Foteck SSR's @*^^?&#! JUNK

[augiedoggy]

Buy them from auberin and get a large heatsink from them also

Why buy them from Auberins? It was already mentioned auberins just buys Chinese MGR SSRs, has them rebranded and doubles the price they are the same SSR ebrew sells as well... You can buy the very same SSR on Amazon or eBay for $5 shipped. Better to buy two there and have a spare than pay $15 for one with shipping with a different color sticker on it.

 

[augiedoggy]

Those cheap heat sinks don't get warm to the touch, because they don't conduct heat..... The fans are just Blowing warm air around inside of that box. Best of luck.

From my understanding of how heat transfer works that statement makes no sense. An aluminum heatsink with thermal compound that doesn't get hot just proves it's working well or it's still plenty large enough for the just. do you think they arent made of aluminum or something? these are common din rail ssr heatsinks.. same as auberins and erbew sell for 3 times the price (besides the flashy anodized coatings)

I have 5 of these same heat sinks in a couple panels , some dating back four years. All set up the same way as the OP has them and I can assure you they DO work great this way.. I even have a $20 crydom clone dual ssr on one of these heat sinks which controls both my BK and HLT elements in my current panel... no issues

 

[golfindia]

From my understanding of how heat transfer works that statement makes no sense. An aluminum heatsink with thermal compound that doesn't get hot just proves it's working well or it's still plenty large enough for the just. do you think they arent made of aluminum or something? these are common din rail ssr heatsinks.. same as auberins and erbew sell for 3 times the price (besides the flashy anodized coatings)

I have 5 of these same heat sinks in a couple panels , some dating back four years. All set up the same way as the OP has them and I can assure you they DO work great this way.. I even have a $20 crydom clone dual ssr on one of these heat sinks which controls both my BK and HLT elements in my current panel... no issues

Physics. Mass dissipates heat. Weight one of those $2 Tee shaped heatsinks. I used some of them for a long time too. Until I switched to a real heat sink. My real heat sinks get hotter than hell. Because they are dissipating heat. But hey, whatever works. It's not like we're operating nuclear powerplants. It's just beer.

 

[r4dyce]

But hey, whatever works. It's not like we're operating nuclear powerplants. It's just beer.

D'oh!

 

[golfindia]

Look here:

http://www.instructables.com/id/The-inner-workings-of-Counterfeit-FOTEK-SSRs/

Both the knockoff and knockoff knockoff had the same innards. That's exactly my point. I don't want to be geopolitically incorrect, but almost everything we're going to get from China is going to be a copy of something.... There are always $40 ISO 9000-whatever domestic versions.

 

[Esmitee]

Looking at your pictures, I wonder if you had a bad crimp connection that overheated. Did you use a ratcheting crimper? The crimps on your 10 gauge wires look questionable.

No I don't have a ratcheting crimper. I did examine the crimped connections, and found no signs of arcing, burning, melting , or, any discoloration. All of the wiring is intact, fortunately

 

[Esmitee]

Look here:

http://www.instructables.com/id/The-inner-workings-of-Counterfeit-FOTEK-SSRs/

When I get my replacement SSR's, I'm going to tear that Fotek apart, and I bet I'll find a much lower rated TRIAK? And I'm not a betting kind of guy!

 

[Esmitee]

For the record, there are many different manufacturers selling fake foteks on alibaba the quality likely varys quite a bit. It sounds like you might have had either a faulty or poor quality fake.

I'm betting it's a FAKE, I will tear it apart when I get the new ones.
We will see if it is or not.

 

[Esmitee]

From my understanding of how heat transfer works that statement makes no sense. An aluminum heatsink with thermal compound that doesn't get hot just proves it's working well or it's still plenty large enough for the just. do you think they arent made of aluminum or something? these are common din rail ssr heatsinks.. same as auberins and erbew sell for 3 times the price (besides the flashy anodized coatings)

I have 5 of these same heat sinks in a couple panels , some dating back four years. All set up the same way as the OP has them and I can assure you they DO work great this way.. I even have a $20 crydom clone dual ssr on one of these heat sinks which controls both my BK and HLT elements in my current panel... no issues

Another note, The box I have is thin Stainless Steel and it measures 17 1/2" x 23 1/2" x 8" deep It's huge and all the components have a lot of room. Lots of airspace too. It's not all crammed in there like a lot of projects I see.

