**raises hand** - but understand; most smart people are on the spectrum to some degree. Part of autism is - generally speaking - I/O processing abilities that neurotypicals cannot even comprehend, let alone actually accomplish. ;)
Getting the parts orientated in the same direction *isn't just about aesthetics* but actually makes circuit checking and diagnoses so much easier when you don't need to turn the board around, etc. It is a good habit to learn.
It also helps when it comes to odd noises and interferences generated due to imbalances in the circuit. It becomes an even greater concern at the microchip level, where the distances are much smaller.
I once got shown a “circuit board” as used on an oil refinery control system. They didn’t use electricity they used air. The board was two plates bonded together. The “traces” were tubes embossed between the plates. Capacitors were implemented using tiny bellows. Resistors were little Venturi. I can’t remember all the details (this was early eighties) but it still amazes me.
@@geoffreykeane4072 Many appliances in EX (explosive hazard) atmospheres run on compressed air indeed. There's a whole range of sensors, regulators, and actuators run entirely on the flow and pressure of not electrons but good old bellows stuffing. I worked with them in chemical industry myself. Fun stuff.
About cutting the lead too short: 12:36 "Not to worry" 13:07 "Not to worry. I'm not bothered." 15:57 "I'm not too bothered by that." (It's really bothering him lol!)
Ya I have checked a lot of things and on several things with compressors i have improved the power factor with a capacitor across the compressor just because and because i am working on doing some off grid stuff but like my xbox and Samsung tv are around a .6 power factor which is bot great but i have a cheap 65 inch tv in the living room and it is like .98 or something real high which is surprising because its cheap
There's going to have to be a radical redesign of electrical devices.Right now too many electronics are drawing microamps on standby mode.Dave Jones at eevblog just did a video about how much power something as simple as smoke detectors are eating up.
@@james10739 A lot of the big TV's are coming with built in power factor correction these days even the cheaper ones, the PFC designs are becoming more standardized and use an IC, MOSFET and inductor (basically a boost stage timed with the mains waveform before the big DC filter capacitor).
@@chaosflower4892 Depends what the price of power is in your local area, what provider you're with, what particular price plan you're on, even what time of the day.
For me as a newbie to electronics this was absolutely fascinating. I just loved the explanation as to how the circuit worked with the components and also your analysis of the components used. Love your channel. :)
“I shall connect it to the mains, and see if it goes bang!” I know that because the video is posted, it didn’t go bang in too bad of a way. I still love that he has a sense of humor around electricity, all while giving her great respect as well.
Hmm, fan-fold printer paper, yes .... also like punched paper tape sprocket holes! From the days when bugs were wildlife which may cause your software to fail. :-)
I worked with fan-fold paper in the 80's. Use to print bank statements on high speed metal belt printers which meant a full box of paper didn't last too long. Always great fun when the paper wouldn't stack again on exit from the print mechanism and you had to hand fold the paper without tearing or getting dirt on it. And we also used punch cards for program initiation and daily parameter changes. Oh the good old days.
Hours of “fun” when a fan fold dot matrix line printer ends up with misaligned paper and the toothed drive wheels shred the edges of the paper... Or when something disturbs the output pile and it then settles down folding the paper the wrong way round... but you have to sort out the resulting mess!
OH NOOOO! Genuine Rifa capacitors - the scourge of old test equipment. Hope they have changed the type of plastic used for the outer shell. Great explanations of common mode choke and X cap function. Thank you Clive.
The choke explanation is the wrong way round, though. It's the induction from common mode noise that is _in_ phase; the induction from regular LN AC is out of phase.
@@Mark1024MAK Nooooo! I just had one fail (missed it during inspection after purchase) in an HP 4262A LCR meter. I had to remove all cards and clean them and the chassis to get rid of the stink. There was this yellow film.................
David V - some 1980s computers are renowned for their old Rifa X2 capacitors going pop and filling rooms with their distinctive horrible smell. If you don’t clean up any of the gunk that gets on a nearby heatsink, it will continue to stink every time it is on long enough for the heatsink to heat up....
Not to mention: The ability to print right past the bottom of the page with no margin. Remember when you could print a banner on any old printer and not have to tape together 17 sheets?
Mmmm... Memories of elder times... Formaline we used to call those tear-off strips with holes that fed into the tractors. And the striped paper 132 or 148 character wide I think, 48 lines long unless it was the "Yankee-format". That paper had pink stripes, not blue, and 72 lines if I remember correctly. At least ours did. Did a lot of off-line printing when I was young. Running six big bulky Sperry Univac line printers fed by, would you believe, Datapoint 2200-series computers and stand alone tape stations. Then came the lasers and the fun went out of it.
A common mode choke works in the opposite manner that you showed; the fields cancel with normal differential AC current flow, and the fields add in the case of common mode current.
@@stargazer7644 I'm with Tyler on this. The fields add in the case of common mode current. This creates a magnetic field, and that very field opposes the flow of the current which created it. That's how I understand inductance to work. I think it's Lenz's law.
Or to put it more simply, any induced magnetic field causes a corresponding EMF (voltage) which opposes the current flow. With this application, the mains current produces two different magnetic fields each of which has the same strength, hence they cancel one another out, so no resulting EMF.
I was going to comment on this. He had the concept right, but was wrong about when the inductance "activates" as it were. And of course, those chokes can be wired as differential or common mode, and in a few COTS EMI filters (Corcom etc) there is one of each, although differential mode is usually accomplished with two inductors not coupled for some reason I have had too little coffee this AM to recollect... also, printer paper: I got to use actual teletypes in the USAF. I'm not that old, our site was slow to get updated hardware. I was shocked when I got there in 1981 to see 1950s comms, 1960s compute and 1970s crypto. O_O
I do envy your finger dexterity - something I once had as a young technician. Age and chemo have a way of damaging the nerves in one's fingers. I use various clamping devices now to prevent finger cramps more than to hold things for soldering, but after a 40 year career in electronics I'm thankful I'm still in the game. I could have used this power filter kit 30 years ago when computers were much more sensitive to transient spikes.
