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Nasty Power Supply

From time to time we come accross examples of where electronics release the magic smoke, and this page is some of them in photos, plus the odd really bad product.

This one requires some back story

A while back there was a need for a fairly powerful laser module, which after some hunting was found on ebay, and beleive it or not at realistic price.

So this thing arrives, and is deboxed, and all looks more or less ok, with the exception of the power supply, which was very light, and rattled. Hmmmm, not a good sign.

As expected there was zero chance this power supply was going to get plugged into anything let alone 240VAC, so it was screw driver time, the results are shown below:

first view

First thoughts, yuk, OMG etc, closely followed by, where are my gloves, as touching this thing could be hazerdous to health

The question is, has this mess been under water for some of it's life?

Moving onwards, and after finding the gloves, the board is removed to show the underside

the bottom

Nothing here to change the initial thoughts on this thing

The only thing to say abut this nightmare is, it's a little cleaner than the top

And yes there is no doubt that this is a recycled power supply, which in some cases may be ok, however this nightmare is something which should have stayed e-waste

the bottom

Could this thing get any worse, well yes, just look at the above!!

when this thing was rescused from the under water e-waste dump, they could not even be bothered to unsolder the original AC wires. Note the way whats left of them are laying, nice and close to each other.

Should that not be enough, look at the two heat shrink covered devices, physical damage, yes really....

To me this is not a power supply, it's a fire starting device. Buyer beware.....