 

[Esmitee]

Physics. Mass dissipates heat. Weight one of those $2 Tee shaped heatsinks. I used some of them for a long time too. Until I switched to a real heat sink. My real heat sinks get hotter than hell. Because they are dissipating heat. But hey, whatever works. It's not like we're operating nuclear powerplants. It's just beer.

The heat sinks that I have, are designed for SSR's. That's another reason "Auberins" sells them for SSR's, although they suggest you upgrade to that Honking Slab of aluminum on top for $100. bucks and it's only worth about $ 30 - 35 bucks. You won't void their warranty if you don't upgrade.
I would think if the heat sink is not hot, it's doing the job it's supposed to do. If it's really hot, I would think it's not working property because it's purpose is to "DISSIPATE HEAT", Not to retain heat.

Another note, The box I have is thin Stainless Steel and it measures 17 1/2" x 23 1/2" x 8" deep It's huge and all the components have a lot of room. Lots of airspace too. It's not all crammed in there like a lot of projects I see.

Here are better pics of my set up Golfindia. Hope you can clearly see how much air the ssr"s and heat sinks, and everything else gets.

 

[augiedoggy]

Physics. Mass dissipates heat.

Exactly! if its not enough mass the heat builds up in whats there! It doesnt just not exist (unless its being efficiently dissipated) ... What your implying makes no sense here.

 

[jimmayhugh]

I think we've covered all the bases here...
I'm out...

 

[golfindia]

Yeah. Horse is dead. But at the risk of belaboring, here's a temp reading on a knockoff Berme 40a SSR running a 5500w element at 100%. It peaks at about 135 deg F. If your heat sink is cool to the touch, you have a magical heat sink.

 

[augiedoggy]

Yeah. Horse is dead. But at the risk of belaboring, here's a temp reading on a knockoff Berme 40a SSR running a 5500w element at 100%. It peaks at about 135 deg F. If your heat sink is cool to the touch, you have a magical heat sink.

you know those "berme knockoffs" aren't knockoffs right? They are made on the same assy line as the mgr and auberin SSRs.. A fan makes all the difference in cooling... This is why all CPU's use fans on the heatsinks..

 

[Esmitee]

Yeah. Horse is dead. But at the risk of belaboring, here's a temp reading on a knockoff Berme 40a SSR running a 5500w element at 100%. It peaks at about 135 deg F. If your heat sink is cool to the touch, you have a magical heat sink.

WOW, if that honking slab of aluminum is @ 130f "outside" your small box with 1 ssr on it, One can only think of how hot that SSR is inside your box. Only 1 thing could fix that.....a magical FAN.

 

[JONNYROTTEN]

When I get my replacement SSR's, I'm going to tear that Fotek apart, and I bet I'll find a much lower rated TRIAK? And I'm not a betting kind of guy!

I went though endless Foteks and they were all fake and fried or never worked. I bought some Crydoms on Ebay for cheap. Still going after a year. That would be my suggestion
Heres a picture of one of the melted Foteks I cracked open. Maybe the numbers will mean something to you?

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/numbers-inside-a-melted-ssr-pic.592756/

 

[augiedoggy]

Yeah. Horse is dead. But at the risk of belaboring, here's a temp reading on a knockoff Berme 40a SSR running a 5500w element at 100%. It peaks at about 135 deg F. If your heat sink is cool to the touch, you have a magical heat sink.

I do have what appears to be just about that same heat sink mounted on a rims+biab panel I made with a 40a ssr and an ssvr mounted to it and To be honest it gets much hotter than my my main control panel heat sinks because there is no fan to cool it. I actually havent decided if I'm going to replace it or not because I dont like how hot it gets compared to the cheaper heat sink and fan setups mounted inside my other two panels.
View media item 68523

 

[Esmitee]

I went though endless Foteks and they were all fake and fried or never worked. I bought some Crydoms on Ebay for cheap. Still going after a year. That would be my suggestion
Heres a picture of one of the melted Foteks I cracked open. Maybe the numbers will mean something to you?

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/numbers-inside-a-melted-ssr-pic.592756/

Hey, when I tear that ssr apart, I will look for some kind of ID markings on it, like on the one you opened up.

