Have you ever thrown
a shopping cart out of a convertible at 80 mph to observe the sparks?
How about hooking up a power amplifier to 115 volts AC just to see
how it craters? Your fellow engineers have done these things and
more! If you have a great picture of totally destroyed hardware,
or a photo of a blown circuit, send it to webmaster@microwaves101.
If it gets on the web site you will receive a free Microwaves101
key chain pocket knife! Impress your friends, if not your boss!
Note to mortuary
contributors: please consider that your boss may not find your
submission in the best interests of your Big Company. Lately we've
been getting a lot of "please remove my submission" emails,
try not to send us anything that you might regret.
Note to Big Companies:
Don't blame us for posting your spectacular failures, we only post
what your employees send us. On the other hand, please don't rip
off Microwaves101 pictures for presentations without permission,
that's bad manners. Maybe it's time for some training!
Note to mortuary
fans: we put the new stuff here at the top, but the older disasters
are still here too--just scroll down. Also, in many cases, if you
click on the pictures on this page you can see higher resolution
images.
New for July
2010: This photo came thanks to Will from Down Under. We had
to read it carefully to see what the problem is. That's why we don't
work in QC!
Attached is a photo of the
output waveguide one of my company's 25w Ku band BUC's*... someone
in production must have been taking a nap when this thing was
built! Thankfully the labels come from a vendor so this particular
idiot isn't ours, but our idiot is just as bad for putting the
label on!
*Block Up Converter, used
in microwave satellite communications equipment.. it's like a
mixer and a high power amplifier all in one. Takes a (in our case)
L band IF at low power, mixes it up and amplifies it at the dish
so the feedline loss is nice and low.
Also new for
July 2010! These pictures
came from Tk, who deserves a MacGyver Award for his efforts:
The attached pics speak
for themselves. What you see here represents ~60-65 dB of attenuation.
My digital radio source was ~+22 dB, patch cables -1 dB each.
Where does all the non-transferred
power go? Probably back to the source! Good thing we've got some
solid output gain stages!
Here's some more images from
Tk that we didn't get around to shrinking: 1,
2,
3,
4,
5, 6
New for June
2010! These came from Matthew (thanks!)
Attached are two photos
of what happens when the laser used to hermetically seal the aluminum
housing of this RF assembly is turned up to “11”.
It blasted through two covers
and a gasket to vaporize a portion of the RF circuit.
Also new for June
2010! This photo is thanks to Jim!
LDMOS power amp
gives up the ghost.
My co-worker and
I went to change the PA tube in our FM Broadcast transmitter.
We switched on the solid-state auxiliary transmitter and
powered down the main. After installing the new tube,
it arced the first time the HV was turned on, causing
a brief power outage. We then smelled something burning.
After, disassembling the tube transmitter expecting to
find burned parts, we found nothing. Then I sniffed the
exhaust air from the auxiliary transmitter. I told my
co-worker, "I don't think it's supposed to do that!"
New for May
2010! These came from Ed, thanks!
Here is a picture a piece
of 12’" C-band flexible waveguide. This waveguide is in
the bottom of our pedestal/antenna assembly. It is located below
our azimuth rotary joint. The rotary joint seized and caused
the flex waveguide to then become the rotary joint…… momentarily!
Ironically, we were still
getting returns from this setup! Albeit, about the range on
the radar display was 3 miles as opposed to the 300 that they
were accustomed to. I changed the flex and all was good again.
I love simple problems like this one!
New for March
2010! These pictures came from Peter, way back in January,
and fell through that crack in the Microwaves101 floor. Sorry
for the delay, and many thanks, sir!
The first picture shows
connectors from a 10 kW switch that suffered badly. What happened
was during a high power transmit period a small piece of metal
broke off inside the relay, starting a fire inside. The result
is a totally burned relay. Second picture shows the 7/16 DIN
coax connector that lost the center pin and the teflon insulator
in that same burn. The relay has been repaired and is now in
service again in my 144 MHz Earth Moon Earth (EME) station.
These photos have great resolution,
be sure to click on them... -UE
Also new for
March 2010! These came from David, who offers this simple
explanation:
Someone took the back
feet off a Tektronix scope and then used too-long screws to
put the scope back together. And then sent it to our Calibration
Lab to be calibrated.
Bummer! The perpetrator deserves
to be promoted to manager so he/she can't do any more damage...
Also new for
March 2010! These came from Colin, who had a little problem
with heat. Come to think
of it, without heat, this mortuary would be significantly reduced
in scope...
I thought I'd share a
couple pix taken of a voltage regulator that was dissipating
a few more watts - into the highly ineffective circuit board
instead of a heatsink. There was a 5A fused "protection
circuit" that failed to blow the fuse, and of course, it
didn't protect the regulator, or anything downstream. A 12V
supply was feeding about 4A to equipment under microprocessor
control, and a single fuse was used for the load as well as
the 5V logic - so when the logic failed and drew about an amp,
that was still fine with the fuse (4A + 1A = 5A) but the regulator
was now dissipating 12-5=7V * 1A = 7W - without a heatsink.
The microprocessor normally drew a few milliamps.
New for February
2010! You can thank John for these SEM images. They are very
high-resolution, be sure to click on them to see destruction at
the micron level!