Hours of “fun” when a fan fold dot matrix line printer ends up with misaligned paper and the toothed drive wheels shred the edges of the paper... Or when something disturbs the output pile and it then settles down folding the paper the wrong way round... but you have to sort out the resulting mess!
Company I work for still uses industrial dot matrix printers and fan fold paper for invoicing, I have the joy of listening to them screeching away in the next room every night.
When my brother did his high school work experience at the computer shop I was working for..... First job we had him do was hook up an old dot matrix printer, load some tractor feed paper, and run a DOS program I'd written that printed out his list of tasks for the week... I had intentionally introduced a short pause between every character to make it print slow, so it took about 10 minutes to print... Which is roughly how long it took him to figure out how to feed the paper in.
Your magnetic flux flow is wrong. When the magnetic fluxes oppose, they cancel and the inductor does nothing. This is the normal operation. When the magnetic fluxes add it has inductance that oppses the current flow. This is the state that attenuates a common mode current.
I thought that was wrong too. If current flows in opposite directions the field should cancel so inductance is small, common mode the field will add so inductance is large.
Having the skirt at the bottom of the clamp is a nice feature. Had a set without those little aprons and lost track of how many times I've screwed one of the terminals down and then the wire just falls right out.
There is only one thing you need to learn about lead-free solder: A _good_ joint made with lead-free solder looks _exactly the same_ as a _bad_ joint made with lead-free solder.
I like the way you solder! I've watched your channel for years, and I picked up your technique. It's not often that I need to solder at work, but I always get strange looks when I do it your way
The good branded MCBs have the skirt to prevent the busbar from being inserted behind the clamp, saw this well over a year ago when replacing consumer units. Good vid Clive. 👍
Just bought a Chinese CNC 6040 machine. Found a very similar board in it. Has a very similar layout and components, minus one capacitor but added discharge resistor. Thanks for the video bigclive
I was taught to snip and then solder by the Navy (as well as many other useless soldering techniques, like forming perfect hooks for joining wires). Even though it has been many years since then, and I also prefer to solder and then snip, it still triggers me. Like somehow that tiny little bit of exposed copper is going to doom us all. Thanks, Navy. And ahh yeah, that continuous sheet of printer paper. So cool. I remember when my dad splurged for the micro-perf stuff for our 24-pin dot matrix. My school reports looked so good. :)
When I worked in the Aerospace industry the rule was always cut first and solder later to avoid mechanical shock of cutting the wire from cracking the joint. It's rather difficult to repair a bad joint in a satellite 35,000 km up in the air. Of course it's all surface mount now.
Hey! I've used fan-fold printer paper at home! 😂 Oddly enough, I have a photo of my daughter (now 21, then about 3) on my cork board, printed with a dot matrix printer on fan-fold paper.
That's how we learned to solder: Start with phone connectors, then go quickly to 5 pin + DIN connectors to solder on wires. The process then is a combination of swear, hate and soldering. But in the end you know how to solder.
In fact, I've used them to trim claws of pets who needed a little help wit that. The cutters are so sharp that they cut with ease. This makes the whole procedure faster and also reduces the forces transmitted by grabbing the claw until it's cut, all to reduce the discomfort for the critter.
That common mode choke would also take the edge off of choppy modified sine wave AC, which can make audio equipment annoyingly buzzy. Though I don't know how much edge it would take off, doesn't seem like it has a very high inductance. It would still do something though, as the inductance of the choke would resist the sharp voltage(current) rise of a stair stepped waveform to some degree.
It won't have much effect on audio equipment. Common-mode chokes really only affect noise in the range 100kHz through 30MHz, which may help reduce audible noise on an AM radio or a SW radio.
There seems to be enough combined reactance - although some series independent inductances would be very helpful - to significantly reduce the hash from ubiquitous cheap phase angle dimmers, the bane of HF / DX radio operators / listeners the world over. They and other industrial hash are why many hams choose to move to the boonies to pursue their hobbies. Most houses, and certainly all businesses, street lights, etc, etc, are hella noisy both in radiated and line conducted noise.
When placing components onto a board, if you spread the legs of the component slighty it will hold itself to the board without falling out making it much easier to solder.
Thankyou so much Clive for making me feel old with your various reference's, but then I realised that I was biting off pieces of Mum's 60/40 rosin cored solder (and chewing it) before you was a sparkle in your daddy's ballbag!
I was taught to put components into a PCB with all the markings in the same direction. It makes fault finding easier. I passed the Radio Communications General Certificate a couple of years before satellites made it obsolete. That dates me as much as my bus pass.
I printed on tractor feed fan fold printer paper just yesterday. I was doing a test print from my Commodore 64 of a spreadsheet I was working on, and with green bar paper no less!
If the soldering life and neutral on the wrong side bother you, you could just populate the board from the designated solder side, it is symetric. Furthermore, to get a ‘thicker’ earth connection just add solder to the non-screen-printed copper on the PCB.
The wide area in the earth conductor provides shunt capacitance from the two x2 capacitor to earth. I do not know what the capacitance line to ground is, but it is a clever circuit trick!
I was about to comment the same. Where the magnetic fields from the windings cancel there is no impedance and therefore no power dissipation in the choke. If they add (common mode) you get impedance.