 

[LarMoeCur]

I run a very large heat sink that sits right on top of my 50a panel. It get's pretty hot during the boil. It get's close to 100 degrees for sure. When I have both elements running it's over 110 degrees for sure. If you touch it you know it's hot. Those heat sinks may not be the best choice for a 60A panel but should be adequate depending on good surface contact and thermal paste. Especially with a fan to help cool.

After doing the research for my panel build. I would never buy a Fotek SSR even if the Pope himself was selling them. The net has thousands of stories about fakes coming from very reputable electronics supply chains. There are way to many SSRs out there that have zero reported fakes. They are only a dollar or two more.

 

[augiedoggy]

I run a very large heat sink that sits right on top of my 50a panel. It get's pretty hot during the boil. It get's close to 100 degrees for sure. When I have both elements running it's over 110 degrees for sure. If you touch it you know it's hot. Those heat sinks may not be the best choice for a 60A panel but should be adequate depending on good surface contact and thermal paste. Especially with a fan to help cool.

After doing the research for my panel build. I would never buy a Fotek SSR even if the Pope himself was selling them. The net has thousands of stories about fakes coming from very reputable electronics supply chains. There are way to many SSRs out there that have zero reported fakes. They are only a dollar or two more.

I would have to agree with this.. The only reason I still have a few foteks kicking around is I bought them for my first panel build or they came with pics I bought back then and they all still work fine.. I was lucky.
I now buy the berme (mager,mgr made) for $5 each with free shipping.

 

[doug293cz]

Those cheap heat sinks don't get warm to the touch, because they don't conduct heat..... The fans are just Blowing warm air around inside of that box. Best of luck.

Heatsinks get hot because they do an inadequate job of transferring heat to the air in the configuration in which they are used. The thermal conduction of the heatsink only affects how well heat gets from the component being cooled out to the fins, which is were most of the heat transfer to the air occurs. Even with low thermal conductivity, a heatsink would get hot if it didn't transfer heat well to the surrounding air.

Physics. Mass dissipates heat. Weight one of those $2 Tee shaped heatsinks. I used some of them for a long time too. Until I switched to a real heat sink. My real heat sinks get hotter than hell. Because they are dissipating heat. But hey, whatever works. It's not like we're operating nuclear powerplants. It's just beer.

Mass does not dissipate heat. Mass absorbs heat, analogous to how a capacitor absorbs electric charge. The purpose of a heatsink is not to absorb heat, but rather to conduct heat away from a source and transfer that heat to the surrounding air. The fact that your heatsink gets hot means that it is not transferring heat efficiently to the surrounding air. It has nothing to do with the mass of your heatsink. The cooler your heatsink, the better job it is doing of getting rid of the heat transferred to it by the heat source. A poor thermal interface reduces the amount of heat the gets transferred from the source to the heatsink, resulting in a hotter source.

Blowing air over a heatsink (forced convection) can easily increase the thermal dissipation by 10X or more, compared to natural convection. OP actually has a rather well designed forced convection cooling system (fan, separate air inlet and outlet, fan air stream aimed directly across heatsinks.) The heatsinks OP is using are more than adequate in that configuration.

Heat flow mathematics is just like electricity flow math. In fact thermal engineers use electrical circuit models to do calculations on heat flow and component temperatures. If you understand electric circuits, you can apply that knowledge to heat flow.

Brew on

 

[cegan09]

doug293cz beat me to it, but yup, a lot of misinformation about heat sinks in here.

A heat sink, despite it's name, is not meant to absorb and hold all the heat from the object it's attached to. Not entirely. As said above it's meant to provide a heat path to get heat out of a part and into a cooling medium. Heat is not some static thing, it's energy. Imagine it like a facet pouring into a bucket. At some point the bucket is going to fill up and overflow, unless you're draining that bucket to something else at least as fast as it's being filled. Same with heat, you're dumping heat into the heat sink, but unless you're moving that heat to the surrounding air you will eventually heat soak the heat sink and then both it and the part will climb in temperature until something fails.

Placing a heat sink in still air is called natural convection. It works, just not amazingly. To be efficient you need a LOT of surface area on the cooling fins. That's why guys that choose not to use a fan use a very large heat sink with a lot of fins. As long as your surface area allows heat to flow out of the heat sink at least as fast as it's being put in by the load (SSR in this case), you'll be ok.

