I phone charger went bang

[Tim]

Got back from work, phone battery was low so i picked up my charger (which i had left plugged in to an extension lead all day) and bang. Tripped out the mcb and partly popped off the plastic cover of the charger, and its all black inside and my flat now smells of fried circuit board.

Morale of the story, unplug your chargers.



Tim

 

[Kate]

Ouch, I don't leave any extension leads on unless actually in use.

 

[Thefailsafe2012]

Is it a proper apple one?

 

[markc123]

Unlucky lol.

 

[telectrix]

like trigger says. "look after your broom"

 

[rich67577]

Had one I bought the mrs of eBay do that

 

[brookster]

Was it PAT tested ? only joking . I'd be causing a fight with apple over this.

 

[Marvo]

I think chargers are more of a hazard than most people imagine. We had a small fire in our workshop overnight when a AA / AAA battery charger caught alight, luckily it didn't spread because it was a steel bench and there was nothing combustible in the vicinity. Plus a friend of mine had a major fire the gutted his garage and part of his house. They investigated and found his drill battery charger was the cause.

 

[Tim]

It was a genuine apple one, about 4 years old.

I never usually leave the extension leads and chargers on but i must have forgot after a few cans last night.

Thing is, this is the second one to go bang in a year, the last one only survived a couple of weeks but it was a crappy import one.

 

[babylonsBurning]

Ive just unplugged my AAA charger after reading this!

 

[grantr37]

Got back from work, phone battery was low so i picked up my charger (which i had left plugged in to an extension lead all day) and bang. Tripped out the mcb and partly popped off the plastic cover of the charger, and its all black inside and my flat now smells of fried circuit board.

Morale of the story, unplug your chargers.

View attachment 18655

Tim

the innards look more like a cheaper make to me, if you pull the PCB out and look at the back you will find that the tracks on it have burned away, what has happened is that the thin copper tracks printed on the back(well actually etched into links) have burned off the back of the circuit board, this happens when they are left warm for long periods, the track lifts/peels off the board, splits then arcs, this flashover also hits the remaining tracks on the cold side as well as completely burning away the "hot" side of the board....other components commonly die as a result as well...

the photo isn't very clear, is the capacitor on the top right of the picture (the radial electrolytic) next to the 4N23 swollen /charred or is that just a black pen mark on it from the factory?

you can see the smoke pattern (on the plastic socket plate base) radiates outwards from the hot side of the board where the two links from the plug pins go through the circuit board and are soldered in (the two small yellow link wires) so the track seems to be the instigator of the failure, due to overheating.....if you were not in at the time and had not disturbed this, I would say that after another 90 minutes to 2 hours, this would have gone on fire, and would possibly have taken the house with it....

I would not leave any kind of plugtop charger plugged in while not in use, and especially so not when away from the house/office/canteen etc...

 

[grantr37]

I also don't like the piece of yellow insulating tape that has been used on manufacture to insulate/separate the plug pin connections from the component legs and USB power terminal, as you can see on the plug base(the yellow tape in the bottom half of the picture)

double posted

 

[Knobhead]

What do you expect from Apple?

Take it to an authorised dealer, see what they say.

 

[GLENNSPARK]

Got back from work, phone battery was low so i picked up my charger (which i had left plugged in to an extension lead all day) and bang. Tripped out the mcb and partly popped off the plastic cover of the charger, and its all black inside and my flat now smells of fried circuit board.

Morale of the story, unplug your chargers.

View attachment 18655

Tim

so thats what they look like inside then...