Thought I'd send along
a couple of pix of deceased IC's I took at work on our scanning
electron microscope.
The first image is of
an IC that had way too much current passed through it. We expected
to see just the usual destroyed substrate but instead were surprised
to see this nice little fiber of silicon oxide that grew out
the unfortunate device. The device became hot enough to actually
oxidize the silicon and cause the fiber to grow instead of just
explode. Shades of the movie "Alien".
The second image shows
a semiconductor from a power supply that we "unfortunately"
managed to destroy by accident one day in the lab. We decided
to cut open the deceased part to have a look. Not much left
of it here, just this destroyed micro landscape. As I recall
the part was something like a voltage regulator IC in a TO-3
package.
Also new for
February 2010! This picture came from Mario, and illustrates
what can go wrong when you don't "match the load to the generator..."
Thanks! Hopefully we can all stay friends!
While on vacation in Europe
a friend of mine plugged my battery charger into an outlet using
an adapter but no transformer. Apparently 220V was more than
the poor charger could take. After hearing a loud pop and opening
the charger up, the damage was obvious. What wasn't as immediately
obvious was the damage done to the house's electrical system...
New for January
2010! These images came from Karol, in Gdansk. Nice Christmas
colors!
I'm an Electronics student
from Poland and I have a few pics for your mortuary - please
see the attached files.
The first one is a cratered
FPGA chip. It was some kind of measurement equipment and this
damage is caused by a thunder storm. The second picture shows
a few other chips on the same PCB as the xilinx chip. In the
blue circle you can see a laser burn on the CCD sensor of my
camera :( Be careful when taking pictures of working lasers.
On the third and fourth photos you can see a power supply module
from the same equipment.
Fifth and sixth picture
shows a self made probe for measuring something on a 3-phase
power line. The resistors got hot and melted the caps. It was
a design fail because that kind of resistors are supposed to
get hot. It's quite surprising that the caps still work (I mean
there's no short or open circuit and they still act as a capacitor).
The last picture shows
a blown IGBT brick. I got it from trash so I don't know what
has happened to it.
Thanks, and sorry
for the delay caused by our overflowing spam bucket! - UE
New for December
2009! This came from Daniel:
I have an
exhibit for the Microwave Mortuary. It's an AC input filter
(220 volts) from a 300W Ku-band amplifier. The power connector
turned out not as weatherproof as it claimed to be, so some
rain water got inside and turned most of the filter into smoke,
tar and charcoal.
Let guess...
removing screws voids the manufacturer's warrantee! - UE
New for November
2009! These two video links came from Isaac:
I see this
kind of work a lot, but this takes the cake. This is an $18,000
radio someone put up with zip ties and bailing wire. Makes me
wonder why they are always having trouble with this path.
Ever get
mad at your test equipment and wish you could do this with it??
New for November 2009! These
photos also came from Ben:
There are lots of different
antennas on the market for different applications ranging from
simple Hertzian dipole, patch, Yagi, horn to expensive dish
antennas. They can be made of a simple cable, build on a PCB,
or even integrated on silicon.
We found a versatile antenna
with reasonable efficiency and very low cost. The antenna was
not found by 3D EM simulation or theoretical calculations, but
by research in the field. We don't know the directional reception
pattern yet, but we still are doing research on this topic.
We called it the fork antenna, simply by its shape. I discovered
it in Gori, Georgia, Central Asia. I actually don't know how
it really works, but this is no fake, I watched television on
this TV set with this antenna. Maybe somebody could check in
the US if this type of antenna also works with the new digital
TV.
New for October 2009!
This photo came from Ben from Deutschland, who is becoming a regular
contributor!
Hey, I killed a chip and
made a photo of it. The chip is die and wire bonded to a PCB,
some bondwires are gone because the board was on my desk for
half a year and didn't work anymore. The photo was made with
a Nokia Handycamera through a microscope, the quality is really
good for that. What happened to the chip?
I designed a circuit including
an amplifier and wanted to control the biasing current, which
is a frequent concern in RFIC research. I made two current input
pins. In the lab, I turned off my setup, the supply voltage
and RF sources. But I forgot to turn off the current sources.
When pulling the current plugs, the current source went to the
voltage limit. Unfortunately this was 40V, a bad idea for an
IC. The ESD protection and a part of the circuit exploded (I
even could see a flash) and melted (both marked in red). The
fallout is distributed all over the chip. So be advised: Never
use current input if you want to tweak your biasing current.
Always use voltage input biasing control pins!
Also new for October 2009!
This picture came from Paul:
We had a path fading.
No foul weather and we couldn't see a problem with the antenna
or feed horn from the ground with your binoculars. See what
we found on the feed horn when we had the cable crew closely
inspect this feed horn. You had to get to within five feet before
the corrosion was apparent. The pressure of the corrosion pushed
the brass in till there was a short from side to side. Salt
air, this was 100 yds from the ocean.
And also new for October
2009! This picture came from Benjamin from Slovenia. This
is an example of what happens when you short out 230 volts at
60 amps.... yikes!
We accidentally connected
the switch so it made a short when switched to ON. You wouldn't
like to be there when it happened... We had a New Year's Eve.
My co-worker (he switched it on) got minor burns and luckily
that was everything.