Again as mentioned above, forced convection (moving the air over the heat sink) is amazingly more efficient. Even a small amount of air flow makes an incredible difference. The more air flow you have the less surface area your heat sink needs with that air. To go back to my horrible bucket analogy, instead of just having a drain in the bucket we'd be pumping the water out. The larger the pump, the smaller the bucket can be to catch all that's coming out of the facet.

So to relate this to your SSR and heatsink choice. If your heat sink is getting hot, that means the SSR is hotter. And the hotter the SSR runs the shorter it's life will be. Knockoff or not, heat kills electronics. If you want your setup to last a long time go overkill with the heatsink and consider a fan. Every now and then you're going to get a junk SSR if you're buying ones known to be flaky, but the cooler you keep things the longer they should last.

 

[lump42]

say that first sentence out loud ... Does that make any practical sense? The official rating of the device already has this buffer built in.

Again many fake fotek SSRs use components designed for only 10 amp regardless... A real 25amp rated device is rated to be used for up to 25amps that includes 23 amps... If it makes you feel better to use 40 amp equipment for 23 amps great but it isn't needed unless the products your using aren't properly designed.
The NEC 80% rule everyone here keeps misquoting if for devices that draw 100% sustained loads for over 3 hours continuous.

The truth is we are all discussing this without even knowing how the SSR was being cooled

Yeah that first sentence was bad, sorry. I never said it made sense to me, that was just the way it was explained to me by the facilities manager who had an associates in EET. I'm a horticulturalist not a electrician. I guess the NEC 80% rule made sense for the lights being ran for 16-18 hours.

 

[augiedoggy]

Yeah that first sentence was bad, sorry. I never said it made sense to me, that was just the way it was explained to me by the facilities manager who had an associates in EET. I'm a horticulturalist not a electrician. I guess the NEC 80% rule made sense for the lights being ran for 16-18 hours.

Yeah there's a lot of scenarios and stipulations in the rulebook. That and the rulebook is always changing.

 

[JONNYROTTEN]

My heatsink is setup on the side on the side of the box with the ribs facing up and down to form a draft. I can hold my hand 3 inches above the top of the heatsink and feel the hot air coming off it.

It gets piping hot at times. My last brew day I put the box near my front door and opened the door just a crack. Just the small draft from the door instantly cooled the heatsink from to hot to touch to luke warm. A small amount of movement goes a long way.

 

[doug293cz]

My heatsink is setup on the side on the side of the box with the ribs facing up and down to form a draft. I can hold my hand 3 inches above the top of the heatsink and feel the hot air coming off it.

It gets piping hot at times. My last brew day I put the box near my front door and opened the door just a crack. Just the small draft from the door instantly cooled the heatsink from to hot to touch to luke warm. A small amount of movement goes a long way.

Yep. Placing the heatsink on the side of the box, as you have done, will improve natural convection significantly. I'm not sure who started the trend of putting heatsinks on top of enclosures, but people seem to follow that lead blindly. It's not optimal for natural convection, but it does work well enough in most instances.

Just for the record, I spent 36 years as an electronics packaging engineer (i.e. how to put components in modules, how to attach modules and other components to circuit boards, and how to put circuit boards and other things into enclosures.) One large sub-discipline in electronics packaging is thermal engineering (i.e. how to get rid of the heat generated by electronics.) Thermal engineering wasn't my specialty, but I worked closely with many thermal engineers, and learned quite a lot along the way. This doesn't make me any better than anyone else, but it does give me some credibility when discussing this topic.

Brew on

 

[Esmitee]

I run a very large heat sink that sits right on top of my 50a panel. It get's pretty hot during the boil. It get's close to 100 degrees for sure. When I have both elements running it's over 110 degrees for sure. If you touch it you know it's hot. Those heat sinks may not be the best choice for a 60A panel but should be adequate depending on good surface contact and thermal paste. Especially with a fan to help cool.

After doing the research for my panel build. I would never buy a Fotek SSR even if the Pope himself was selling them. The net has thousands of stories about fakes coming from very reputable electronics supply chains. There are way to many SSRs out there that have zero reported fakes. They are only a dollar or two more.

Well, 1st of all, in the case of these brewing control panels we're talking about here, I don't think you size the heat sink(s) for the ssr's by the total amperage of the panel. You have to size the heat sink(s) to match the ssr's.

Say you have a 60 amp panel and you have (1) 60 amp ssr. Yes, you would need a rather large heat sink to dissipate the large amount of heat that 60 amp ssr is going to generate.

