fire fire

[Radiomariner]

Like Allan Keeping up and Rupert I dont believe these capacitors would fail without good reason. It is most likely that the capacitor failure is due to the failure of some other component. Similarly, the capacitor fialure may itself have caused failure of further components elsewhere.

 

I notice that the inverter appears to be mounted upside down. Is it possible that a small metallic object such as a grub screw, steel filings or blob of solder could have fallen down inside?

 

So the inverter is still working, perhaps so, but obviously some part of it is not!

 

I would not be able to sleep at night unless the cause had been thoroughly established and repaired or replaced. Get the manufacturers advice

[denboy]

still waiting for a reply from maker its not mounted upside down the labels are the wrong way round

[Semitrad]

Not unusual in my experience to have components like this fail, the usual prime suspect is poor solder joints. Simply replacing the components may not be enough, quite often the PCB has been damaged and needs to be cut out in that area as it can become conductive. A successful repair can often be made but I would advise that it is probably not a DIY job unless you have some experience of this type of repair - which you oviously haven't! (no offence intended)

[alan_fincher]

I can't for the life of me imagine poor solder joints to the capacitor itself could cause it to overheat.

 

If it doesn't overheat when "connected" it's not going to if "disconnected".

 

I can see that poor solder joints elsewhere on the circuit board could cause a problem, as they could result in a greater voltage being applied to the capacitor than the designers of the circuitry intended.

 

I still think something else is wrong, and that's taken the capacitor out, rather than the capacitor just failing it it's own right. Unless it's severely underrated for the use it's being put to, I can't see that happening.

 

If poor flow soldering does turn out to be the diagnosis, I'm kind of surprised it occurred when the inverter was only in standby. Dry joints tend to make their presence known when currents are higher. But they can give random failures, at any time I'll admit. We are still using a very ancient Sony telly where professional repairers proved incapable of fixing it. I did eventually find a dry joint, but, boy, did I spend a long while looking!

[Keeping Up]

When I used to repair TV's for a living, they used to come into the shop with the customer's description of the fault on a label. One came in once saying "It explodes every 15 minutes". Intrigued we put it on the workbench and switched on; after a little over 10 minutes everybody had migrated nervously to the other side of the workshop, and sure enough a few minutes later there was an almighty great bang, and a flash of light, but it carried on working perfectly. We all waited, and sure enough a quarter of an hour later it repeated the performance.

 

It turned out to be the mains suppressor capacitor which was one of those wax-covered paper/foil types. It was mounted near the top of the TV, above all the valves (yes it was a long time ago), and as it got hot the wax softened so that it compressed slightly and short-circuited itself. The resultant explosion blew the insides apart temporarily, until they slowly moved together and made contact again.

 

On that occasion all we had to do was replace the capacitor; but even when I'd done so, I noticed that everybody moved to the other side of the workshop again while I was testing it.

[alan_fincher]

(yes it was a long time ago

Can't be that long ago Allan, or you would be calling them condensers.

 

Capacitor is a new-fangled modern term, surely!

[Semitrad]

I can't for the life of me imagine poor solder joints to the capacitor itself could cause it to overheat.

 

If it doesn't overheat when "connected" it's not going to if "disconnected".

 

I can see that poor solder joints elsewhere on the circuit board could cause a problem, as they could result in a greater voltage being applied to the capacitor than the designers of the circuitry intended.

 

I still think something else is wrong, and that's taken the capacitor out, rather than the capacitor just failing it it's own right. Unless it's severely underrated for the use it's being put to, I can't see that happening.

 

If poor flow soldering does turn out to be the diagnosis, I'm kind of surprised it occurred when the inverter was only in standby. Dry joints tend to make their presence known when currents are higher. But they can give random failures, at any time I'll admit. We are still using a very ancient Sony telly where professional repairers proved incapable of fixing it. I did eventually find a dry joint, but, boy, did I spend a long while looking!

 

Very sweeping statements. I long ago learned not to close my mind to the causes of faults in electronic circuits, an inermittent and possibly arcing joint can have peculiar effects, pehaps even bringing an appliance out of standby and certainly causing overheating of a component.

[alan_fincher]

..................................an inermittent and possibly arcing joint can have peculiar effects, pehaps even bringing an appliance out of standby and certainly causing overheating of a component.

 

Actually, I think I said, (or tried to say!), more or less the same thing.

 

What I did think, (and still think), is that if its dry joint related, that dry joint is more likely to be on some component other than the failed capacitor. (Capacitors will generally fail if too many volts are applied to them, not too little).

 

If those are too sweeping statements, I'm sorry. I only speak from general electronics experience. I worked in a factory trying to manufacture electronic calculators in the UK, when the UK electronics industry was taking it's final dying gasp. Believe me there were more circuit boards turned out with dry joints there than in most places, and I've fault found many of them. I'll freely admit I'm not a specialist on invertor internals, and, as you say, no possible cause can be dismissed, until it's been looked at by an expert. I can't disagree with that.

 

Alan

[denboy]

OK folks need some advice ref the fire the manufacturer has got back to me and they would like to have a look at the said inverter now as its out of warranty they will collect it for(£20) plus a £25 cost for them to have a look at it so the question is should i right it off to experience and never recommend them to anyone else like i have in the past and just get another new one as they are a lot cheaper now than 3 years ago ,I was thinking of trying to go down the road as"not fit for purpose which i believe from another post recently you can go back 6 years under that criteria

[WJM]

£45 to tell you what you already know, write it off!

[dor]

Following this tale, I've now fitted a 10 year smoke alarm in my electrical cupboard!

[denboy]

£45 to tell you what you already know, write it off!

thing is it cost me £540 when i bought it so its a biggish right off

[Oliver1954]

out and about over the weekend and just got out of bed when the wife shouted there was smoke in the engine room so in i goes to find the inverter in flames have no idea why as it was on standby mode lucy it didnt go up a few hours earlier strangly it s still working

anyways all safe heres a couple of pics

 

 

Hi Dennis,

 

I'm sorry to hear about your experience with this inverter, but very happy to know that you got to the fire before anything more serious occurred.

 

I have recently purchased an inverter that looks VERY similar to yours, I bought mine direct from the manufacturers in Taiwan, the Company is called KiPoint 3000Watt Pure Sine Wave Where did you buy yours from?

Best wishes,