New for September 2009!
This photo came from Ben from Deutschland, who also provided us
some advice on microwave
career killers:
I've got something for
the microwave mortuary. It's not so much microwave, but more
power supply related.
What to do if your power
cord is broken? Replace it? Not necessarily! Just cut the connector,
skin the wires, plug them into the socket and fix it with the
connector. Maybe you have to turn the power off before you plug
the wires in! I think you also should not touch the top of the
connector.
That's sage advice, especially
when you consider that this is a European outlet providing 240
volts. Thanks, Ben!
New for May 2009! This
picture came from Paul, showing the remains of a beefy amplifier.
Thanks!
This is (what's left of)
the input power filter network in a Techron 3020 300V, 200A
power amplifier for a MRI system - one of a 3-channel set. All
three channels were fed from a common DC rail fed by a full-wave
rectifier directly from a 3-phase AC supply. Since it's a pulse
amplifier with quite a lot of electrolytics, there's plenty
of reserve to draw from. The only circuit protection was the
panel breaker. This channel blew up with a shotgun-like blast
when one of its output MOSFET modules shorted. The module itself
disappeared into plasma, along with a good chunk of its heatsink
structure. The date? 9/9/99. I shoulda guessed something bad
was going to happen. We never did find the root cause, but figure
it must have been poor heatsinking and device overheating. We
ran these right at the hairy edge, so didn't even attempt a
repair. We replaced them instead with much larger 700V/350A
amplifiers.
Some pix of a CCTV DVR
board from a computer. I noticed that several power rail caps
on the PC motherboard had also bulged but not blown. I'm not
sure if it was the PC power supply that killed the DVR boards
or the other way around. Unfortunately I couldn't keep the boards
for a memento as the client wanted them for a insurance claim.
Both DVR boards had blown in the same place around the V-regulator
area.
New for March 2009!
These images came from "anonymous ham enthusiast" who
might have blown his cover as well as his amplifiers. Thanks!
Class C amplifiers and
and black powder DO mix!
This is the product of
a bet between myself and a radio geek friend of mine. I had
an ailing, home-brew, ham fest special, 220 MHz amplifier that
had an arcing trimmer cap. After cleaning up some of the "welds,"
the problem persisted.
To be honest with you,
I didn't get much deeper into the troubleshooting process. A
fellow radio geek came over and spotted a can of "powder"
on my "other" bench. The devil's grin appeared on
his face immediately after I told him what I was working on.
He bet me that the spark from the cap. wouldn't be enough to
trigger the mixture. He was wrong! Enjoy.
New for February 2009!
Here a video of an acorn stash, inside a microwave antenna. Anyone
know the dielectric constant of acorns? Sent to us by Kyle! Sorry
we couldn't figure out a way to embed the video, just click the
link below to view it.
New for January 2009! These
photos came from Richard... the picture on the lower right would
make a scary computer "desktop", click it twice to see
the non-airbrushed details.
The
first picture is a transfer panel that was missing a 4
inch seal which the birds took advantage of. The flood
pictures were from this year in Franklin, In. during the
great flood of aught8. There was 25 inches of water inside
the building and it sits on a 30" high pad. The last
and certainly least is one of my fellow technicians when
we restored traffic.
Also new for January 2009!
This image came from Mike:
You know how the data
sheets on TO-case power resistors strongly suggest the use of
high quality thermal grease? Ever wonder what happens when your
tech doesn't bother? Bustication!
Mike also contributed an example
of an unstable
amplifier (example #4), thanks Big Guy!
New for December 2008:
Here's a destroyed radome from a National Weather Service radar
in Reno Nevada that got caught in 140 mile per hour wind gusts
on December 19, 2008. Sent in by Matthew (thanks!) For the full
story, visit
their web site, there are a lot more images than this one!
If you are looking for weather radar images anywhere near Reno
Nevada, for now you are out of luck! In the future, the CASA
project will populate the US with thousands of low-cost weather
radars, and this type of single-point failure will be a thing
of the past.
New for December 2008! This
burning dish came from Jim.
Here's one you
might want to include on your site. This picture was
taken sometime in the early 80's in Dalton, Georgia.
A tech was inside the site doing an inspection when
he smelled something burning and the radios started
squelching. He just happened to have a 35mm camera with
him.
Click
on image for a closer look!
Hot path
New for November 2008!
These images of a toasted circulator came from Happy_Trails...
This circulator had 2
frequencies running through it —> 10.9925 GHz & 10.9915
GHz with 296W at a 50% duty cycle. The only problem is that
nobody put heat sinking brackets on it, therefore causing it
to go to a couple hundred degrees. I now call it the Technicolor
circulator.
Click the images to see some
giant, high-resolution photos!
New for October 2008! Here's
a pdf
document that shows some toasted transformers in Southern
Cali, sent in by Bill. We're not sure where the photos originally
came from, but we'll leave them in the original document and maybe
someone will fill us in on the back story. Thanks, Bill!
New for October 2008!
More pictures from Marcelo of Buenos Aires:
And some people worry
about asteroids... Apparently, it fell down during a particularly
windy day. I´m attaching a couple close-ups of the mounting
pole's base, there you can see the tiny fisher anchors that
were used to fix the radio. No wonder why it was blown away...
