Help !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

wrong voltage possibly? not all ssr's are created equally.

It could either be a short in what the SSR was controling or you did nothing wrong and it was simply the SSR itself that went bad.

In electronics we have what is called infant mortality. That is bad semiconductor components tend to fail early on if they are going to fail at all.

The componets that are most prone to failure are those like the triac device in the SSR that carry all the heavy load currents or final amplifier transistors in stereo amps, RF finals and such.

When those types of componets let go, because of where they are in the circuit, it's usually in a spectactur fashion because they are exposed to higher levels of power. Thats when all the magic smoke, that is the secret stuff that makes all electronics devices work, gets out and escapes into the atmospehere. When the magic smoke gets out, there is no fixing it so you must replace the component with one that has it's supply of magic smoke intact.

Get another relay and double check all your wiring and do a resistance check on the whatever the load was, be it a fan or heating element.

As stated make sure you are using the correct voltage rating for the power you are using. You can use 220VAC parts with 110VAC voltage but not the other way round. i.e. your supply voltage can never exceed the rating for the device but these days most power control devices are rated for worldwide supply voltage usage.

You might consider adding a fuse link on both side to protect the PID controller.

Wonder if the thermal paste used on computer heat sinks would work? The Arctic Silver stuff has great thermal conductivity for heat sinks - even on my 125W quad core AMD.

Anyone have a wiring diagram or picture of a fuse link, maybe a recommended one from somewhere?

Did the hi temp grease come from Auber too?

AS the voltage ratting is very important so is the amp ratting... make sure that the heating element and the SSR have the same or the SSR is higher Rated.. Also insure that the PID is in a cool spot, maybe outside the box. this will help the temperature..

Good smoking...