@new name As I understand it, under normal circumstances the field created by each coil cancel each other out and hence produce no back EMF as the voltage rises and falls. If noise is introduced, the difference between the fields in the inductor will be the effect of the noise. This magnetic field as it rises and falls will induce a back EMF opposing the very voltage that caused it.
i do too. I work as a lab equipment repairman, and lab equipment boards are notorious for having inadequately tiny pads connected to inadequately thin tracks, that together with inadequately narrow holes in the pads and the use if these pads as free vias makes replacing blown components a true nightmare.
Every time Clive mentions the bandoliered components, I wonder if a dot matrix printer could be modified to feed pieces into a diy automatic soldering system. I think this is the first time I've heard him reference fanfold paper, though...I can't even begin to think of how many boxes of it I must have bought back in my early computer days. Suddenly I feel like I'm ancient. Thanks Clive! 😆😆
You solder _so_ much better than most UA-camrs.. Every time I see someone feed several inches of solder into a 1/4 watt resistor joint, I groan to myself. Then they move something while the joint is cooling and you can see the solder crystallize, and a Peanuts(tm)-esq "Arrggh!" escapes into the real world. Don't get me wrong, it doesn't bother me so much that they screwed up their own project. I _do_ care that some large number of viewers are going to see it and think it's a good solder joint.
21 minutes in, when you are soldering the screw terminal, I notice you are using all five fingers to hold the pcb. I remember a few years ago a software engineer watching me soldering a PCB at work. He quietly said "You are using all five fingers..." I smiled, but I was also surprised that yea, I was. I forgot it's just a skill we have. I guess it's like touch typing.
11:35 -- someone who has done this for a long, long time! holding the soldering iron in one hand, and in the other hand holding both the solder and the board... And again at 13:50, holding board, component, and solder in one hand. I'm with you on leaded solder -- the only whiskers I want are on my face!
Handy tip ( ? ) .... when taking apart discarded microwave ovens ( for all manner of useful stuff ) , there is almost always a FREE filter board near to the cable inlet ( this will save you £ 2-55 ! ! ) ... FYI a ( brittle ! ) magnetron magnet can be stuffed onto a wood broom handle with a plastic spray can top screwed into the end of the handle ( this protects the brittle magnet from knocks ) ... MOST USEFUL to pick up dropped steel wood screws / drill bits / nails from your floor / DRIVEWAY ( tried - n - tested ) ....
Clive, any chance you could do an ELI5 of power factor or "power factor for dummies" type video? Or maybe just as a side note in any given video? The term comes up a lot, and I understand that it's a comparison of apparent vs. real power, but I think some of us could benefit from a simplified explanation of WHY there's a difference in apparent and real power and where it comes from.
its always the way I have soldered stuff even resistors and diodes if you linger with the soldering iron the component can get very hot if your holding the component flat to the board from the other side ! I learned to solder quickly !
Alice is one of my favourite ebay sellers. And other sellers have figured that out and name their shops similarly, you have to be sure it's the original alice.
Every line surge protector on the planet has two MOVs from line to ground in them. Plus one across the line. Lead free solder isn't required because it is a health hazard to hobbyist assemblers, it is required because it is a health hazard when hundreds of tons of it in landfills leach heavy metals into the groundwater.
Not every surge protector on the planet. I know I've removed the MOVs and replaced them with gummi bears in a number of of them. Usually after an evening of eating fine cheese and suckling on my leaded solder.
You explained the common-mode choke filter backwards. In normal operation the two windings cancel each others flux out thus giving a very low impedance. When in common-mode filtering they work together to create the high impedance to the high frequency noise signals.
Americans might know that printer paper better as "tractor-feed" printer paper. People thought the sprocket wheels looked like tractor wheels for some reason. That style of printer was commonly available well into the 90s, so it isn't just for the old and wisened to remember.
I might be a little late to the party, but for what you do on your channel, I couldn't suppress a little snicker when you said you misidentified the MOVs for some Y-CAPs at first...😂😉
When I first saw you solder that way I thought "so, I'm not the only one that does it that way." Now based on your comment at 14:05, maybe it is weird.
Very old, me. Speaking of fan fold- There was a live stream a few years back where Tom Scott and crew printed the comments from a live stream and fed the result directly into a shredder. I do wonder how many viewers had ever seen a dot matrix printer before.
13:36 - "I was going to describe it as like fan-fold printer paper but none of you knows what that is unless you're very old..." Hey!! I'm only 44 and not only do I remember it, I used it growing up! Since when is 44 "very old?" Sheesh! ;)
I liked fan fold paper printers. When I was at uni I could print out assignments in one of two long continuous scrolls. I'd then physically cut and paste edit it on my bedroom floor. Perhaps not to everyone's taste but it just suited the way I liked to work with a full overview. One the subject of work wear I use those military surplus British AFV type flame retardent ones. Essentially armoured vehicle overalls. So many useful pockets and all zipped. I buy then big enough to go over thermals in the winter and to be a bit baggy in the summer. My partner who does all the welding and fabrication swears by them as she creates a lot of sparks and fire 😊
Clive! I have a replacement mainboard coming for a fancy inverter/solar/charger/battery/etc unit... Are you interested in the old one? It's doing some strange things... 😉
Using MOVs between neutral, ground, and hot is pretty common in the USA inside of cheap power strips that claim to provide protection against power spikes. They are sacrificial, and I don't know how much of a voltage spike they can withstand before letting the magic smoke out.
Toe-Guard (the piece of aluminum that supposed to stop people inadvertently falling down lift hoist way) - except if they are impatient and as happend some years ago in a hotel in Scotland, didnt live to tell the tale.
