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I have this power supply board from a Honeywell HPA300 air filter that has a burned out triac (BT3) in this row of 4 side by side triacs (BT1-4). The conspicuous thing about the one that burned out is that it appears to be soldered in the reverse orientation as you can see from the images below. BT1, BT2, and BT4 all face one direction while BT3 inexplicably faces the opposite direction.

closeup of the 3rd triac soldered with face opposing the other three all four triacs in view

The PCB silkscreen printing of the part outline beneath these discrete components definitely conveys an orientation given by the thickness of how the rectangle is divided with the thin side oriented to the back and the thick side forward facing. This has a feel analogous to how electrolytic capacitors have an oriented silkscreen printing beneath them. This silkscreen rectangle I can depict with this ASCII art below.

|------------------------------------|
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Does this outline serve to indicate how the component was to be installed on the board and the manufacturer failed to pay heed to it and was likely the cause of the failure? Are these triacs designed with polarity in mind or are they symmetric? From what I'm able to read of the sibling parts these are part number TG BT134 600D 1805. However I have been unable to locate a datasheet for this exact match, however I could find one for a BT134 600D 127


Additional Photos

There's another photo that also demonstrates this strange bending of BT3 to be out of plane with the others. I don't know if it was installed that way or began to bow as it heated up and burned out. longitudinal view of the row of triacs The triac removed from the PCB

The evening this unit burned out, both the living room and dining room held that burnt electrical smell to them. This thing definitely let off smoke while we were away. It was left running with a timer I believe. Leading up to this catastrophic failure was a malfunctioning of the incremental touch button for power and to the different speed settings (going from off, low, medium, high). One of the speeds wouldn't operate and you'd have to jump to the next to get the fan to blow. I didn't note which speed was affected just that the state toggling was already malfunctioning.


Full PCB

Since the board is fairly small I was able to take a snapshot of both sides of it. I digitally edited the right half of the image, which is the bottom of the board, with a vertical reflection to make the coordinates overlap and to visually align the two for easier visual correspondence.

PCB layout

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    \$\begingroup\$ this unit burned out the whole living room and dining room A simple comma can make or break a sentence. \$\endgroup\$
    – MiNiMe
    Commented Nov 17, 2023 at 3:56
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    \$\begingroup\$ @MiNiMe good call on the comma, I just tuned up that sentence. @Hearth I'm not 100% certain but some corroboration could be found in the other two smaller models I own. Both my HPA200 and HPA100 had all 4 triacs oriented facing the same way. Those power supply boards look very similar but do have some differences. One curious thing about them is they use a subtly different triac, the BT 134 600D 1811. Still leaves things a bit inconclusive. I edited the question and offered a full view of the PCB for review. That may help shed some light on the mystery. \$\endgroup\$
    – jxramos
    Commented Nov 17, 2023 at 6:44
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    \$\begingroup\$ If you can contact the right person, you should be able to get a free replacement, even if it is out of warranty. Due to your incompetence, my house could have burned down. This unit was assembled improperly, a Triac was installed backwards ... honeywellhome.com/us/en/support \$\endgroup\$
    – Mattman944
    Commented Nov 17, 2023 at 13:45
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    \$\begingroup\$ @Mattman944 yah Honeywell, which goes by Helen of Troy now, had superb customer service and took my name email and shipping address and sent out a new one. I was still within my 5 year warranty. The unit lasted from 2018 to 2022. When that one's due for a deep cleaning I'll update this post to see if the power supply board is the same and have some additional reference points to share. \$\endgroup\$
    – jxramos
    Commented Nov 17, 2023 at 17:33
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    \$\begingroup\$ @RussellMcMahon I received a replacement unit from a warranty claim. I plugged it in to a KillAWatt device and measured the following power draws for the whole unit: Low 30.4W, Medium 48.6W, High 67.0W, Turbo 97.3W. There’s a small LED on the unit that you can turn on and off. Doesn’t seem to impact the power draw. Looking at the board again BT1 has a W symbol, BT2 an L, BT3 an M, and BT4 an H. I assume those are for Turbo (whole motor), Low, Medium, and High Fan speeds. The triac that failed was BT3 so medium speed. \$\endgroup\$
    – jxramos
    Commented Nov 28, 2023 at 16:06

2 Answers 2

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It is hard to believe that it would have passed final testing with a part installed backwards, but let's assume that it is backwards. This would reverse pins 1 and 3, the Gate and MT1.

To really understand this, you will need to trace the circuit. I picture of the backside of the PWB would be a start.

I believe that the circuit looks like this. This is not a common driving circuit. If you can get a part number off the transistor, it will help confirm my analysis.

The 4 driving circuits are similar. So, I am certain that the Triac was installed backwards.

My knowledge on Triacs is mostly for normal applications, maybe someone with more of a Semiconductor Physics background can help further.

schematic

simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab

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    \$\begingroup\$ From the pictures of the circuit board, there appears to be a row of which could be 5 opto-couplers in 4 pin DIP packages. From the picture I can't make out the marking on the 4 pin DIP packages. From the reverse side (a) the traces on one side are towards the TRIACs (b) the traces on the other side are towards the 6-pin white connector (c) there looks to be an isolation gap in the tracks between the top and bottom sections. Where the 6-pin white connector presumably has the low-voltage isolated control signals. This points towards opto-isolation between the control logic and the TRIACs. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Nov 17, 2023 at 10:28
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This answer to the related question, Are TRIACs symmetrical?, answers the part about triacs being symmetric.

Apparently they are not, so that's a strong clue the part was incorrectly installed in reverse. I'm still uncertain if the part could have burned out on account of that however, I'll wait for others to chime in.

I found some more evidence of the triac orientation which can be seen in the images over in this question: Can a triac work with MT1 and gate reversed?. Those two triacs are found to be soldered such that the back of the triac faces the thin band of the printed silkscreen rectangle PCB marking.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ T wo users flagged this as "not ans answer". I noted "A useful link that somewhat addresses the question. ie - answer enough IMO to be wrorthwhile. Comment welcome if robust. \$\endgroup\$
    – Russell McMahon
    Commented Nov 17, 2023 at 14:00
  • \$\begingroup\$ @RussellMcMahon - IIRC, The reason why I flagged as not an answer is that the (original) answer, i.e. the first paragraph, looked like it could have been better served as an update/edit to the question, maybe(?). The subsequent addition of the second paragraph makes this more of a standalone answer though, admittedly. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Nov 21, 2023 at 14:49
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    \$\begingroup\$ @Greenonline Thanks for commenting. It's useful to try and understand what people are thinking. \$\endgroup\$
    – Russell McMahon
    Commented Nov 21, 2023 at 15:08

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