Digital Sidecar c6

[FRC1014]

We have had two sidecars go bad because c6 was, in the words of one of our engineers, "tombstoned." C6 in the sidecar was not properly soldered down to the pads and fell over. In the first instance it touched c4 and shorted out the sidecar. In the second instance that has not happened yet, and we are trying to fix it. We checked when the sidecar stopped working. Has anyone else experienced a similar problem?

[Russ Beavis]

There is a known case interference issue that causes C6 to be broken free from its solder pads. To the best of my knowledge, we've never seen a loose C6 result in damage to a DSC (since the DSC is conformally-coated and therefore well-protected from such contaminants). You might want to go through Andymark to obtain a replacement if you feel that the loose capacitor resulted in such a failure.

C4 and C6 are in parallel and only one is really required to provide proper decoupling for the 6V servo power supply.

Did the short cause the 20A breaker for the DSC to open?

Given the conformal coating, I'm surprised that you've encountered a dead DSC.

Russ