I think your explanation of the common-mode choke is the wrong way round. It should be that, if the current is flowing in the same direction in both wires, the magnetic fields add to each other, requiring a magnetic field to be built up, which makes the choke act like an inductor. And if the current is flowing in different directions, the magnetic fields cancel out, so the choke doesn't act like an inductor.
Anyone working at Argos will be well acquainted with the fan fold printer paper, was still being used when I was there a few years back, love the stuff
I'm old. I submitted my senior year term paper in on fan fold paper printed from my Commodore 64. The teacher initially refused to accept my paper as it had the little nobbly tears along the edges and was SLIGHTLY smaller than 8 1/2-11" Fun times.
Clive! At 35 I know exactly what fan-fold printer paper is. They were still using it in the computer lab when I was in elementary (or primary, if you prefer that term) school in the '90s!
Used to use a hand cranked resistor cutter/former machine when i worked PTH, Also worked and maintained the wave solder machine and racks and did QC on the finished products
Hate to be the counter to the "leaded solder" argument but it's not largely about the effect it can have any *single* person but what happens to that lead content when it's inevitably sent to landfill and environment impact long after we're all dust. On a personal note I have both some decades-old leaded solder and modern lead-free solder and, I would assume due to lengthy oxidation, I've found the lead-free stuff far easier to work with. Even accounting for the age, I've also found solder with a Sn/Ag/Cu/Rosin mix perfect for small amounts of SMD repairs, something I found absolutely not possible (again probably down to skill rather than materials) a few decades ago.
All the control devices at work use the screw connectors. I lost track of how may intermittent faults have be traced back to someone installing the wire under a clamp. I always tell the guys to turn the screw backwards until it clicks which indicates the screw is all the way down. At the lowest point the screw is out of the clamp and it is not possible to put the wire under it.
![How A Turn Signal Flasher Blinker Works - Complete Redesign With Schematic [Tung-Sol P229D]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/3ADoODcApNE/mqdefault.jpg)
I'm autistic too! Thank you for providing me mental comfort with your videos. Videos like yours really help to calm me down.
Don't worry, there aren't many non-autistic-y engineers (and IT guys) around; it's almost mandatory. 😋
Now it is confirmed by the expert Big Clive, I am autistic as well! Why need other experts?
Technical fields like this tend to draw in those in the autistic spectrum. We just think differently.
**raises hand** - but understand; most smart people are on the spectrum to some degree. Part of autism is - generally speaking - I/O processing abilities that neurotypicals cannot even comprehend, let alone actually accomplish. ;)
Getting the parts orientated in the same direction *isn't just about aesthetics* but actually makes circuit checking and diagnoses so much easier when you don't need to turn the board around, etc. It is a good habit to learn.
It also helps when it comes to odd noises and interferences generated due to imbalances in the circuit. It becomes an even greater concern at the microchip level, where the distances are much smaller.
"Fit it in whichever holes come closest"
That's just a good life lesson right there.
I love how you create monetizable videos using the cheapest items imaginable and a healthy dose of knowledge and care.
except they aren't monetized! send him $ via Patreon or whatever!
I enjoyed the water-tank analogy for the filter cap - I shall definitely use that when explaining EMC filters to the hydraulics engineers at work!
Do plumbers use electrical analogies? Seems only fair really.
Your hydraulics engineers will understand capacitors as accumulators.
I want a live demonstration of its operation... In AC of course.
(I don't think this should be done inside!).
I once got shown a “circuit board” as used on an oil refinery control system.
They didn’t use electricity they used air.
The board was two plates bonded together. The “traces” were tubes embossed between the plates.
Capacitors were implemented using tiny bellows. Resistors were little Venturi. I can’t remember all the details (this was early eighties) but it still amazes me.
@@geoffreykeane4072 Many appliances in EX (explosive hazard) atmospheres run on compressed air indeed. There's a whole range of sensors, regulators, and actuators run entirely on the flow and pressure of not electrons but good old bellows stuffing. I worked with them in chemical industry myself. Fun stuff.
I love your soldering style. If one has mastered the art of steady hands, it is so much easier and efficient.
About cutting the lead too short:
12:36 "Not to worry"
13:07 "Not to worry. I'm not bothered."
15:57 "I'm not too bothered by that."
(It's really bothering him lol!)
It bothers me too when it happens to me :D
The day power company's switch to charging households for Apparent Power and crappy power factor will be an interesting day indeed
Ya I have checked a lot of things and on several things with compressors i have improved the power factor with a capacitor across the compressor just because and because i am working on doing some off grid stuff but like my xbox and Samsung tv are around a .6 power factor which is bot great but i have a cheap 65 inch tv in the living room and it is like .98 or something real high which is surprising because its cheap
There's going to have to be a radical redesign of electrical devices.Right now too many electronics are drawing microamps on standby mode.Dave Jones at eevblog just did a video about how much power something as simple as smoke detectors are eating up.
@@james10739 A lot of the big TV's are coming with built in power factor correction these days even the cheaper ones, the PFC designs are becoming more standardized and use an IC, MOSFET and inductor (basically a boost stage timed with the mains waveform before the big DC filter capacitor).
Okurka With an atrocious power factor, even microamps would add up if charged by apparent power
@@chaosflower4892 Depends what the price of power is in your local area, what provider you're with, what particular price plan you're on, even what time of the day.
For me as a newbie to electronics this was absolutely fascinating. I just loved the explanation as to how the circuit worked with the components and also your analysis of the components used. Love your channel. :)
"You won't know this - unless you're very old." - I feel a sudden ache to my back... ;-)
“I shall connect it to the mains, and see if it goes bang!” I know that because the video is posted, it didn’t go bang in too bad of a way. I still love that he has a sense of humor around electricity, all while giving her great respect as well.
