How to test without heatsink and full assembly

[Greg Doughty]

I finished my board, but I have not put on the heatsinks as the directions say to wait until the board is tested...but the board needs to be installed in its housing and all of the wiring needs to be hooked up, right, or am I am just missing something?

Thanks,
Greg

[cmoore60]

When I solder the boards. I mount the low power heatsinks to the triacs. Set the board on a piece of dry wood. Connect the power and output dongle cords and attach one string per channel. This is my method and by no means do i advocate it. Just simply sharing what I do.

When all tests ok then I remove power, cord and low power heatsink and install the high power heatsink.

Chuck

[TJ Hvasta]

I do the same, but as I only use the low power sinks, I'm putting them on anyway.. just lay the board in the case, plug the power cords and dongles onto the board, plug the power cords into the wall, check for the blinking LED, plug in the Cat5 cable, start up the Hardware Utility, as soon as it's up, the LED should go steady.. good, Comm established, unplug the Cat5, plug it into the other Cat5 socket to check that one was soldered correctly (do not ask me how I know why to do this), assign a unit #, select all channels, ON, then plug just one set of lights into each dongle to see if the triacs power up.. if so, you're good to go.. click "Turn OFF" lights with the HU, unplug the POWER CORDS FIRST, then unplug everything else.. mount the Hi-power sinks, then finish the install in the case.

[Guest guest]

Same approach here..you need to plan to test in a somewhat temporary mode. I always go with high power sinks, so there is the extra step of attaching the low powers and then removing (which, I probably could eliminate, but, why tempt fate..).

Definitely make sure your board is on an insulated surface when you test, no wire clippings, etc to cause you some unexpected sparks, which is why sitting it in its enclosure is a good idea. And, of course, remember that once you plug the cords is, you've got 120V floating all over the place, so appropriate respect and precaution is required.

[Greg Doughty]

Thanks. I guess I am just being lazy. I figure that since I have to hook up all the wiring, I will just install the hp heatsink to test.

Thanks for the responses. I am now working on board two. Then on to three and four.

[Alan C]

If you need to fault-find, this cannot be done with the high power heatsinks attached, as you cannot access the underside of the board. You would also need additional heat-transfer compound when you reassembled it again. As with others, I put the low-power heatsinks, dry, for the initial test. Bolting the triacs to the low-power heatsinks also keeps them in the right position while you solder them.

Regards,

Alan.

[TJ Hvasta]

an interesting idea just occured to me.. anyone use old CPU fans to aid in cooling? remember the small clip-on fans for 386/486 chips? mount them on the heatsinks to aid in passive cooling? I guess you could do the same with larger/newer fans venting the whole case if you're in a liquid-free environment..