Let's Take a Trip Inside a Power Strip!
Let's Take a Trip Inside a Power Strip!
By
The PC's Underappreciated Protector
We often mention power supplies when we talk about the unsung heroes of enthusiast computing. But what about the humble power bar? Aside from the obvious task of providing multiple outlets for all of the gadgets you have around your computer, they also provide a central, common ground location for all of that equipment, minimizing ground loops. Most bars also give you some degree of surge suppression and power filtering.
In this picture story, we're taking a look at what goes on inside of a vintage APC Performance SurgeArrest (specifically, model PF11VT3-CN).
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Also never though of using the de-soldering braid as a patch
Who knows. I'm sure most of this seemed like a good idea at the time.
For the soldering, they probably put the units through automated testing and as long as everything tests ok, they send the units on their way - the ATE probably tests the live and neutral wires at 20A and the neutral with 100A pulses so in principle, if the ATE says everything is fine, the visual inspection becomes somewhat superfluous... it may not be visually pretty but as far as electrical testing goes, it appears perfectly sound.
But I agree about expecting better out of APC on that one. As noted in the conclusion though, the unit with the blown trace had none of the soldering issues found in the tear-down unit so the "lack of pride" was at least not systematic.
It went out the window when the manufacturing went overseas.
Who knows. I'm sure most of this seemed like a good idea at the time.
For the soldering, they probably put the units through automated testing and as long as everything tests ok, they send the units on their way - the ATE probably tests the live and neutral wires at 20A and the neutral with 100A pulses so in principle, if the ATE says everything is fine, the visual inspection becomes somewhat superfluous... it may not be visually pretty but as far as electrical testing goes, it appears perfectly sound.
But I agree about expecting better out of APC on that one. As noted in the conclusion though, the unit with the blown trace had none of the soldering issues found in the tear-down unit so the "lack of pride" was at least not systematic.
Still regardless of if it passes electrical testing a bad solder may just die over time when the device gets bumped, moved or just gets older. It may pass the test when it was made but 10 years ahead it may become a very different story. I can tell you I do use things like this for more then 10 years because there is no reason to replace when it does still work.
This does make me wonder how my € 3 hubs hold up on the soldering department.
https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2804/4448769179_decd009a6f_o.jpg
It looks like they are purposely ignoring this issue as electrical issues like that (especially with the soldering), cannot be overlooked, someone in the assembly process should spot those issues (company likely told them to ignore it)
I always read articles on Tom's via the Print button; all pages coalesced into one for easy reading!
Try doing the same for other popular surge protector brands. Also may be interesting to visit your local used parts store and get a couple older ones to see how they standup to the test of time.
I have 2 from monster power that are fast approaching 10yrs old. and others of indeterminate age.
I have sent a mail to APC requesting the modern version of the PF11 so I can do a follow-up story comparing the old with the new.
Raiding the local flea market to see if I can get a representative sample of what people might have out there and tear them apart is not a bad idea. I have a few generic bars myself but they all appear to be welded, which is not fun for tear-downs and I would not expect to see much in those. Then again, I was not expecting to spend nearly ten pages on unexpected assembly flaws and an unexpected failure between those two APC bars of mine either.
I'm not condoning their poor soldering job or anything else, but I think that unless all of their units look like this, cut them some slack. I've seen Seasonic power supplies that had bad soldering on them before, but does that make Seasonic a bad power supply company? No.
As I noted in the conclusion, the unit I repaired did not have any of the poor solder jobs I saw in the unit I tore down for this story. It was probably the work of a new or tired employee and in this case, there could be dozens of units from batches that passed by that same employee on that day or week with similar issues.
Unfortunately for APC, one of those units happened to fall in the hands of someone who ended up making a picture story about it roughly a decade later. When you pick a subject for a story, you work with what you have and I happened to discover a handful of manufacturing defects in the power bar I picked for this story.
Unexpected discoveries keep things interesting.