Melty moments with a 230V to 120V converter.

I think it's time for a melty moment and here's a nicely melted moment this was sent in by Ryan from Canada and it's a voltage converter it's the type of thing you plug into a European 234 toilet and it converts roughly to 120 volts but it does so not by using a transformer it's more like a dimmer inside with a fixed voltage but though this does have a switch that chooses between low and high and these things are really really intended for things like irons or steamers or you know fairly resistive loads you can't really use them with electronic loads or it can damage them because basically speaking is fundamentally a dimmer and it's chopping the powerand off so let's squeeze this in the vase of knowledge because it doesn't seem to have much in the way of air screws so I think it's been glued together let's open their place of noise up slip this in and give it a little squeeze and see if we can liberate some secrets without destroying the process that is not giving at all it looks like it's our well welded case I'm just going to grab a hammer a little delicate electronic grid hammer hmm it's kind of starting to give I think I'll just pause and come back in a moment once I've opened this sir my apologies the loud hammering there we're in and it's quite interesting I bond initially if this transforms just power the dropper socket that's all there the triac based rocket but the reason it's got this little switch that goes between low and high is if you set it to the low setting it just acts like a normal transformer based dropper which means you can use delicate loads on it little electronic loads but when you said to the house setting it bypasses it switches this out it's a double pull changeover switch and it switches in what appears to be a triac circuit because I can see what looks like a Dayak and the track and it's all timing capacitor and so yes I think it's time to just err I'm just going to pause mama Charlotte and I'm going to I'm going to doodle out the schematic of this alright so here we are it didn't take too long because it's very simple one of the interesting is there's a fairly chunky looks like it's rated a few watts anyway ten key resistor and it's just across the output 124 output that must be for stability that must just be pull the floating voltage down on low Lord of this transformer or also to make this circuit here stable at low load conditions so I'm the secretary is like this if you switch it to the low setting it just switches in this transformer 230 volt winding at one end tapped off 120 volts and that set it's just a traditional step-down formally you've made faint and you know these average low power units but when you switch it to other direction it switches in this little triac socket and it's textbook there's no suppression or anything like that so it's going to be quite noisy the triac requires a pulse for from basically reference to what's called MT one mean terminal 1 and that's derived from MT the voltage flat is derived from mt 2 simply going through these resistors and charging paster up and in each half wave form it starts that cycle that it starts charged like a past drop as soon as it reaches about 30 volts this Dayak will then suddenly conduct and/or fire the triac so basically speaking if you've got your same wave then say for instance or just roughly it's not it's not going to be this case if you were to set it so roundabout in the middle of the same wave it fired then the same wave would be powered for that half of the wave because the triac matches until it reaches this your crossing point in reality it wouldn't be half I have to say in the past I've tried to drive 110 volt lamps with just a diode in series that doesn't work when refer to volts if that it's actually much less that OverDrive's them if you do that so it would probably closer to a third of the sine wave at gas M so it's got the hundred in each key resistor which is the if this potentiometer that's in the side here because it's got a tuning potentiometer you can adjust it to the output voltage requires a voltage it's not really voltage the output power you require is the best way to describe it so it's got this a 180 q resistor and then the variable resistor which in this case is a 250 key variable resistor but was set to 67 K which is obviously the voltage which they decided was the sort of ideal output voltage that the ideal point the same moved to trigger it charges up this 100 nano farad capacitor but Jordan may have a reach about probably about 32 volts and these die acts there is a bi-directional switch component that just has a threshold and it doesn't matter which polarity it's commonly used the Triax for driving them it basically when it the voltage reaches its threshold it suddenly turns on and delivers a pulse from this capacitor into the track to turn on and the other thing there is this 740 K resistor which quite an odd values it's these are for band color cords and it really is quite hard volume it's a violet yellow black orange which excuse me when I'm so used to seeing yellow violet black orange you know 470 K this a violet yellow is 740s standard fire I don't know if that's a standard resistor for you but anyway they've got that across the capacitor just to make sure discharges don't turn on level and that you know after it's fire just to make things more stable and then of course to get this 10k resistor here to give a slight load just to make the whole thing stable so I'm guessing from the way that the bit that's melted is the transformer so I orrible feeling that someone has plugged a high load into this but actually set it to the low setting because there's nothing to actually stop that happening and what's actually happened there is they've tried to drive a really hyper load through the transformer which has as a result it's gone all very hot and melty and it's distorted the case but you know it's not exactly hard to do is it m2 if when you've got a switch that's going to choose the two settings like that it would be quite easy to to mix that up there interesting device nonetheless you know this that the fact it's got those two sections that I've never seen that before oh I should mention before I before I stop the triac is a SAN rex t25 ecigs F never heard of it and it had this rather stylish heatsink which was mounted over this of mains pins in here is just basically trying to squeeze as much heat sink into the space as possible oh no this is for because it's clearly designed for some other sort of application is quite neat it's quite a stylish heatsink but yeah it's quite a neat little unit so let's make this a double bubble video with this 1600 watt converter also sent through by Ryan at the same time this one's interests because