Fuses

[Jetto Funk]

I'm refurbing a few machines and trying to get them back on their feet again.
I looked through my asteroids machine and after reading the manual realized that most of the fuses that were in there when I got it were the wrong ones, same with my Tron machine as well.
If there is a 5amp 250v fuse in a 2amp 250v spot would that cause any problems?
Right now the Asteroids machine is running fine, the Tron machine is in need of a helping hand, looks like some soldered on wires have fallen off.

[BobA]

Fuses are there to protect the circuits in your cab.   If an over sized fuse is in place the circuit in the cab will burn up before the fuse if there is a problem.  This means that you will be sacrificing the circuit to save the fuse.  It is like putting a penny in an old fuse box in a house.   The house will burn but the penny will not.

[SavannahLion]

Fuses are there to protect the circuits in your cab.   If an over sized fuse is in place the circuit in the cab will burn up before the fuse if there is a problem.  This means that you will be sacrificing the circuit to save the fuse.  It is like putting a penny in an old fuse box in a house.   The house will burn but the penny will not.

I got a funny story about that.

I used to work at Rat Shack in a slummy part of the city. The kind of customers we tended to get were lonely house wives trying to connect up their crappy VCR's (my co-worker got a lot of action from that). Lots of abused women trying to fix the computer their boyfriends smashed. People trying to use inducting cell phone antennas in place of proper full sized whip antennas. Lots of theft. Lots of dumpster divers (requiring us to take a sledge hammer to anything we threw out). That sort of thing. It was a pretty good neighborhood.

Anyhoo, this guy comes in and starts asking us a bunch of questions. Claims he's in the, "microwave repair business." I think he thought he could have us sell his surplus microwaves or some stupid ---Cleveland steamer---. This spans a course of several days, usually with him leaving with some small purchase, like a switch, a spool of wire, whatever.

One day, he starts bragging about how he's come across a dozen microwaves (this is right before trash day). On this day, I was trying to repair one of my toys. The fuse kept popping and I was futzing with the multimeter trying to locate the problem. As he's eyeing the toy, he made a comment that he didn't understand why fuses were necessary. I carefully explained it's to prevent the circuit from frying. Conversation proceeded to go something like this:
Idiot: It won't fry.
Savannah: What? Of course it would, that's why the fuses keep popping.
Idiot: No, trust me, it won't hurt anything.
Savannah: What? You're telling me to put in a bigger fuse?
Idiot: No, you don't even need to do that. Just wrap the fuse in aluminum foil and stick it back in.
Savannah: Aluminum foil? What the ---fudgesicle--- are you talking about?
Idiot: Just wrap it in foil.
Savannah: Where did you get this idea?
Idiot: Look, I know what I'm talking about, I found twelve microwaves today and half of just had a blown fuse. I put aluminum foil around the fuses, put them back and voila! I got a microwave I can sell!
Savannah: .... (a photograph of my face at this point might be appropriate. My co-worker said I looked like I was playing poker.)
Idiot: I sell lots of microwaves after I fix them.
Savannah: What's the name of your business again?

[grantspain]

another example of this is what i came across just last week,one of the duty managers said she could smell burning and after a little detective work i found a humpty dumpty machine to be smoking
after checking the main board i found  2 smoking transistors and the bridge rectifier had actually fallen off the circuit board due to the heat.
after closer examination i found that a former tech(??) had bridged out the mains input fuse located on the cpu with a lump of wire that i could only hazard a guess on being rated at about 20 amps(1 amp is the correct rating)
i actually managed to repair the cpu and returned it to its correct state
if i had not been there at the time then the minimum problem would have been a completely destroyed cpu (about $200) and it could have been worse if the actual machine had caught fire
so yes the fuses are BLOODY IMPORTANT

[SirPeale]

Lots of dumpster divers (requiring us to take a sledge hammer to anything we threw out).

Why?

[Zebidee]

Why?

... to discourage the divers of course.

This does, of course, raise the question of why TRASH (Tandy RAdio SHack) didn't dispose of their waste a bit more thoughtfully, esp. considering the recycling/recovery of materials.  I'm not saying this is SL's fault - the company tells their employees what to do ... 

[SirPeale]

Why?

... to discourage the divers of course.

Something wrong with dumpster divers there, bucko?

[Kevin Mullins]

Ya know.... I've seen ALOT of companies doing this sort of thing more and more.
I figure if you were going to throw it out anyways that you've deemed it uselees to you and your company for resale or any other purpose...... so why utterly destroy something when maybe somebody else could actually make use of it ?!?! I understand that whatever the merchandise is had cost the "company" money somewhere along the line, but now you have deemed it only worthy of throwing away. Nothing wrong with a little "dumpster diving" if it could possibly be something of use to someone else.

As for the original fuse question..... it is safe to run with a lower amperage rated fuse.... but NEVER a higher rated fuse. The amperage rating is the key and should remain exact, the voltage rating should be equal to or greater than the original.
They are there to prevent any further damage to a circuit than what has already occured that caused the fuse to blow in the first place. Making it a minor repair versus a major repair consisting of a whole lotta burnt up stuff.