Now lets say you have a 60 amp panel and you have (6) 10 amp ssr's. You could have 6 small heat sinks because they would generate very little heat individually, or, have 1 very large heat sink if you combined them on a single heat sink. In this case, my guess is you would need even a larger heat sink than the size of a heat sink rated for a single 60 amp ssr. Doug may clear this up?

i agree with you on the Foteks, like I said before, I didn't purchase the ssr's separately , they came bundled with the Mypin controllers.

 

[Esmitee]

Heatsinks get hot because they do an inadequate job of transferring heat to the air in the configuration in which they are used. The thermal conduction of the heatsink only affects how well heat gets from the component being cooled out to the fins, which is were most of the heat transfer to the air occurs. Even with low thermal conductivity, a heatsink would get hot if it didn't transfer heat well to the surrounding air.


Mass does not dissipate heat. Mass absorbs heat, analogous to how a capacitor absorbs electric charge. The purpose of a heatsink is not to absorb heat, but rather to conduct heat away from a source and transfer that heat to the surrounding air. The fact that your heatsink gets hot means that it is not transferring heat efficiently to the surrounding air. It has nothing to do with the mass of your heatsink. The cooler your heatsink, the better job it is doing of getting rid of the heat transferred to it by the heat source. A poor thermal interface reduces the amount of heat the gets transferred from the source to the heatsink, resulting in a hotter source.

Blowing air over a heatsink (forced convection) can easily increase the thermal dissipation by 10X or more, compared to natural convection. OP actually has a rather well designed forced convection cooling system (fan, separate air inlet and outlet, fan air stream aimed directly across heatsinks.) The heatsinks OP is using are more than adequate in that configuration.

Heat flow mathematics is just like electricity flow math. In fact thermal engineers use electrical circuit models to do calculations on heat flow and component temperatures. If you understand electric circuits, you can apply that knowledge to heat flow.

Brew on

Hey Doug, thank you for making this CRYSTAL CLEAR!

 

[BrunDog]

I can’t help but jump in. Assuming a heat source is constant (and we do not know if we are all assessing the same thing, as different SSR’s under different current flows, duty frequency, voltages, etc. will produce different amounts of heat) then the heat sink’s job is to conduct that heat away from the SSR and convect, conduct, and radiate it it to the air around it. If the interface between the HS and the SSR conducts poorly, the HS will be cooler to the touch than if it conducts well. So that doesn’t mean it’s working well. If the HS conducts heat from the SSR well but doesn’t transfer it to the atmosphere well, it will be hot to the touch.

So unilaterally saying hot or cold to the touch is not a legit assessment of a HS’s performance. If you want to accurate determine performance, take temp readings from the SSR baseplate and the HS mount surface (should be close) then from the mount surface to the distal fins (should have a delta), then the ambient air.

 

[augiedoggy]

I can’t help but jump in. Assuming a heat source is constant (and we do not know if we are all assessing the same thing, as different SSR’s under different current flows, duty frequency, voltages, etc. will produce different amounts of heat) then the heat sink’s job is to conduct that heat away from the SSR and convect, conduct, and radiate it it to the air around it. If the interface between the HS and the SSR conducts poorly, the HS will be cooler to the touch than if it conducts well. So that doesn’t mean it’s working well. If the HS conducts heat from the SSR well but doesn’t transfer it to the atmosphere well, it will be hot to the touch.

So unilaterally saying hot or cold to the touch is not a legit assessment of a HS’s performance. If you want to accurate determine performance, take temp readings from the SSR baseplate and the HS mount surface (should be close) then from the mount surface to the distal fins (should have a delta), then the ambient air.

This is true but the surface would have to be really ueven for this to occur with thermal grease which has been used. I have bought about 8 of these cheap heat sinks off eBay now usually going with the cheapest source at the time and I have yet to see this. Not saying it's not possible but I just don't think it's likely either as if it were bent slightly screwing the SSR would likely have some effect on flattening against the ssr surface.

My current build for my 3bbl panel has 2 very large repurposed heat sinks from a 2000w uv lamp ballast. I'm planning on mounting them on the sides as I've read many times here that they will dissapate the heat to the air faster this way. I too think most people seem to care more about the cosmetic aspect when mounting on top. If I had the room to mount internal sinks in the fans path I wouldn't hesitate.