Hmm, fan-fold printer paper, yes .... also like punched paper tape sprocket holes! From the days when bugs were wildlife which may cause your software to fail. :-)
yes indeed
Fan fold, still made still used in many different sizes.
I worked with fan-fold paper in the 80's. Use to print bank statements on high speed metal belt printers which meant a full box of paper didn't last too long. Always great fun when the paper wouldn't stack again on exit from the print mechanism and you had to hand fold the paper without tearing or getting dirt on it.
And we also used punch cards for program initiation and daily parameter changes.
Oh the good old days.
Still got a big box of it in my office today to go with my Epson FX-100
Hours of “fun” when a fan fold dot matrix line printer ends up with misaligned paper and the toothed drive wheels shred the edges of the paper...
Or when something disturbs the output pile and it then settles down folding the paper the wrong way round... but you have to sort out the resulting mess!
OH NOOOO! Genuine Rifa capacitors - the scourge of old test equipment. Hope they have changed the type of plastic used for the outer shell. Great explanations of common mode choke and X cap function. Thank you Clive.
The choke explanation is the wrong way round, though. It's the induction from common mode noise that is _in_ phase; the induction from regular LN AC is out of phase.
David V - Did you “enjoy” the smelly smoke from some failed Rifa paper insulated capacitors then 🤣
@@Anvilshock Yep, he did it backwards.
@@Mark1024MAK Nooooo! I just had one fail (missed it during inspection after purchase) in an HP 4262A LCR meter. I had to remove all cards and clean them and the chassis to get rid of the stink. There was this yellow film.................
David V - some 1980s computers are renowned for their old Rifa X2 capacitors going pop and filling rooms with their distinctive horrible smell. If you don’t clean up any of the gunk that gets on a nearby heatsink, it will continue to stink every time it is on long enough for the heatsink to heat up....
I miss the old printer paper, folding it over and tearing the sides off with the holes. Simple satisfaction...
Not to mention: The ability to print right past the bottom of the page with no margin. Remember when you could print a banner on any old printer and not have to tape together 17 sheets?
The computer facility I worked at ran through so much fanfold paper that we saved the torn off edges in a big box to use as packing material.
Mmmm... Memories of elder times... Formaline we used to call those tear-off strips with holes that fed into the tractors. And the striped paper 132 or 148 character wide I think, 48 lines long unless it was the "Yankee-format". That paper had pink stripes, not blue, and 72 lines if I remember correctly. At least ours did. Did a lot of off-line printing when I was young. Running six big bulky Sperry Univac line printers fed by, would you believe, Datapoint 2200-series computers and stand alone tape stations. Then came the lasers and the fun went out of it.
My grandpa still has some 😂
I remember fan-fold printer paper and I am only 38... Wait. That is actually pretty ancient these days, isn't it?
A common mode choke works in the opposite manner that you showed; the fields cancel with normal differential AC current flow, and the fields add in the case of common mode current.
@@stargazer7644 I'm with Tyler on this. The fields add in the case of common mode current. This creates a magnetic field, and that very field opposes the flow of the current which created it. That's how I understand inductance to work. I think it's Lenz's law.
@@stargazer7644 Yes, that is what it does, what I explained was the magnetic fields created in the choke core.
Agree.
www.researchgate.net/figure/Inductive-choke-a-Differential-mode-b-Common-mode_fig2_251990299
Or to put it more simply, any induced magnetic field causes a corresponding EMF (voltage) which opposes the current flow. With this application, the mains current produces two different magnetic fields each of which has the same strength, hence they cancel one another out, so no resulting EMF.
I was going to comment on this. He had the concept right, but was wrong about when the inductance "activates" as it were. And of course, those chokes can be wired as differential or common mode, and in a few COTS EMI filters (Corcom etc) there is one of each, although differential mode is usually accomplished with two inductors not coupled for some reason I have had too little coffee this AM to recollect... also, printer paper: I got to use actual teletypes in the USAF. I'm not that old, our site was slow to get updated hardware. I was shocked when I got there in 1981 to see 1950s comms, 1960s compute and 1970s crypto. O_O
I love how you explain everything in great detail!
I do envy your finger dexterity - something I once had as a young technician. Age and chemo have a way of damaging the nerves in one's fingers. I use various clamping devices now to prevent finger cramps more than to hold things for soldering, but after a 40 year career in electronics I'm thankful I'm still in the game. I could have used this power filter kit 30 years ago when computers were much more sensitive to transient spikes.
Terrible filter. Hooked to my tap and now my water just tastes like sine waves
But you do feel all the new and refreshing energy, right?
Funny mine taste like cosine waves.
lol
@@Thirdbase9 Don't worry, it's just a phase.....
I agree! I built one up and used it to replace the filter in my Hoover, but now dust and dirt blow out as fast as they get sucked in.
Clive just called me, "Very old." Now I know it's true.
Nothing like tearing the edges off the printer paper...only to tear the document itself and having to reprint it.
this is a mood
The unique noise in unforgettable.
I use to do that all the time
Or as in my case - not being able to turn in an assignment because of the nobbly bits on the edges.
Hours of “fun” when a fan fold dot matrix line printer ends up with misaligned paper and the toothed drive wheels shred the edges of the paper...
Or when something disturbs the output pile and it then settles down folding the paper the wrong way round... but you have to sort out the resulting mess!
Company I work for still uses industrial dot matrix printers and fan fold paper for invoicing, I have the joy of listening to them screeching away in the next room every night.
Big fan of your disassembles (and your videos in general), please do more of them :)
When my brother did his high school work experience at the computer shop I was working for..... First job we had him do was hook up an old dot matrix printer, load some tractor feed paper, and run a DOS program I'd written that printed out his list of tasks for the week... I had intentionally introduced a short pause between every character to make it print slow, so it took about 10 minutes to print... Which is roughly how long it took him to figure out how to feed the paper in.