New for September 2008!
These pictures came from Laszlo.
We had some technical difficulties
and malfunctions, off-line links -- attached pictures show ice
problems and one of them shows our hangman just for fun :)
Tower is located at Budapest,
Hungary, 350m hilltop. Pictures taken in January, 2004.
By the way, these antennas
worked just fine, after they were de-iced...
Also new for September 2008!
these pictures came from Marcelo in Buenos Aires.
These are two pictures
of an Ericsson Mini-Link E indoor unit that landed in my repair
shop. The nasty looking coat you see spread evenly all over
the mainboard is the good old mix of dirt and water commonly
known as Mud.
Pity I don't have a picture of the repair guy's face when he
removed the cover.
He had this "about to puke" look when he came
asking "I guess this is beyond repair, right?"
Note from UE - why not send
these boards for a ride in the dishwasher before attempting the
"repair"...
New for August 2008!
This story came from Adam...
I recently had a serious
problem with my self-built main CAD machine (Athlon
64 x2 @ 3.02 GHz, 8 GB of DDR-2 800 RAM, 1 TB RAID 10 array...
You get the picture). I lost a drive on the RAID array, and
the rebuild of the array kept failing... Then lots of bluescreens...
Then lockups if I ran more than 3 of the 4 sticks of RAM...
Totally bizarre, and I kept replacing things and testing individual
parts in other machines trying to find the source of the problem.
Weeks later, frustrated and now weeks behind schedule on several
custom motorcycle parts projects, I was no closer to a solution.
Until I accidentally did something that shouldn't be done, but
gave a result far out of proportion with what should have occurred...
Apparently what had happened
was that one of the two +12v rails in the power supply had failed
--it was now grounded rather than providing +12v, although I
never opened the power supply to find out how the problem had
come about, exactly. The way I "diagnosed" this was
while I was still mucking with the RAID drives, trying to get
my precious work out of the remainder of the array (one drive
had a dead controller card and was known DOA -- don't know if
this was the chicken or the egg in this failure). Well, one
of the drives was a "crossover" drive, a SATA 300
drive that had both a SATA and a Molex power connector, with
a strict admonition against connecting both at the same time.
This shouldn't have caused anything catastrophic... but in my
case, I apparently connected the grounded rail to one of the
connectors, and the working rail to the other, causing the full
rail current to pass through the drive's controller card and
out the grounded rail. I caught the burning component smell
immediately and yanked the power cable out of the back of the
machine, but the deed was done. I gather this was a "sacrificial"
power resistor (capacitor? Hard to tell...), but that didn't
save the drive coils for the read/write heads... Hoping the
drive was still good and only the controller card bad, I tried
a known good controller from an identical drive... And ended
up with no smoke, but no joy, and two dead controller cards.
At least I found the source of my problem (as well as the drain,
no gate included!)
Also new
for August 2008! These pictures came from "Anonymous
in Southern California...
Did some mountain
top tower work over the weekend. Saw some stuff (not
ours) that's - umm questionable. . . . Like the Useless Antenna.
Ice damage
on an air conditioner housing . . . And, not broken, but have
to say, "here is a photo of a big pair of cans."
Click on images
for closeups...
Bad VSWR?
Nice cans
Ice damage
Saftey notiss
Useless antenna
New for June
2008! This image of the guts of an unscrupulous copy of a
circuit breakers comes from Schneider
Electric in the U.K. at the suggestion of Kerry. Let it serve
as a warning that counterfeit electronics parts can be deadly!
Kerry also submitted
a link to this tower video.. yikes! Caution! Turn down the sound
if you don't want to hear the "f-word".
New for June
2008! These photos came from David in Israel.
Here are
a few pictures of some unfortunate pieces of hardware. Although,
in their life, they were not, strictly speaking, microwave
hardware, but they were close support. High voltage power
supplies for TWTs, to be exact.
This photo shows
what happens
to a 10 Amp 115V relay, attempting to
interrupt about 500 Amps of (short
circuit) current.
The scarred area
in the middle used to be as green as the grass on the
other side of the proverbial fence. Look at the far
right side for a clue.... The cause – an X7R ceramic
capacitor hooked across two prime power phases. X7Rs
like to have a DC bias on them; real AC makes them crack
and short out.
A flashover between
115V 3F rectified
bus (makes 270 Vdc and, practically,
as much current as the wiring survives).
Apparently, due
to some moisture
condensation upon the (removed)
connector.
The mating connector,
which was plugged into the one that flashed over (which
you can't see 'cause it's been removed…), in the previous
picture.
The pins that
are missing were not broken off. They literally evaporated
into thin air!
(Some of the vapor
can be seen to have condensed back onto the PCB in the
previous picture.)
New for May
2008! This photo came from Dave.
Here's
what happens to a static discharging style lightning arrestor
when it is in-line with a poorly tuned antenna, Hi-SWR! Burnt
enamel wire and toroid core fractured.
I thought
I had properly adjusted my vertical antenna for 80M, then hit
it with 1 KW from the linear....arc popping and spitting in
the amp and no output until I removed this arrestor.
New for May
2008! These came from Nameless Satellite Guy sometimes known
as Charlene when he's playing dressup. Click the images to supersize
the damage!
