Most of us have a 6 year old running around in our brains.

Want!

Swiss are very big on following laws, so I wouldn't worry about rogue ammo. Now, the Swiss assault rifle is better than any club or bat known to man because... well, it's Swiss. So there is, as they say, that.

Sounds like they don't have bullets at home anymore. People always forget the bullets, they go on and on about how you need so many guns when you can easily go through 500 rounds on a bad day....

Buy ammo. Every time I used to go to Wally Mart I'd grab a box of .22 ammo. Never know.

Note to self: Be careful what you wish for....

Musk says it's bulletproof. Big deal, can it handle a flamethrower?

The crux of the deal here is you can cheat, you can cut corners, but if something goes wrong you could have a fire. There have been plenty of mining farm fires out there, no shortage of pictures of that sort of thing. The thing they have in common seems to be an "economical" design.

What you *can* do is get proper plugs and sockets on the end of those circuits, then plug in power distribution poles with the 30a plug on one side and normal 15a sockets along the length. These poles will have circuit breakers in them designed to pop at 15a or whatever and thus provide the protection for the downstream devices. This is the right way to do it.

As an example my Matrix 5000 UPS is a 30a 240v input with a pretty hefty plug. On the secondary side is a distribution box that plugs into the 30a 240v receptacle and has several circuit breakers on it along with 240v 15a and 120v 15a circuits. Each with their own proper plug.

This stuff is not just done to sell a lot of plugs, it's done because people have burned down houses, farms, offices and the little electrical inspector goes through the wreckage and says "This is the 10th time I have seen this problem. We should write a rule to prevent people from fucking up endlessly".

On the other hand, it keeps the fire trucks a-rolling....

Hm. Looking at that just gives me a warm, burning feeling.....

I'd be a little cautious: For example suppose the Antminer power supply explodes inside and dead shorts the input. Now you have 30 amps of current being sourced by your breaker and delivered by 14 gauge wires rated at 15a to the shorted out Antminer.

Will the cable catch fire before the breaker pops? Maybe.....

An extreme example of this process can be found in mining farms where they ran 1,000 amp 12 volt busses to ranks of miners and teed off with PCIe cables. When the miner shorted out, it would be fed the full 1,000 amps or so from the supply which would cause flames to shoot out of the miner with the usual results (burned down farm). Could be avoided by fusing the miner's input wires to the max current the miner uses but that costs money.

In the UK, those huge plugs have a fuse in them rated to the wire size going to the appliance since the ring current can be 30-40 amps. That fuse in the plug allows the use of 14-16 gauge wire in the appliance without having to worry about fires from a dead short.

That is interesting: Last I checked a couple of years ago the only solution was a Square-D box designed to fit in the exact same space as a Stab-Lok with spots for real breakers. I'd have no problem with the use of UL approved breakers, but I didn't realize anyone made them for Stab-Lok panels (for a number of years in the 2000's someone was selling "new" ones, but they had the exact same failure mode as the old ones. Ug!)

Was that breaker a Stab-Lok or Square D? When I ran miners at the house I would check the panel weekly and I did see one Square D breaker that was getting warmer than the others so I pulled it just to be safe. Miners put an insane constant load, and if you quote the NEC I think a 20a circuit should have no more than a 13-14a continuous load on it (which miners are. Warm, cuddly miners).

Oh God, your country is wired with Stab-Loc? You might as well save time and set fire to your house :-)

For the un-initiated, Stab Loc was a maker of circuit breakers that.... well wouldn't break. Under load they had a tendancy to do one of two things:

1) Warp the contacts so that resistance increased as load increased, causing heat and a fire in the fuse box
2) Fuse shorted under overload (or even load) so that when a short was detected the breaker would ensure that the full 100-200ams of the house service could be dumped into the load, causing fires in walls, appliances, everywhere.

For awhile people thought that cycling the breakers every once in awhile would fix the problem, but then it was discovered that each time you cycled it you would make event 1 more likely. In other words having them open under load was a literal crap-shoot.

In terms of 30a 120v, that is very unusual in the US, it requires 10-8 gauge wire minimum and I could see a 120/240 unit melting its input lines under the extra current it tries to draw (do Antminer PSUs have a fuse in them?). Am curious to see what kind of power the OP has, and will test my icoming S15 with the Watts-Up meter to see what it does on 120v.

(Edit: I see Schindler Electric is selling new breakers that might fit in a Stab-Loc panel. Interesting)

Interesting. I'm getting in an S15 of my own for fixing and testing, I'm guessing since it's a switching power supply it will just try to double the current on the intake in order to generate the DC voltage on the output. Surprised it just didn't blow your fuse right off; did you plug it into a 15a or 20a breakered outlet?

One question I'll test is if it can run on 110v with half the boards. Should be possible....

QFN and chips like the Antminer ones are real pains in the rear to replace on a board. Using a preheater is an excellent idea, as is using lead/tin solder paste for the replacement as it flows a lot better and is a lower temp than ROHS.

I would say try cutting down the heat on your air gun to something like 360 on the re-solder. You don't need as much heat as when you're pulling them, also how much airflow are you using (sometimes a lower flow rate is better as it creates a cloud of heat over the chip instead of washing it with heated air).

For cleaning the pads on the board should be bright and shiny. I use 95% isopropyl alcohol and no lint swabs to clean them off. Make sure it's flat as a pancake, and get rid of any remaining heat sink glue on the board.

You might want to buy a few S9 chips new from Ebay just to see if the problem is bad chips. Maybe they are getting damaged on removal from the board and are thus duds.

Flux is always critical. I have found that zephlux is like nectar from the Gods: It's tacky without being sticky, holds components in place and when heated allows the solder and the component to "float" into final position. For removal I make sure to put Kestrel 951 (I think that's the number) liquid flux down first to help the solder melt cleanly.

Do you have a testing rig, or do you put heat sinks back on and test in an S9?

C

Removing connectors is a serious pain in the ass. Partially because the boards are loaded with copper power planes right by the plugs, and partially because the little connector right next to them can be melted by too much air heat.

What I typically do is use a pre-heater to bring the board (and those heat wicking ground planes) up to a reasonable temperature, then use flux and a good iron to melt some lead/tin solder into the pins. Lead/tin melts at a lower temperature, and the result is the plugs will have a better chance of coming off.

For new plugs use nickel plated ones and once again put paste flux (I love zephlux) on them before putting in the holes. Then solder with lead/tin solder to make a good solid connection. *

If you need someone to do it, I'd do it for shipping as I'm getting back into S9/15/17 repair and can always use some extra practice.

C

* Note: After using lead/tin solder please do not eat the board. :-)

How do you know if you got the bump?

What, you think those religious sand owners won't just re-nationalize the company and stiff anyone stupid enough to pay money for their worthless "stock"?

Again?

That is a weird spot to have a burn, that should be the +12 and ground backplanes. I wonder if the chip next to it shorted out, burned the board, and then opened up.

C

This pretty much sums up my halloween costume for the year....

Well, we shouldn't rule out space. Roach can go to space. He can colonize Uranus.

Just took a trip through North Dakota and Montana: There is so much open space in the US that overcrowding will not be a problem. I sem to recall the drop in birth rate is natural when one's kids stop dying in childhood.