Six dozen eggs went into the turkey fryer the night before the fair. And we woke up to six dozen extremely hard boiled eggs! The PID controller had failed with a flashing o o o o on the display and the output full on!

That error indicates a failed thermocouple. A quick swap-out with a new T/C and the error was the same.

A failure with $10 of eggs isn’t so bad, except for the Murphy’s-Law timing of it, but if it had been a nice piece of beef, the damage could have been far worse.

Here’s a brief article about the failure and the fair:
http://digital-diy.com/Electronics-Blog/the-kitsap-mini-maler-faire.html

I suspect that whatever great programming fails with the output on may fail to turn on the over temperature alarm too….

Unfortunately my worst bridging problems were around through-hole pads, which would be more challenging to mask off with tape. Taping the board before milling and then peeling the tape off the traces (leaving it on the isolation) seems vaguely interesting, though …

I’ve found soldering milled boards works much easier if you use Kapton tape as a buffer so the solder doesn’t wick. You can see what I mean here: http://www.fromorbit.com/content/finished-smd-ring-oscillator

I’ve had great success with it and I just keep reusing the same pieces until they don’t stick any more.

Cheers,
Alan.