Here are photos
of what happens when you aren't careful when running a CS01
test, causing two 1-ohm current sense resistors to set fire
to their Uralane coating.
New for May
2008 (we've been having a busy month!) This set came from
Tim from MN, who simply states:
Apparently
‘school bus’ exceeds the mil spec of this portable radio.
New for April
2008! These two photos came from Zhang in Beijing, illustrating
a mechanical interference problem...
Below are
two pictures I took when I worked on one SNG truck (SNG means
Satellite News Gathering, it is from the Digital
Broadcasting Standards of Europe.) It was interesting ,
it is a dual frequency band system both C and Ku, (See PIC 1),
but it seems like they forgot something: when the antenna rotated,
the output flange of the C waveguide will be obstructed by the
Ku waveguide. (See PIC2).
Finally
they made the system work--good job. Well I think it is still
a good experience to remember.
New for March
2008! Here's some photos of a board roast from Bob:
I’m submitting
pictures of a VME daughter card that failed rather dramatically.
The source of the short is unknown, but you can see the extensive
fusing and charring on the daughter card plus the proximity
burns to the main card. More than a few errant amps went through
the wrong path I dare say. In addition to the unmistakable smell
of “smoke being let out of chips”, actual smoke was seen coming
out of the chassis in question.
We've posted
some closeup photos here,
here, and here.
Someone open a window, that smell is overpowering...Here's
another submission that's new for March 2008! This almost
unbelievable example of microwave connector abuse came from Liam:
We found this
in our lab a while ago. We never found out who did it but personally
I feel that tar and feathering would be too good for them.
New for December
2007! This just in from Pat:
Please see the
attached photo for the mortuary. Failure analysis: component
has seen an over-current. Overcurrents may happen when you apply
50kV across a device that typically sees 500V. This was operator
error. Also, I am looking into making the enclosure squirrel
tight after viewing other postings. The IGBT is an amazing device
that compliments the power switch tube, just don't push either
to 100X their rating. From a technical note it would seem that
current is free in a solid state device and voltage is expensive.
The vacuum electron device (tube) has free high voltage and
expensive current. I really like your website, it reminds me
of RF Cafe before all the advertising.
New for October
2007! The following four photos came in from Alex, from
across the pond.
1. A colleague, whilst
on his honeymoon in Cork, Ireland, was confused as to why
the TV picture in their B&B was so bad. Wishing to investigate
further (being an RF engineer) he followed the cable to discover
it led outside of the room window. He peered outside to find
this fine example of an Irish “lossless” TV signal splitter:
(Note to viewers: the above
reference could perhaps be construed as a slur against the
great people of Ireland. We don't want anyone to think we're
insensitive here at Microwaves101, indeed, one of the principals
of M101 came from a "two-toilet Irish" neighborhood
near Boston before she married above herself! - UE)
Note to readers:
the following photo might just be the best one on the page,
and for sure it will be downloaded and pasted into ESD training
manuals all over the world. Just remember where you found it
and give Alex (and Microwaves101) credit!
2. An ESD
inspector had kittens when he found this high-isolation ESD
lead attached to a bench grounding point!
New for September
2007! Here's two photos submitted by Mark. Don't look at
the second photo right before lunch. Here's the story:
I work
at a C-band shuttle tracking facility at KSC (Kennedy Space
Center). After a launch and several weeks of downtime, we went
back to the site to bring up the system. Everything booted up
nicely but the pull-out keyboard and monitor did not work. We
unscrewed the top of the flip-up keyboard and monitor assembly
and WHOA!
A real
nice stench and a whole lot of dead mice… not to mention some
circuit board problems.
Here's the toe-tagged
hardware that was acting up...
and here's what's
going on inside. Gnarly! Next call
the Orkin Man, before you call Tech Support. Click on the
photo for a higher resolution image if you like.
In case you
were wondering where the nest material came from...
There's a few
more photos of this mess, if anyone's interested just ask!
New for September
2007! These photos came from Iraq, by way of Steve. These
are two dishes at a Forward Operating Base in the Baghdad area.
No, Dick Cheney was not hunting in the area, instead they were
clobbered by debris from a 107mm rocket that impacted the corner
of the rooftop (the 3rd picture). Here's some excerpts from one
of Steve's emails:
There was
a note in our orientation papers about knives, saying something
to the effect of, "you only need a pocket knife. If the
enemy has gotten past the walls, concertina wire, armed guards
and machine guns, and through all the armed personnel walking
around base, a bowie knife isn't going to help." I don't
care. I take an Applegate-Fairbairn with me in my travel bag
every time I get on a helicopter and it makes me happy.I'm on
Camp Liberty which is one of the several bases built around
the Baghdad airport. It's fairly civilized, you wouldn't guess
we were at war sometimes, at least until a rocket lands a couple
hundred yards away. It's godawfully dusty, the dirt turns into
talcum powder an inch thick in some places. A few of Saddam's
old palaces are built out here, so we have a few lakes and some
interesting architecture to look at, not all of them are bombed
out so that's kind of cool, I need to get into some of them
and crawl around. Rumor has it that if you go to the no-man's
land between base and the public side of the airport, you can
get all sorts of things -- cars, guns, etc. I need to find out
more about this.Spare
parts are interesting. Get what you can, when you can and preferably
two of them is the rule of thumb. I work with Raytheon, and
they do a pretty nice job of keeping us in stock with what we
need. Praise the lord for e-commerce and shipping to APO addresses,
we can mail order just about anything we want so that's pretty
cool.
