscillator !
But even with more experiences I still do dumb errors, one years ago I was at a friend home helping him to build a TDA7294 chip amp, in his home diy-shop there was only 15 ohm 5 watt resistors that I could use in serial with the amp rail inputs to protect it, I did check everything but still do the error to connected the power supply rail inverted, so minus to the plus of the rail, etc.., hopefully I ad a amp meter on the rail, to much high amp reading, outch !!! ... poor chip amp it took quite a shock for about two minutes... but after connecting the power supply correctly the chip amp was fonctionning ok, except a small retard to ligh up on one channel.
Even wen buying parts wen need to check, a years ans half ago, I've encounted one pack of resistors who was wrong value marked on the resistors, it the was marked as 10 ohm but the real value was 1000 ohm.
Those resistors was to be use for the output transistors base resistors of an amp, one pack was good but only one left and it goes on the lower output base, but from the wrong value marked pack of resistors, one defect resistor goes on the upper output base, I was not suspecting that there was one defect resistor and on scope all was wrong, and distortion sky-high, it took me testing all transistors, connection, etc to finally decide to test all resistors and capacitors to find the bad resitor wen the meter showed 1000 ohm, so there was 10 ohm on the lower output base and 1000 ohm on the upper one... I was quite angry, the store who sell it to me never mind about that and about all those trouble it gave me.
Now, I test all parts before using them.
Bye
Gaetan
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My girlfriend is told if she hears a bang and a scream, come knock me off it with a dry piece of wood. She has a baseball bat that she wants to have an excuse to use now!
Have you seen this? YouTube - Exploding capacitor
John
Have you seen this? YouTube - Exploding capacitor
John
Make sure you people stay safe, you really can hurt yourself with these things. Getting a nasty burn is also something easily done.
These days I dive under the bench at the first sound of "that hiss" that caps make just before they do that supernova thing. I'm not going to hang around after being caught up in a few exploding capacitors!
You haven't really lived until a large filter cap goes BANG close by. You can't hear much for a while and the air is full of paper fuzz and a rather bad odor. Now that is scary!
-Chris
These days I dive under the bench at the first sound of "that hiss" that caps make just before they do that supernova thing. I'm not going to hang around after being caught up in a few exploding capacitors!
You haven't really lived until a large filter cap goes BANG close by. You can't hear much for a while and the air is full of paper fuzz and a rather bad odor. Now that is scary!
-Chris
I always play it safe and wear brown underpants lol
Tantulums go off with a loud crack too.
Saw it happen in a lab when I was training to be an electronics engineer.
She might like a classic rubber rain/mud boot. Then she can can boot you off the connection.
I like North American voltage. 110-120 zaps and repels and throws...220-230 pulls...nasty!
That was a cool story... Speaking of tantalums, i blew seven in a row one day. The voltage of the circuit they were working in was much lower than their maximum rating so they did not blow immediately, but instead the thing worked for a couple minutes then the capacitor caught fire. I installed another one, same thing happened, after a few minutes there's that funky smell again.
Since the caps were recovered from an old TV i wasn't sure they were any good, so i kept on swapping. And so it went till the 8th one, when i noticed the little + symbol on the cap. And yes, i was just about to install that one backwards as well. 
I've done even more stupid things but i won't tell you.
Anyway i still have a lot to learn since i'm just turning 19 this summer, but one thing i know for sure now is to never, ever, throw a project away just because it didn't work. You never know when it will be useful. I've thrown away LOTS of stuff that would have came in handy nowadays, who would've known that at one point i would really know what i am doing. 
it's all part of the learning process - my first preamps were funky (and being thermionic), buzzy and microphonic. Lots of hum issues and a few fried parts too. I've since learned layout better and how to keep in the 'magic' smoke. I've recently branched out into solid state and expect to 'learn' some lessons the hard way.
Yes, at the time I was on the other side of the room hidden behind a book case with my finger on the power switch. So of course the cap would have had to have been really clever for it to have actually hit me! Although it would have really been something if the window had shattered too...
Now of course I've got the bench power supply, so these things happens rarely and only if I do something stupid.
That video of the exploding cap was quite something though. I wonder if they connected it in reverse and also grossly exceed it's maximum voltage rating. This gives me evil ideas on how to torment old, low voltage, caps.
Isn't you tube wonderful...
YouTube - Capacitor 1000 uF 10 Volts under water
The noise the guy makes with the second test made me laugh a little.
This however just seems plain stupid. Oh look at that the resistors smoking, hey lets turn it on again >.< Not only this but he has no lid on the box. Then he goes shooting something into the sky... maniac, if something had gone wrong. Well you know draining a cap of it's juice that quickly could cause it to explode, and also the disk he's shooting? yeah misfires and shoots at him? Or lands on his head.
Then he says part way through, hey look the fan has started, now it can cool the resistor... where's the resistor? NOWHERE NEAR THE FAN.
YouTube - 8 Capacitor washer launcher
The first guy has loads of interesting videos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3so7t6Yyt4A&feature=related
Haha, the first guy has a great attitude.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgCKnJ5s0Ss&NR=1
First lets throw 1000v at it, hmm not much happened, he's not happy, clearly.
Lets give it 3000v, KABOOM!
YouTube - Capacitor 1000 uF 10 Volts under water
The noise the guy makes with the second test made me laugh a little.
This however just seems plain stupid. Oh look at that the resistors smoking, hey lets turn it on again >.< Not only this but he has no lid on the box. Then he goes shooting something into the sky... maniac, if something had gone wrong. Well you know draining a cap of it's juice that quickly could cause it to explode, and also the disk he's shooting? yeah misfires and shoots at him? Or lands on his head.
Then he says part way through, hey look the fan has started, now it can cool the resistor... where's the resistor? NOWHERE NEAR THE FAN.
YouTube - 8 Capacitor washer launcher
The first guy has loads of interesting videos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3so7t6Yyt4A&feature=related
Haha, the first guy has a great attitude.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgCKnJ5s0Ss&NR=1
First lets throw 1000v at it, hmm not much happened, he's not happy, clearly.
Lets give it 3000v, KABOOM!
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