Your magnetic flux flow is wrong.
When the magnetic fluxes oppose, they cancel and the inductor does nothing. This is the normal operation.
When the magnetic fluxes add it has inductance that oppses the current flow. This is the state that attenuates a common mode current.
Exactly what I thought...
I thought that was wrong too.
If current flows in opposite directions the field should cancel so inductance is small, common mode the field will add so inductance is large.
@BrackynMor need the car, maybe the new tesla truck which looks a bit like ...
@@jyvben1520 A flying locomotive will do too, as long as it can reach 88 miles per hour.
Just wanted to write the same, but you explained it already perfectly.
Having the skirt at the bottom of the clamp is a nice feature. Had a set without those little aprons and lost track of how many times I've screwed one of the terminals down and then the wire just falls right out.
That's the big problem with the circuit breakers. They're locked in position, so you can't tell they missed the busbar.
Finally! common mode noise well explained! noise on both "input's" cancelled out by the coil. Thank you. I learned something. :-)
Oh you bring back so many memories of the fan-fold dot matrix printer paper...
Of course, the printers were massive as well...
Okidata still makes 'em that way. I got a used 420 (though they're available new for a hefty sum). Thing weighs 20 lbs.
There is only one thing you need to learn about lead-free solder:
A _good_ joint made with lead-free solder looks _exactly the same_ as a _bad_ joint made with lead-free solder.
properly soldered the solder wicks through and solder both sides. if it is big concern you could just mount the components on the opposite side
Good point!
It never gets old your assembly videos. Cheers from unusually warm kansas, and congratulations to the Chief's for the superbowl win. Cheers.
I like the way you solder! I've watched your channel for years, and I picked up your technique. It's not often that I need to solder at work, but I always get strange looks when I do it your way
The good branded MCBs have the skirt to prevent the busbar from being inserted behind the clamp, saw this well over a year ago when replacing consumer units. Good vid Clive. 👍
Just bought a Chinese CNC 6040 machine. Found a very similar board in it. Has a very similar layout and components, minus one capacitor but added discharge resistor. Thanks for the video bigclive
I was taught to snip and then solder by the Navy (as well as many other useless soldering techniques, like forming perfect hooks for joining wires). Even though it has been many years since then, and I also prefer to solder and then snip, it still triggers me. Like somehow that tiny little bit of exposed copper is going to doom us all. Thanks, Navy. And ahh yeah, that continuous sheet of printer paper. So cool. I remember when my dad splurged for the micro-perf stuff for our 24-pin dot matrix. My school reports looked so good. :)
When I worked in the Aerospace industry the rule was always cut first and solder later to avoid mechanical shock of cutting the wire from cracking the joint. It's rather difficult to repair a bad joint in a satellite 35,000 km up in the air. Of course it's all surface mount now.
Would solder, snip and re-solder work? Just because it would be so much harder to keep components in place with snipped leads.
I'm kinda disappointed you didn't connect the Earth connection
@@vobbertbecking3598 The MOVs will still catch high surges exceeding 2x470V .
😂
Hey! I've used fan-fold printer paper at home! 😂
Oddly enough, I have a photo of my daughter (now 21, then about 3) on my cork board, printed with a dot matrix printer on fan-fold paper.
Colour or mono?
I think I threw an FX80 printer out within the last 5 years.
"Take this off briefly so I can just slip it in. MMMMM"
Just the tip...and only for a minute
The "mmmmm" was what made me laugh.
Can you explain what it means?
lol
Nearly spat my morning coffee out.
And just mash it in to any random hole!
That's how we learned to solder: Start with phone connectors, then go quickly to 5 pin + DIN connectors to solder on wires. The process then is a combination of swear, hate and soldering. But in the end you know how to solder.
@BrackynMor that is the only way to learn it
@BrackynMor Not had that issue so far. But I know of the difference between a good and bad solder wire and especially solder iron.
The bigclive Vulcan death grip is the most important soldering flex on UA-cam
Those side-cutters are brilliant. They are also perfect for effortlessly trimming your toe-nails.
In fact, I've used them to trim claws of pets who needed a little help wit that. The cutters are so sharp that they cut with ease. This makes the whole procedure faster and also reduces the forces transmitted by grabbing the claw until it's cut, all to reduce the discomfort for the critter.
That common mode choke would also take the edge off of choppy modified sine wave AC, which can make audio equipment annoyingly buzzy. Though I don't know how much edge it would take off, doesn't seem like it has a very high inductance. It would still do something though, as the inductance of the choke would resist the sharp voltage(current) rise of a stair stepped waveform to some degree.
Wouldn't do much exactly because it's a common mode choke but the modified sine is a differential mode signal.
It won't have much effect on audio equipment. Common-mode chokes really only affect noise in the range 100kHz through 30MHz, which may help reduce audible noise on an AM radio or a SW radio.
There seems to be enough combined reactance - although some series independent inductances would be very helpful - to significantly reduce the hash from ubiquitous cheap phase angle dimmers, the bane of HF / DX radio operators / listeners the world over. They and other industrial hash are why many hams choose to move to the boonies to pursue their hobbies. Most houses, and certainly all businesses, street lights, etc, etc, are hella noisy both in radiated and line conducted noise.
When placing components onto a board, if you spread the legs of the component slighty it will hold itself to the board without falling out making it much easier to solder.
Not always possible, depending on the legs. Of cause SMD makes this easier as they don't face down during soldering.
Clive,you got that unintentional ASMR going,with your voice and the way you do things,it is great :)
Sprocket fed fan-fold paper, I still use it sometimes with my 9 pin dot matrix printer and Amiga.