it's got a fuse you can pull this little cover off in the back and it's got a fuse position in it and this one's not melted but I get a feeling from the fact that it doesn't have any other settings it just says 1600 watt converter that this is purely and what does it see do not use with power tools or electronic circuitry computers fax machines TVs VCRs battery recharges and stereos only for use with you know well it says 50 to 1600 watts it's only for use for you know chunky high power resistive loads resistive loads like a hair dryer which has a motor in it but you know that the fact that it's got massive resistive heating element would actually hold the circuit on so I'm just going to the other one was quite hard to get to bits I think this one is going to be hard to beget to bits as well so I'm just going to pause while I take it to bits right well that was quite tricky to open however now it's open and we're going to go look inside and what's more stem interest but this is it's got this massive heatsink the circuitry is even simple nother one because it's you know it's just the absolute most basics of demo type circuit and what's interesting is that the heatsink in here normally with a heatsink you want to go for the largest surface area so things like this hole here is quite good because it opens up a large surface area you get these fins they open up a surface area but this is just a solid I don't think this is hollow I think it's a solid block and there is a seam I don't know if that's just from moulding or casting but em I guess this as a solid block and that that's not as efficient for dissipating heat as findlay oh's but I'm guessing that most the loads are going to be plugged into this are going to be like a small kettles hair dryer steamer or whatever and it's going to initially it's going to be drawing a lot of power and then it's going to cut off and you know this block here will act as a serve mass that's going to absorb x-mode heat and then allow it to be dissipated gradually in this sort of shall we say the off pH do with these fins so it makes reasonable sense to have just that there for thermal mass as a as a reservoir for the energy initially the heat so I am the triac is a bt a 16 let's see if I can no you're not going to see this it's a bt a 16 600 B which is very calm you know let's draw this out let's get this in and draw the schematic out it's going to be simpler so I'll do it sideways so a usual arrangement here we've got that look a big resistor across the input yeah at the opiate as a big resistor across it for stability slows I start off and odd volume gree black red air grieve white eight zero and then two zeros eight k 8k square not value isn't it 8200 one we're going to stand value but eight thousands quite odd I could be wrong and so let's see we've got here the we start off the supply commune the 230 volt coming in and it's got a fuse on the same circuit board and then it comes out to the circuit board so let's go a 230 volt in I will just randomly draw that fuse on one of the lines and one of those go straight to a pin and the other it goes to the transistors mt2 so let's draw that going straight up in that's the 120 volt out or roughly it's not actually hundred involved it's just a chopped up sine wave it's just there it's just segments of the same wave that they're dimming effectively to actually control the output power so let's say add that resistor which is the eight key we're just going to dissipate a modest amount of heat and that's the on trend of all out and then we've got let's connect mt two of the track which is reasonable enough there is mt one which I'm guessing is going to the other pin mt one is going to the other pin and then we've got almost certainly the Dayak is going straight to the gate pin of that yes it is our textbook really and from here this will be from empty - it will be going through our resistor in this case and empty - it's going through a 100k resistor 100k then that will be going through the potentiometer which it is that goes through the variable resistor which is printed on it it's exactly same as the other one it's 250 K I wonder without Bessette I know the last one was set at about 70 cares about that but the resistor above it was higher so I'm guessing this will be set for a higher level depending on what the value of the capacitor is the capacitor is 120 nano and it's going to be connected between mt 1 and the output of the potentiometer yep okay so that's their their 120 nano and then that goes to the the diag that's going to once a capacitor charges up to high enough voltage it will then pull send a pulse to switch that tricorn so let's see what they say I would guess this is going to be sent to higher value because the capacitor of the other one was 100 nano and but it was about 180 Kea think so that is going to probably be 150 ki maybe it's set to let's measure that so I'll set this to 200k and stick it across the potentiometer it's set about a hundred and sixteen K okay so let's say one hundred and sixteen K I also note down that was their BTU 16600 beast that was a bt a which is a very standard air track 16600 be very common track it's a isolated tab track as well and and it's a MIT by SGS thompson st so em yeah it's a very common track that is just you know it's at the minimal they could possibly go off with to make basically it's a dimmer without any suppression but just with a slight load here just to probably make it stable for if when things are not connected or and one percent sure what about what the EK resistors for and maybe it's for loads that don't pose a continuous load or those really this is designed for a continuous loads but yeah that's just as simple as it get so it's basically like a dimmer putting out variable you know wall plate dimmer in series with the load touch to convert the 230 volts out to roughly 120 volts at fairly high power but that does mean it can only really be used with lamps resistive loads like heaters and and not really things like just motors in their own which would be a bit troublesome or electronic stuff which could be damaged by you know the the fact that the voltage a lot higher but as supplied as a series of pulses from the sort of partially chopped top same wave but yeah it's quite a quite a stylish little unit and it's just super simple it's just basically minimalist and quite interesting for that

Channel: bigclivedotcom

Views: 241,290

Rating: 4.952024 out of 5

Keywords: YouTube Capture, melted, melting, overheated, overheating, hot, plastic, case, voltage, converter, adaptor, adapter, auto, transformer, triac, phase angle, dimmer, fixed, 220v, 230v, 240v, 110v, 120v

Id: JbgJ1yPwHRM

Length: 16min 10sec (970 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 13 2016