Click on Steve's photos to
see full-sized images!
New for July
2007! These photos came from Stephen from Pennsylvania.
This is what happens when you run 1kW at S-Band through your
stripline hybrid coupler. Don't try this at home unless you
do it in waveguide. Hmm, maybe there's a rule of thumb here
somewhere...
Also New
for July 2007! These "cobra pictures" came in
from Nino from Argentina, no explanation offered, none needed!
New for June 2007! This
is from The Emperor of Leesburg...
A friend
of mine in Colonia NJ had a new phone line put in last weekend.
Check out the photo, observe the perfect placement of the
drill bit going right through the electric service cable.
Since the installer shorted the line upstream of the breaker
panel, the only thing that stopped the fireworks was the wire
burning open. I wonder how fast the meter was spinning for
the 20 seconds or so when the lights were flickering in the
whole neighborhood? The technician is lucky to be alive, and
the homeowner is also lucky that his house didn't burn down.
I guess
this could have been done by Verizon, or the cable TV company,
or the satellite company. They all show up at your house with
the same 2-foot long drill bit, and their technicians are all
about as well trained.A local electrician fixed the mess that
Saturday evening. and Verizon paid it, somewhere north of $1200.
There is also some obvious damage to the house which Verizon
is going to have to pay for but has not yet done so. The electrician
asked the Verizon guy if he would pick a lottery number for
him, since his luck was so good.
We've got a feeling
this picture is going to get more than 15 minutes fame, expect
to see it on an Official Safety Poster soon (especially if you
work for Verizon...). Think before you drill! If anyone
wants to buy the original full sized picture (it has remarkable
detail), make us an offer and we'll pass it on to the lucky homeowner...
Update July
2007... here's a picture of the temporary fix that PSEG
did before the
electrician showed up...
New for June 2007! This
from William: This is a picture of a (large microwave
company located along the Route 495 Rust Belt) switch that
we blew up in a circuit. This switch is only rated for 20
dBm peak power (absolute maximum) but we were using it in
a circuit where the power was 1 W CW. We had a lot of fun
blowing up a lot of switches on purpose as we researched the
problem and looked for a solution (using a thermal camera
to view the junction we could see that the switch went kapooooww
at about +230 degC junction temp). We were eventually able
to get this switch to work nicely in the application (still
required 1W avg power) and had a lot of fun in the process.
We were
testing TO-247 "300 watt" power mosfets to see how
long they would last at 300 watts actual dissipation, pulsed
load, bolted directly to a copper block. We ran them at 300
watts until they exploded, and many would not make it past
50 milliseconds. We wound up with an Ixys p-channel part and
an IR n-channel. This is for an MRI gradient coil driver with
about 17KW peak output, 32 fets on a huge heatsink with copper
heat spreaders.
New for April
2007! Here's an RF cable with a problem, it got chewed up
by a positioner! Submitted by Andy, an 18 year old lad doing
an internship with a microwave company in the UK. Thanks for
thinking of us, Andy!
New for April 2007!
This just in from Tony...
Ever
wonder why digital cellphones suck? If this level of engineering
is any example, it should be crystal clear. OK, so the link
would only suffer when the wind was blowing in a certain range
of azimuth. The impact on the PCS sectors might be less, due
to the lower frequency but good grief. Do people not get basic
concepts anymore? Did they ever know them in the first place?
What are they teaching in schools these days? Am I the only
one who thinks this is wrong?
OK, so
if the blades are nonmetallic composite, its still a big slab
of dielectric material, moving through the link path (or one
or more sectors) at a time, varying in thickness...multipath?
Doppler shift? If there is any metallic structure it gets even
more stupefying. Names, companies and location withheld to protect
the RF physics
impaired.
New for March
2007! This Agilent ESA-L1500A/E4411A 9 kHz-1.5 GHz spectrum
analyzer was for recently sale on Ebay a "buy it now"
for $1299. It's not worth 1299 cents! Seller "Effy6"
has 100% positive feedback, and warns: Sold AS-IS, no returns
and refunds. We wonder if it powers up? Contributed by Kerry
from down under!
Also new
for March 2007! Here's a FET that is a little shy on gain...
check out the source bridge on this FET! Near as we can figure,
the bonding tool got a little too close and mangled the bridge
without actually breaking it. Amazingly, it still worked! (with
about 4 dB lower gain than its undamaged brothers). It was delivered
that way from a reputable supplier that shall rename nameless,
only because we weren't given the info, not because we're scared
of them! This fine bonding job have been done by an engineer,
not a tech. Contributed by Dr. Matt of NRAO!
New for January
2007! These photos came from Michael. "Here are
a few shots of an 3 kWHPA power supply that overheated and suffered
a severe meltdown".... Someone call 911! If you click
on any of the pictures you can view an even bigger image of
destruction.