Thankyou so much Clive for making me feel old with your various reference's, but then I realised that I was biting off pieces of Mum's 60/40 rosin cored solder (and chewing it) before you was a sparkle in your daddy's ballbag!
"We must ban leaded solder because the kids are eating it!"
Big Clive.... excellent video. I love your style of presentation. Most diverting. Thank you 😊
At least here in Australia element14 still sends their packing slips on fan-fold paper printed with a genuine 9 pin dot matrix printer. Nice.
I was taught to put components into a PCB with all the markings in the same direction. It makes fault finding easier. I passed the Radio Communications General Certificate a couple of years before satellites made it obsolete. That dates me as much as my bus pass.
I printed on tractor feed fan fold printer paper just yesterday. I was doing a test print from my Commodore 64 of a spreadsheet I was working on, and with green bar paper no less!
If the soldering life and neutral on the wrong side bother you, you could just populate the board from the designated solder side, it is symetric. Furthermore, to get a ‘thicker’ earth connection just add solder to the non-screen-printed copper on the PCB.
The wide area in the earth conductor provides shunt capacitance from the two x2 capacitor to earth. I do not know what the capacitance line to ground is, but it is a clever circuit trick!
@7:38 I think you explained the opposite,
In differential mode the current counteract, flux would be zero and hence no voltage drop on the inductor,
I think I did. I'll address that in a future video.
I was about to comment the same. Where the magnetic fields from the windings cancel there is no impedance and therefore no power dissipation in the choke. If they add (common mode) you get impedance.
@new name As I understand it, under normal circumstances the field created by each coil cancel each other out and hence produce no back EMF as the voltage rises and falls. If noise is introduced, the difference between the fields in the inductor will be the effect of the noise. This magnetic field as it rises and falls will induce a back EMF opposing the very voltage that caused it.
You really have a grudge on them for those small pads😂. Keep it up man love your videos!!
Small pads and pointlessly thin tracks. Things that make PCBs less reliable.
i do too. I work as a lab equipment repairman, and lab equipment boards are notorious for having inadequately tiny pads connected to inadequately thin tracks, that together with inadequately narrow holes in the pads and the use if these pads as free vias makes replacing blown components a true nightmare.
Every time Clive mentions the bandoliered components, I wonder if a dot matrix printer could be modified to feed pieces into a diy automatic soldering system. I think this is the first time I've heard him reference fanfold paper, though...I can't even begin to think of how many boxes of it I must have bought back in my early computer days. Suddenly I feel like I'm ancient. Thanks Clive! 😆😆
Most of the bandoliered components are more like 8mm films than 8" paper. So the sprocket is much smaller.
You solder _so_ much better than most UA-camrs.. Every time I see someone feed several inches of solder into a 1/4 watt resistor joint, I groan to myself. Then they move something while the joint is cooling and you can see the solder crystallize, and a Peanuts(tm)-esq "Arrggh!" escapes into the real world. Don't get me wrong, it doesn't bother me so much that they screwed up their own project. I _do_ care that some large number of viewers are going to see it and think it's a good solder joint.
21 minutes in, when you are soldering the screw terminal, I notice you are using all five fingers to hold the pcb. I remember a few years ago a software engineer watching me soldering a PCB at work. He quietly said "You are using all five fingers..." I smiled, but I was also surprised that yea, I was. I forgot it's just a skill we have. I guess it's like touch typing.
How well would mini Babybel cheese work in place of the MOVs?
Regular or light mini Babybel cheese?
It's funny you ask, because this is exactly what was used in the olden days before they were invented!
The easy way to find out is to try some.
Yes, your soldering dexterity is awesome!
11:35 -- someone who has done this for a long, long time! holding the soldering iron in one hand, and in the other hand holding both the solder and the board... And again at 13:50, holding board, component, and solder in one hand. I'm with you on leaded solder -- the only whiskers I want are on my face!
What's the problem exactly?
Handy tip ( ? ) .... when taking apart discarded microwave ovens ( for all manner of useful stuff ) , there is almost always a FREE filter board near to the cable inlet ( this will save you £ 2-55 ! ! ) ... FYI a ( brittle ! ) magnetron magnet can be stuffed onto a wood broom handle with a plastic spray can top screwed into the end of the handle ( this protects the brittle magnet from knocks ) ... MOST USEFUL to pick up dropped steel wood screws / drill bits / nails from your floor / DRIVEWAY ( tried - n - tested ) ....
Clive, any chance you could do an ELI5 of power factor or "power factor for dummies" type video? Or maybe just as a side note in any given video? The term comes up a lot, and I understand that it's a comparison of apparent vs. real power, but I think some of us could benefit from a simplified explanation of WHY there's a difference in apparent and real power and where it comes from.
its always the way I have soldered stuff even resistors and diodes if you linger with the soldering iron the component can get very hot if your holding the component flat to the board from the other side ! I learned to solder quickly !
Big Clive soldering things together is kind of like the electronics version of Bob Ross. Can we send him more of these kits? This is quite theraputic.
Let's hope he doesn't get stuck with a hairdo that he doesn't like just to resemble his logo image. Or in Clive's case, perhaps his beard.
Alice is one of my favourite ebay sellers. And other sellers have figured that out and name their shops similarly, you have to be sure it's the original alice.
Every line surge protector on the planet has two MOVs from line to ground in them. Plus one across the line. Lead free solder isn't required because it is a health hazard to hobbyist assemblers, it is required because it is a health hazard when hundreds of tons of it in landfills leach heavy metals into the groundwater.
Not every surge protector on the planet. I know I've removed the MOVs and replaced them with gummi bears in a number of of them. Usually after an evening of eating fine cheese and suckling on my leaded solder.
