Unfortunately, I have heard of this sort of problem more than once. A good friend of mine lost his home to a plastic power strip that ignited. Any unit that I own that has to do with power is built within a metal case. That, and location of the power unit can be important.
A Warning for Owners of Furman IT Refernence 20i
A Warning to anyone who owns a Furman IT Reference 20i for power filtering-
Do Not Leave the unit unattended while powered on. A few weeks ago, I smelled the very acrid smell of melting plastic and circuit board coming from my stereo. Long story short, my Furman IT Reference was the source and one of the circuit boards that was designed to prevent ‘current inrush’ self destructed.
Thankfully, I was close by and was able to quickly unplug the unit or there was a very serious chance of fire! Since then I have tried, without any success, to have the unit repaired, but have gotten nowhere with Furman (now part of Nortek). I have tried sending in multiple requests for service. I’ve tried calling, only to end up in ‘press 1 for, press 2, purgatory..‘. When I have managed to get someone on the line, they referred me to their ‘dealer network’ for repairs. I contacted one of the dealers and they told me that only Furman is allowed to perform their own repairs. Call back Nortek and they won’t sell parts and they only use their dealers for repairs. Lather, Rinse, repeat. For $5k I’d expected better. The only good news is that I’m a very experienced service person for research instrumentation and I was able to identify the electrical component that failed (Ametek Thermistor SL22). Furman undersized the thermistor in their inrush circuit and thereby started the board to self destruct. The part is very cheap and I’m hoping I can still salvage the circuit board. But BEWARE! Had I not been nearby, it could have been much much worse!!!
Showing 3 responses by 4krowme
emailistsThat is a good question. The reason that I would tend to doubt it is because it seems that many manufacturers change up parts from model to model and even from unit to unit., let alone year to year. That is a blanket statement, I will admit. Within my limited scope of electronic knowledge, I still take the top off units just to see wth is going on. Many times it is a headshaker, but like in the case of my BPT unit, there is nothing admiration to be had for the forethought and quality displayed. |
Just wow. I appreciate the accurate description of what has occurred, an NO, few of us here would find your explanation boring. In fact, I am always interested in the guts of a unit. Interesting to note the size of the transformer in particular. It's one thing to get the correct sized thermistor to do the job but running a line over the top of it speaks for itself. Please do keep us informed as things hopefully progress. |