[Noisebridge-discuss] Heat press not functional, repair help needed.

[Zach R]

I have a real hard time believing that it's a 25A fuse.  Most wall outlets and power strips are rated at 1500W.  You will find nothing in a house rated higher than 15A because it would flip the breaker.  I mean this thing would have to be industrial with a multi-phase power connector to draw that kind of power. 

Not trying to dog on anyone, and I think it was excellent going to the autoshop looking for a fuse.  It's just *more* excellent to ask for assistance with expensive gear at NB.  I am all for diy laptop repairs and maybe even a diy projector repair (they are <$100 nowadays).  But looking at the NB lasercutter has shown me that these diy solutions are destroying our nicest equipment.  And all because of a lack of communication.  I'm just pointing this out as an NB issue, not to rub salt in any wounds.

There's always ways to identify gear.  Googling "china heat press" or whatever and doing some image searching, looking for markings on the PCB, etc etc.  People are too quick to throw in the towel on this (as I also learned with our lasercutter, which was a mystery until I spent 10 minutes using google).

________________________________________
From: henner.zeller at gmail.com <henner.zeller at gmail.com> on behalf of Henner Zeller <h.zeller at acm.org>
Sent: Sunday, January 17, 2016 3:33 PM
To: ng.kyle at gmail.com
Cc: Zach R; noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
Subject: Re: [Noisebridge-discuss] Heat press not functional, repair help needed.

On 17 January 2016 at 15:07,  <ng.kyle at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey sorry I understand but I determined that it was a do-ocratically
> excellent thing to do at the time. Lesson learned.

It is perfectly excellent, just make sure to fix with the right fuse
to not verschlimmbessern it (German expression for: attempting to
improve something but making it worse in the process).

Do you have a picture of the fuse ? Often, there is as well some
marking close to the power input or near the fuse connector.

>
> The displays have an XMTE branding and Chinese characters with nothing else
> I can use to ID the thing. A different XMTE heat press I found uses 1200W at
> (100-130)V

If this press is in the order of 1200 W that means it would require a
>= 10A fuse. So the 25A sounds reasonable.

F25A250V means that it is a fast blow fuse for 25A. And all these
standard glass or ceramic fuses are rated for 250V (which really only
means that the filament is nicely insulated and that they won't arc
when they blow; lower voltage ones can do that, but would still
technically be safe to use if same amperage).

>
> It should be noted that the original fuse had charring on the tube but the
> filament was intact

We have tons of fuses within Noisebridge, but it is not necessarily
clear if they have the right value. Lukily we have a search app to
help find the right component:

If within Noisebridge you go to
  http://pegasus.noise:3000/search  (  or http://pegasus.local:3000/search )

and type in "fuse" in the search box, you'll find a lot of instances
of parts. Unfortunately, they are mostly not yet sorted by value, but
you find the drawer number (something like ID:210 in the result boxes)
in the result page, so you can go to a couple of these drawers to find
if there are fuses with the right value.

>
> Also most of the machine has no power except for one LED which seems to be
> powered separately.
>
> On Jan 16, 2016, at 8:37 PM, Zach R <organicunity at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
>   Not to sound mean here, but you really should never touch an expensive
> piece of electronic gear if you don't know about replacing fuses properly.
> Never replace a fuse with the wrong voltage.  It irks me a little when
> people go around fiddling with this nice gear and then ask for help after
> they've broken it worse.  What would help is:
>
> 1) the name + model number
>
> 2) google that, and you will find info on the fuse
>
> 3) google the fuse rating and voltage.
>
>
> I've never seen a 25A 250V fuse before (that's 6,250 Watts!)

Well, the device only operates at 120V, so it is much less.

>  but then again
> I've never used a heat press before.  Odds are, it was a 2.5A fuse (625)
> Watts.  But putting in the wrong fuse (automotive especially) you could have
> really damaged it.  Please, first pause and ask for help next time before
> you open things.
>
>
> -Zach
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: noisebridge-discuss-bounces at lists.noisebridge.net
> <noisebridge-discuss-bounces at lists.noisebridge.net> on behalf of Kyle Ng
> <ng.kyle at gmail.com>
> Sent: Friday, January 15, 2016 3:29 PM
> To: noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
> Subject: [Noisebridge-discuss] Heat press not functional, repair help
> needed.
>  5eat press it was perfectly functional, but some people wanted to use it
> recently and found that it was not heating up nor displaying the
> temperature.
>
> They removed the fuse and dropped it on the ground, breaking it. I went to
> buy a new fuse today. The old one had the markings F25A250V. However, I
> could only find a 25A 32V fuse at O' Reilly's so I went ahead and put that
> in. No luck and same symptoms.
>
> I opened up the back to see if anything was visibly melted but I couldn't
> find anything wrong. I think the temperature controller is messed up.
>
>
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