New for November
2006! This from Dave from down under... The attached
photos used to be a Centellax broadband amplifier. Then a pair
of tweezers happened to be in contact with the gate and drain
at the same time. The magic smoke was grey and the chip glowed
red for a brief instant. Need I say any more?
New for October
2006! This from Robert: results of a little "Arcy-Sparky".
This is an RMA from Florida. Seems like one of the hurricanes
decided to dissipate some of the built up energy into our I/O
card. Results = malfunction, cratered chips.
New for September
2006! Here's two photos of an FM transmitter that was damaged
during a storm, from Enrique! Looks like it is all over but the
insurance settlement...
The original
of this picture is huge and high resolution, if you want to
see it in all it's glory just click the image below!
This item is
called a capacitor security valve.
New for August
2006! Here's a contribution from down under... it's a thermal
image of a piece of CPWG on garden-variety FR4 trying to pass
100W of 900MHz RF! It survived almost one minute before turning
the copper into a flaming vapour. Thanks, Max!
New for July
2006! This just in from Fred the Man: "we had a fun
mishap with a temp chamber. The software locked up over the
weekend, holding the chamber cold for a couple of days instead
of cycling. We have a humidifier in the room to reduce ESD."
We wonder if the software guy helped mop up the mess Monday
afternoon when it thawed out... or was too busy writing a macro
to send out resumes.
New for July
2006! This is what happens when your power amp supplier
doesn’t believe your advice about their harmonic filter design.
From Matt!
New for February
2006! This just in from NASA! This is what's left of the
first stage of an 80-1000 MHz high power amplifier. BOOM! Thanks,
Justin!
New for January
2006! As JarJar Binks' buddy would say, "ouch time!"
Below are some of the leftovers from a shoot down at White Sands
Missile Range, New Mexico, donated by our army buddy Steve!
As we like to say, this type of activity should DEFINITELY void
the warrantee. Can't quite make out the part in the center,
but Trak and Celeritek might have some ugly field returns coming
in.
Also new
for January 2006! These pictures came from Tres Huevos.
What you see represents a very bad day at work. Here's the story:
an employee was hired to do laser sealing, but received very
little training. He was sealing a package, and programmed the
laser incorrectly. The laser started to burn a hole across the
lid, out of control....
So the new employee decides to
stop the later by putting his finger over it. Yikes! Needless to
say, Clean Harbors had to clean up all the bloody mess, and the
employee "retired" on disability, with one less working
digit! And of course, the rest of the team had to suffer a demeaning
lecture from Captain Safety!
Here's a look at the destruction
inside the package... no wonder they wanted to put a lid on it,
look at all of those ugly jumpers!
New for October
2005: Tony sent in this picture from an AM transmitter cable,
that apparently worked better than it looks... we're wondering
how many kilowatts this bad boy had to carry! He submitted this
caption: "please just say no to home brew heliax connectors.
New connectors are not that expensive compared to what you pay
for the cable. Besides, some jerk with a digital camera will
take a picture of it and send it to Microwaves101!"
]
New for October
2005: Frank has sent us a couple of pictures that illustrate
what NOT to do during qualification. "During the EMI portion
of qual testing at an outside testing facility a power supply
failed and applied line voltage to a DC input. Unfortunately
the unit was sealed at this point so there was no fire or magic
smoke to be seen. I just love the way the the legs were burned
right off the regulator (in the second picture). No we won't
be using that facility's services again."
New for September
2005: we've got four new photos of mass destruction... don't
tell "W" or he might invade this peaceful third-world
website!
Let's start with
this photo of a burned Ku-band waveguide window, courtesy of "HP".
He was running at 18.3 GHz doing some critical pressure testing
when it rapidly started to lose vacuum in the TVAC chamber. It's
a good guess that this W/G window didn't like drastic pressure
changes while passing 100 watts! We'd guess that voids the warrantee.
Nice photo, tell us the camera model and we'll look for one on
Ebay...
Now let's admire
two photos from the admirable "NS6Y". Here's a nice
little RF switch, N to SMA, but looks like it got a little lightning
hit! Hmm, are SMA connectors usually black like that? Meanwhile
inside, everything looks OK, except that burnt smell that
just won't go away.....
NS6Y also sent
along some "better living tips" which were no doubt
rejected by that scourge of the airwaves, HGTV... a whole new
take on "microwaves for the kitchen..."Living in
the Bay Area as I do, I know: balsamic vinegar tastes good! But,
the lousy cork stopper broke! Wah! Well, good old Caplugs (popular
dust caps for rf/microwave connectors) to the rescue, I think
this is about the size for a GR-900 connector, it saved the day!
Like any rf/microwave person, I collect those Caplugs obsessively
and have a nice bin of them."
NS6Y, next time
we're up the coast, how about fixing us a little lunch?
Below is a picture
we took. Here's a new use for your microwave oven... got some
"proprietary" data you want to eliminate? Nuke it
for five seconds in the ol' Amana, and even the CIA couldn't
pin that alleged white collar crime on you! Here's our page
on microwave heating,
it's just getting started.
New
for July 2005: Here's two photos from Tk's private collection
of horrors. The wire closet photo is before Tk reworked it.
The Nextel picture makes us want to switch to Cingular, read
the message on the phone!
New for June
2005: contributed by Lou from Honeywell in Kansas City.
