A friend asked me to repair a PC board that goes into one of his kids’ entertainment devices, I think it’s some kind of music organ. As can be seen, the current was so high that it vaporized the PC board trace. A few other parts look like they were overheated. He said the fan burned out, and it was replaced.
I scraped off a lot of charred surface and ran some heavy copper wire along the existing trace route. I sure hope it doesn’t happen again, because the trace acted like a fuse and failed, therefore most likely prevented further damage, such as a fire. Now that it is much heavier wire, if it were to happen again, the next weakest point could be a fire hazard. I also replaced a 1N4007 rectifier and a 220 uF filter capacitor because they looked like they may have suffered heat damage.
I gotta meet up with him and see if I can get a free lunch out of the deal. 🙂