Normal temp of a 2 watt resistor?

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Just curious but does anyone know roughly how hot a 2watt resistor should get if it's operating at just under 2watts?

I have an amp where there's a resistor heating up to 120 degrees Celsius (22 degrees C ambient). It appears the resistor is inline with a 24VDC relay coil. The resistor currently measures 928 ohm and there's 40VDC across it so it's dissipating around 1.7Watts. Power dissipation seems ok assuming it's a 2 watt resistor so is it normal for the resistor to be getting so hot?

btw, I don't know the nominal value for the resistor because the color bands appear to be faded (they all appear to be some different shade of brown). It's a 5% resistor so i guess it should be 910 ohm even though the first band appears more grey/brown than white.
 
The first band being brown tells me it's a 1K resistor.

1.7 watts is cutting it close for a 2 watt. I'd up that to 3 or even 5 if you have room. It's not just the resistor, but surrounding component life too.

Keep the leads as long as possible and wrap the resistor in fibreglass or high temp silicone spaghetti (if your local surplus store doesnt have it, rip apart a dead coffee maker/heater/kettle for the stuff).

Cheers!
 
I don't know the exact temperature, but I've seen the smaller body MOX 2W resistors melt the solder right off their leads and fall out of a board while dissipating less then 2W. A large amount of the heat has to get dissipated through the leads and the only time I've ever come near the 2W rating was with fan cooling. As said above, go with a larger wattage resistor, or spread the load across a couple 2W resistors. Always pay extra attention to what's attached to the leads and traces- if it's an electrolytic capacitor or a semiconductor circuit, take some trouble to keep the heat out. This is high on the list of things that make caps fail.
 
Geek said:
The first band being brown tells me it's a 1K resistor.

1.7 watts is cutting it close for a 2 watt. I'd up that to 3 or even 5 if you have room. It's not just the resistor, but surrounding component life too.

Keep the leads as long as possible and wrap the resistor in fibreglass or high temp silicone spaghetti (if your local surplus store doesnt have it, rip apart a dead coffee maker/heater/kettle for the stuff).

Cheers!

i'd swap the resistor for a bigger one but i'm currently still trying to find out whether there's a problem with the amp or the hot resistor is due to a crappy amp design... so far it appears that its resistance seems to be what the manufacturer intended it to be because, the power supply is around 68 vdc and needs to power a 24vdc relay. the resistor currently drops 40vdc so the relay sees 28vdc or less.

it doesn't look like a 1k resistor.... see photos below (note the main board is crooked because it's not screwed down). in the photo, it's the resistor (the one w/ bands that all appear to be brown) next to the 6.8k ohm one.

An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.

An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
 
resistordisipation.gif


resistordisipation3.gif
 
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Hi,
Talk to any repair tech in the TV trade and they will tell you what hot means for resistors. One major manufacturer had a major problem with this on two cermet type resistors. They were about 7 watts rated I think and got so hot that they actually de soldered themselves. And the official cure. Order some special high melting point solder.

Edit-- Can I ask what the item is in the pic.
There are a couple of well known tricks for cutting down on the power dissipated by relay coils by the way, usually easy to implement.
 
a 24Vdc relay does not need 28Vdc across it to hold it in.
It will probably hold in with less than 15Vdc Maybe much less.
Measure it.
Add a second resistor in series to drop the operating voltage to well below 24Vdc.

Add a 22uF to 47uF cap between the resistor junction and the other side of the switching transistor to provide a high voltage pulse to fire the relay on.

All will run much cooler if you can get the relay coil down to around 15 to 18Vdc.
 
Mooly said:
Hi,
Talk to any repair tech in the TV trade and they will tell you what hot means for resistors. One major manufacturer had a major problem with this on two cermet type resistors. They were about 7 watts rated I think and got so hot that they actually de soldered themselves. And the official cure. Order some special high melting point solder.

Edit-- Can I ask what the item is in the pic.
There are a couple of well known tricks for cutting down on the power dissipated by relay coils by the way, usually easy to implement.


are you asking what the relay is used for? it's used to switch the amplifier on/off (but not the power supply).

btw, the power supply voltage is actually 63.5V, not 68V as what I originally stated. i think i'll just replace the resistor with a higher wattage 1kohm one. i don't want to be adding too much bulk to the device because the resistor sits relatively close to the enclosure.
 
turbo-slug:

Very recently I went through a similar experience.

Had a Carver TFM-15cb on the bench with dead VU meters. Found two 2W resistors on the power supply to the VU meter IC, getting *very* hot. They looked very much like your R021. The design called for the voltage to be brought down from 52V to 8.5V These were actually 2.2k (yes, the red bands had become brown with heat). Poor design. I replaced them with 5W ceramic wire wounds. The VU meters work and the resistors get warm, but not as *hot*.

Good Luck
Mayank
 
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Hi
Post's 11 and 12 answered question :) . If you want to stick with just replacing the resistor, leave the leads "long" under the PCB and bend and solder them along the track. This will significantly reduce the "spot" temperature at each leg.
By the way, back to TV's again, it's not uncommon to see small heatsinks fitted to resistor legs (crimped on).
 
burnedfingers said:


I looked thru my files and all I have on those amps are schematics of the turn on circuits in which I signed a non disclosure agreement. If I can obtain the value I will pass it on to you thru email.


Thanks for the help.

Is R021 in your schematics of the turn on circuit? I belive it's used in the circuit that switches the relay on/off.
 
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