The title of this gem is appropriately "too much drain
current". We'd guess about six amps too much... next time
set the current limit on the supply for Chrissakes! Click on
the small picture to admire a larger image!
New for February 2005:
contributed by Ed - WB6CFW from Sunnyvale, here is a photo of
a solar electric charge controller that was in the power system
of a microwave repeater site somewhere in China. The suspicion
is that lightning had something to do with the extensive damage.
Morningstar, the manufacturer reported never having seen anything
as bad as this one. Of course, the customer was asking for a
warrantee replacement... Excellent photo, Ed!
New for
January 2005: here is an example of why you can't just "throw
around a football" in your yard in Tucson Arizona! OK, it
is not a microwave picture, but a disaster nonetheless!
New for December
2004: here is a waveguide adapter employing split-block
construction. The seam is in the worst possible place, and it
has solder voids inside. We have a separate page explaining
why this
adapter is worthless.
New for July
2004: here is some mice damage from a remote transmitter
terminal. This photo was taken after the other mess that the
critters made was wiped up. Photo contributed by Jonathan Zane,
a.k.a. KC2SHO!
In this second
photo from Jonathan, we see a "field return" unit
that probably doesn't smell so good either...
How's this for
a blown ceramic capacitor? This was a DigiKey Panasonic
cap, rated at 100 volts. It blew with only 28 volts on it, and
it sure stunk up the lab! Gonna have to return it and get $1
credit on the next order...
Here's a contribution
from the Unknown Editor hisself. Known to occasionally hang
drywall on the side (we don't pay him that much), this is a
picture of a tape measure that almost killed The Man. "I
was up on a ladder using the tape to locate a hole for a ceiling
light. It was extended maybe six feet to the wall, when it decided
to droop down. Right into the 200 amp service panel, which was
missing its cover (awaiting the drywall). The tape lodged itself
between ground and one of the hot strips, and exploded into
flames. I found myself tugging on it, I didn't like the idea
of it being stuck in there. I can't say why I didn't get the
shock of my life, except that I was 'chosen' by aliens to do
this web site. I wonder if this voids the warrantee?"
Everyone who
knows him knows that the Unknown Editor thinks that Hewlett Packard
computers completely stink. It stinks squared if you are a small
business that has only a couple of HP boxes that you depend on and
can ill afford any trouble from one of them. Maybe six months out
of the box, and you get the mysterious system lockup problem. You
HP owners know what we're talking about. The keyboard freezes, and
you have to reboot by pulling the power cord (or pushing the power
button for at least ten seconds if you happen to read the directions
(which we never do). Once or twice and this would be a nuisance.
Five times a day and you start to lose your mind. Hp's technical
hotline keeps telling you to replace stuff like the hard drive,
the modem, and eventually the motherboard. They tell you "you
need more memory", then "you have too much memory",
then "why don't you replace all the memory?" Hewlett
and Packard meanwhile are doing grave spins at 33 RPM. About
time someone did something about this travesty...
Here at Microwaves101, we have
an HP Pavilion computer that literally cost us 10 times more in
killed productivity and repair charges than its purchase price,
which was more than a comparable Dell (we were stupid). We are
about to get even. We now have on hand a large bag of Mexican
M-80 firecrackers (approximately 1/4 stick of dynamite) which
we will use to blow up the HP box while we record it digitally
for permanent display in the Mortuary. Below are some preview
pictures of this impending catastrophe; stay tuned and come back
soon to see the results... anyone have Carly Fiorini's email address
so we can send her this data?
Below are three
shots of a crashed Cascade Microtech Ka-band RF probe where
the center conductor has lifted off of the teflon insulator
(so they are no longer co-planar). Two things about this incident...
the guy who crashed this probe into a second probe is six foot
six and looks like he might know his way around a boxing ring,
so there's no way to give him any crap about it. We just said
"thank you sir for all of your help!" And second,
the Cascade Microtech bastards wouldn't fix either of the two
crashed probes, claiming that they won't touch anything that
is over a year old! But they were more than happy to ship us
two new probes overnight for $1400...
What's that
below, one "slightly used" HP 4034A meter? Our largest
exhibit yet, we're told this unit actually still works! Maybe
if you're lucky you can pick up a similar unit on Ebay.
Ed Nisley sent
us this picture of blasted RF connectors. He says "These
are connectors I salvaged from a friend's satellite TV installation
after a lightning stroke hit the LNA. It chewed up a security
system, flashed a square yard of aluminum off a Celotex panel,
punctured an air-conditioner Freon line, and blew out a bunch
of RF cabling. Yes, he had lightning protection on the incoming
lines. Nothing protects you from a direct hit..." Thanks,
Ed, for your thoughtful photo!
Below are three
pictures sent in by a fun-loving quality guy with an evil laugh,
who who shall remain nameless. The first one is an optical photo
of a blown silicon nitride capacitor on a MMIC. Hey, tell the
bonding chick to keep all three wires on the bond pad next time!
The second picture
is a SEM micrograph of a blown HBT. Tell the process clowns
we need a little higher breakdown voltage!
The third photo
is another SEM micrograph, this time of a blown bipolar power
transistor. Hey Moe, I see the problem, there are too many wires
sticking out of it...