@@lorddissy 240V fondue'd fine cheese?
@@lorddissy Why did I initially read that as "suckling on my leaded sister"? I need a brain-clean....
All those heavy metals came out the ground in the first place.
Not my problem.
You explained the common-mode choke filter backwards.
In normal operation the two windings cancel each others flux out thus giving a very low impedance. When in common-mode filtering they work together to create the high impedance to the high frequency noise signals.
Americans might know that printer paper better as "tractor-feed" printer paper. People thought the sprocket wheels looked like tractor wheels for some reason. That style of printer was commonly available well into the 90s, so it isn't just for the old and wisened to remember.
A filter circuit board like this really should be a single layer copper design, so you can see and thus know there is correct gaps
I might be a little late to the party, but for what you do on your channel, I couldn't suppress a little snicker when you said you misidentified the MOVs for some Y-CAPs at first...😂😉
Nicely done Clive
I should have known the other video was only about a minute long that this one was going to be good! Be sure to slip it in nice and easy!
Bigclive just slipping it in, with a nice satisfying sound. 3:24
I might build one of those kits just to hear the bang when I sort out the caps with pliers.
When I first saw you solder that way I thought "so, I'm not the only one that does it that way." Now based on your comment at 14:05, maybe it is weird.
Very old, me.
Speaking of fan fold- There was a live stream a few years back where Tom Scott and crew printed the comments from a live stream and fed the result directly into a shredder. I do wonder how many viewers had ever seen a dot matrix printer before.
13:36 - "I was going to describe it as like fan-fold printer paper but none of you knows what that is unless you're very old..." Hey!! I'm only 44 and not only do I remember it, I used it growing up! Since when is 44 "very old?" Sheesh! ;)
I liked fan fold paper printers. When I was at uni I could print out assignments in one of two long continuous scrolls. I'd then physically cut and paste edit it on my bedroom floor. Perhaps not to everyone's taste but it just suited the way I liked to work with a full overview.
One the subject of work wear I use those military surplus British AFV type flame retardent ones. Essentially armoured vehicle overalls. So many useful pockets and all zipped. I buy then big enough to go over thermals in the winter and to be a bit baggy in the summer. My partner who does all the welding and fabrication swears by them as she creates a lot of sparks and fire 😊
Not only do I remember fan fold paper, but fan fold punched paper tape was used when I took my first programming classes.
This is what my Furman power conditioner looks like inside.
It's a huge box with 8-10 outlets and this tiny little circuit board in the middle.
I was going to say the caps on the paper reminds me of film for film projector
Clive! I have a replacement mainboard coming for a fancy inverter/solar/charger/battery/etc unit... Are you interested in the old one? It's doing some strange things... 😉
The creepage distances are extremely small. Look at the large ground trace in the middle, almost touching the inductor pads...
Using MOVs between neutral, ground, and hot is pretty common in the USA inside of cheap power strips that claim to provide protection against power spikes. They are sacrificial, and I don't know how much of a voltage spike they can withstand before letting the magic smoke out.
Toe-Guard (the piece of aluminum that supposed to stop people inadvertently falling down lift hoist way) - except if they are impatient and as happend some years ago in a hotel in Scotland, didnt live to tell the tale.
the pads are so close to the earth trace
they might couple noise INTO the filter
I think your explanation of the common-mode choke is the wrong way round. It should be that, if the current is flowing in the same direction in both wires, the magnetic fields add to each other, requiring a magnetic field to be built up, which makes the choke act like an inductor. And if the current is flowing in different directions, the magnetic fields cancel out, so the choke doesn't act like an inductor.
I think you're right.
Anyone working at Argos will be well acquainted with the fan fold printer paper, was still being used when I was there a few years back, love the stuff
I'm old. I submitted my senior year term paper in on fan fold paper printed from my Commodore 64. The teacher initially refused to accept my paper as it had the little nobbly tears along the edges and was SLIGHTLY smaller than 8 1/2-11" Fun times.
Hey Clive, I should have done a shot everytime you pointed out the small solder pads 😆
Clive! At 35 I know exactly what fan-fold printer paper is. They were still using it in the computer lab when I was in elementary (or primary, if you prefer that term) school in the '90s!
Learned a lot watching this video, Clive!
Finally a video that has no torches in it.
It's just a byproduct of our technical ability. That's my quote of the week.
Used to use a hand cranked resistor cutter/former machine when i worked PTH, Also worked and maintained the wave solder machine and racks and did QC on the finished products
LOL.. is it just me, or are other viewers blowing the solder smoke away too ;)
Would it be possible to show the filter in action with 2 channels on an oscilloscope? Maybe purposely introduce line noise and see how well it works?
Low key soldering skill flexes are making me moist.
A pleasure to look at. And for enhanced enjoyment look for "nasa soldering" on yt.
Hate to be the counter to the "leaded solder" argument but it's not largely about the effect it can have any *single* person but what happens to that lead content when it's inevitably sent to landfill and environment impact long after we're all dust.
On a personal note I have both some decades-old leaded solder and modern lead-free solder and, I would assume due to lengthy oxidation, I've found the lead-free stuff far easier to work with. Even accounting for the age, I've also found solder with a Sn/Ag/Cu/Rosin mix perfect for small amounts of SMD repairs, something I found absolutely not possible (again probably down to skill rather than materials) a few decades ago.
All the control devices at work use the screw connectors. I lost track of how may intermittent faults have be traced back to someone installing the wire under a clamp. I always tell the guys to turn the screw backwards until it clicks which indicates the screw is all the way down. At the lowest point the screw is out of the clamp and it is not possible to put the wire under it.
I routinely wind the screw out, insert and tighten the wire, then pull the wire to double check.