[SavannahLion]

Ya know.... I've seen ALOT of companies doing this sort of thing more and more.
I figure if you were going to throw it out anyways that you've deemed it uselees to you and your company for resale or any other purpose...... so why utterly destroy something when maybe somebody else could actually make use of it ?!?! I understand that whatever the merchandise is had cost the "company" money somewhere along the line, but now you have deemed it only worthy of throwing away. Nothing wrong with a little "dumpster diving" if it could possibly be something of use to someone else.

I'm not saying it's something that I support discarding perfectly usable things (especially if I'm the one that finds them), but the reasoning behind it is pure economics.

I met a guy who worked at HP (if I recall) who was forced to destroy several thousand mid-high end business oriented printers. These printers were perfectly good. Parts were still available on the market. Support was still available from HP. The only problem these printers had was that they were obsolete and they were two generations behind. Even at a discount, businesses would not buy them. So HP ordered that they be destroyed and discarded. The question came up as to why HP wouldn't donate the printers to a school or a non-profit. Remove the serial plates and tell them there's no support. A group with 100 printers can easily use half and use the other half to scavenge parts off of. Being business printers, ink, toner, whatever can easily be available for at least next 20 years.  The answer came back from the higher ups that destroying unsold equipment gets a better tax write off than donations do.

Years later, I find Home Depot does exactly the same thing for almost exactly the same reasons. For instance, I was forced to discard an $8,000 riding mower down into the trash compactor due to cosmetic body damage. Turns out the store could not sell the mower at a discount as it was against the store contract  and the manufacture did not want to send the store new body panels It was cheaper to write the mower off as a loss and receive credit from the manufacture. So I was ordered (against my protests) to shove it into the compactor.

In a sick twist of fate, A co-worker was speaking to the contracted trash hauler who thanked the co-worker for the "brand new" mower. Turns out someone else had dropped in ---Cleveland steamer--- loads of puffed styrene plastic (another obvious recycling issue but besides the point) and plastic wrap materials. Because I didn't cycle the compactor immediately after throwing the mower in, the foam and plastic just padded the mower and packed it in. The guy hauls it away, dumps it then starts rifling and MERRY CHRISTMAS!! A new mower.

[DaOld Man]

I work in an aluminum rolling mill.
We use very big over head cranes. (P&H 15 to 120 tons)
When we change out the wire ropes, we have to cut them up into short (1-2 foot) lengths, before we s-c them.
Also any lifting slings or harness cables have to be destroyed this same way.
I asked if I could have some of the lifting slings, because they work make good towing ropes for the old truck, but I was told we had to cut them up before throwing them out because if someone gets hurt on using some of the discarded lifting devices, the company could get sued.
So maybe the destruction before discarding is a legal thing?

[Zebidee]

it's the craziness of a modern world driven by economics of greed rather than need.

Oh, I'm going to get all leftie here ....

Personally, I have a great time sifting through the stuff other people think is useless ....

Hey, that's where half my arcade parts come from ....

[shardian]

So your saying that fuse in my pinball that was wrapped in foil was a bad thing?

[DaOld Man]

Im not sure what he's saying, but I would say yes, wrapping a fuse with aluminum foil or in any other way bypassing a fuse is a very bad idea.
It's kinda like the way modern medicine treats the symptoms more than the cause of the symptoms in most cases.
But with fuses it's probably a lot more serious.
Fuses are there to protect the equipment from damage, and to protect personnel from fire.
A fuse blowing indicates a problem that should be fixed, not covered up.
But Im sure you all know that.

[Green Giant]

Ya know.... I've seen ALOT of companies doing this sort of thing more and more.
I figure if you were going to throw it out anyways that you've deemed it uselees to you and your company for resale or any other purpose...... so why utterly destroy something when maybe somebody else could actually make use of it ?!?! I understand that whatever the merchandise is had cost the "company" money somewhere along the line, but now you have deemed it only worthy of throwing away.

I met a guy who worked at HP (if I recall) who was forced to destroy several thousand mid-high end business oriented printers. These printers were perfectly good. Parts were still available on the market. Support was still available from HP. The only problem these printers had was that they were obsolete and they were two generations behind. Even at a discount, businesses would not buy them. So HP ordered that they be destroyed and discarded. The question came up as to why HP wouldn't donate the printers to a school or a non-profit. Remove the serial plates and tell them there's no support. A group with 100 printers can easily use half and use the other half to scavenge parts off of. Being business printers, ink, toner, whatever can easily be available for at least next 20 years.  The answer came back from the higher ups that destroying unsold equipment gets a better tax write off than donations do.

Actually there is a little more to that HP story than your friend led you to believe.

I worked at HP for 2 1/2 years on there server lines.  Last year we were cleaning out a storage room so we could sell half of it as office space.  So we started wrapping up pallet after pallet with tons of old servers.  This stuff was still really fast and being sold on CDW.  I figured we could have sent a nice rack full of equipment to every school in the school district, but instead it was all being sent to the dump to be scrapped for materials.

The reason behind all this is that HP doesn't want the liability with these servers.  If something goes wrong a few years from now, whoever is incharge won't realize they were freebies and expect service from us.  Also, some of those were prototype servers that aren't supposed to be sold to the public.  Chances are those printers were test printers that might have proprietary information on board.

It sounds stupid but it is more than anything to protect themselves from having to support donated products.

[Zebidee]

Yes, the economics of waste!

Efficient economic allocation in a free market is not as easy as it sounds - bah humbug!

I'm an economist, so I'm trying to resist writing an essay here ...