Destroyed my relay? -Working now - bad solder joint

[Dervacumen]

So with Spystyle's tutorial, I got a two outlet wall plug, wired a realy into the bottom plug, left the top one always on, and attached a 12V connector to a lead on my power supply.

I thought I checked that everything was isolated and hooked up correctly by:
1.  verifying the grounds were not connected to anything other than gorund
2.  the neutral and live wires on the "always on" socket were connected properly to the power source plug
3.  the live and neutral wires on the "switched" socket did not have continuity with either the "always on" socket or the power source plug until 12V were present via the little 12V hookup, after which the switched socket appeared to be wired up properly.

So I plugged my computer into the always on socket, and monitor into the switched socket and turned the computer on.

POP!  FLASH!  Really fast and immediate.

The monitor never came on so I unplugged it an plugged it into a different power source.

Thankfully everything still works, but any ideas as to what I did wrong?  I looked at the relay and didn't see any burn marks, but now with 12V applied to the relay the live terminal on the switched socket doesn't appear to have continuity with the live terminal on the power source plug.

Anyone else try to kill themselves like this?

I thought maybe the inrush current on my monitor was too high since it's rated at 42A and the replay is only 10A.  But then I thought it very unlikely that everyone else who has used this setup has inrush current from their monitor as low as 10A.

Would hhoking up a surge protetor to the switched outlet likely solve the problem if I replace the relay?

Puzzled.



 

[JustMichael]

Forgive for asking but what exactly are you trying to do?

[Dervacumen]

Oh yeah.  That might be important.

The end result should be pressing a button on top of my cabinet, thus turing on the computer and the monitor, lights, etc.

The button on top of the cabinet is wired to the computer power switch, so pressing that button does indeed turn on the computer.

With the computer on, one of the rails from the power supply is sending out 12V.  That 12V is attached to a relay.  When the relay receives 12V through this attachment, it should fire up the other plug.  That other plug has my monitor plugged into it.  That should then turn on my monitor.

When I shut down windows, the power to the PC gets cut, thus stopping the 12V current to the relay.  Wehen no 12V is detectedat the relay, it should turn off the plug that the monitor is plugged into.

Sorry I forgot that important detail.

[johnm160]

hooking up a surge protecter is not the answer here.

Something is definatly wired wrong.

[BobA]

If wired correctly the 12VDC relay swiching AC works very well.  I have made up 2 of them for various projects.   Perhaps you can provide info on the relay and how you wired it so we can determine what might have gone wrong.

[johnm160]

Yeah pictures are in order here.

[richms]

Sounds like you connected the relay across the mains instead of switching the phase to the monitor outlet.

Pics, including closeups of the relay, and any markings on it, the outlets and anything else which you have.

[original_maxlamer]

Could have used a relay that was only rated to switch 12volts.

Check the markings on the relay to see if it doesn't say 110v/240v (whatever your mains voltage is).

[Dervacumen]

Okay.

I was convinced I wired it right so I checked again with fresh eyes last night.

Everything is in the right place.  HOWEVER.  When checking the hot leg of the switched outlet for continuity (a fifth time, I might add) , I noticed that I only had good continuity when touching the wire, and nothing while touching the terminal ring that I had *ahem* done such a good job soldering.

That's where the flash came from.  It was a bad solder joint.  I've only got a 25W soldering iron, and it doesn't get hot enough to solder 14-16GA wire.  At least not very well, apparently.

Since this it hooked to 120V and I wanted a goot joint I didn't want to crimp only.  So I did the next best thing. I put it in my vice an sandwiched the wire into the terminal ring.  There is no chance it's coming loose.  I think I may have melded them together. Just kidding.

Anyway, I hooked it back up and got a welcome surprise when everything worked.

Thanks a lot for the encouragement to check my work again.  More often that not that seems to be the bottom line.  Check...check...check.