Teardown of an eBay 25A Solid State Relay. (SSR) 

I have considered these relays but avoided them because of safety concerns. I have no problem piling on heaps of dubious low-voltage components that are practically free, but it is a different situation when a component is to be connected to the mains. I don't want to burn down the house or electrocute someone. Even though yours seems reasonably good, I think I'll pass. When certification markings are false and no one is accountable, it is hard to have confidence in a part. This is the first video of yours that I've watched Mr. Clive, and it is simply fabulous. First class. Thanks for doing this.

Thanks Clive! I change out CryDom HD4890 SSR (480Volt 90Amp) Solid State Relays that run 7K watt heater bands on a PVC extrusion lines on a pretty regular basis. About 30 of them are used per line to heat "zones" controlled by Telemachique controllers. Always wanted to see inside one but the Crydom's are potted! Great video! Hate that the Crydom's sometimes fail in a closed gate state and burn up heater bands!

Thanks for this tear down Clive. I have the exact same part from an ebay seller that I intended to use in a Kiln controller (~3KW max output). So after watching this I stripped mine down to reveal that it also contains the BTA12-600B, obviosuly not quite sufficient for my application. I have now ordered a BTA24-600B to uprate this to its original spec of 25A, at least I will now be operating its safe area. Thanks again for your entertaining and interesting videos!

I have a few of those in my shop. Thanks for the helpful teardown.

Bought a few "FOTEK" SSR-25DA a few years ago, used them to control approx. 1kW heaters at 230V. A very light load, only 4-5amps and I have had no problems. Fortunately they are also mounted on a decent heatsink, enclosed in a metal box and controlled by a PLC so there is no human contact with the input. Had some leftovers so after watching this video I cut one open and found a single BTA20-600 inside. A bit bigger than the one in the video but still only rated for 20A, not the full 25A. The input circuit is different and actually quite nice, it has a LM337 regulator connected as 12mA current limiter, which supplies constant current to the optocoupler for the full range of 3-30V. However the PCB is horribly badly designed, input and output traces very close (1-2mm) for the whole width of the board, there is quite enough space to do this properly, really makes one wonder why they had to screw it up. After some thought I got more curious and two weeks ago I ordered a few more SSR-25DA and SSR-40DA from different China ebay sellers just to check them out. Shipping was unusually quick, they all arrived here in Iceland 7-10 days after ordering. First I noticed that none of the items looked exactly like the pictures in the listings, minor difference like "Taiwan made" changed to "Made in Taiwan" and "Solid State Relay" becomes "Solid State Module". Next I split them open and found a single BTA12-600 inside the SSR-25DA type as in the video. So only a 12A TRIAC in a 25A rated module, not good! The listing pictures for the 40A show a module with two screws on the bottom, indicating it might have two power-components, one could even dream about two antiparallel SCRs which is the proper way to make a 40A SSR. Unfortunately they sent a different type with just one screw and a single BTA16-600 in the SSR-40DA. 16A instead of 40A, even worse than the 25A one!! Also the RC filter across the TRIAC was completely missing, no components, just empty holes on the PCB!!! The PCB of the 25A type is exactly like the one in the video, but the 40A has a much better PCB, with SMD components, good clearance and a milled slots between input/output traces. The 40A is also filled with more resin, the space below the PCB was almost completely filled on the output side and the components on top of the board well covered. A real shame they then ruined the whole thing with a 16A TRIAC. Some used heat conducting paste when mounting the TRIACs, some had no paste. It is possible to disassemble those SSRs without much damage, first pry the top cover with sticker up using a small screwdriver. Next use a fine tipped soldering iron to melt/burn the resin from the head of the TRIAC-fixing screw. Then remove the screw and finally the metal heatsink. The TRIAC will stay in place and hopefully not tear any traces on the PCB. Reassembly is also possible, but hardly recommended. After this experience I will try to avoid those SSRs. They are only good for appox. 25-30% of rated load. They should not be used where humans (or any other live creatures) might come in contact with the input wires, the insulation between input/output is not to be trusted.

I took apart an old 1980's vintage USA made 10Amp 140V ssr and it is indeed fully filled with dense black compound. The lid is a full cover and they have little legs that extend into the potting compound to hold the lid on. Much more robust construcutib than what is shown above.

Wow! Thanks for such a quick response. I am pretty much still in the electro-mechanical era so this type of thing is new to me, but still interesting.Pity most schools can't make subjects as interesting as you do.Fantastic work!

Thank you! You've been very helpful. I've been eyeing some of those for a project. Every time I hovered over the checkout button I would get a little voice telling me, "You get what you pay for."

SSRs are really intended for fast switching that would wear out a contactor (controlling temperature on a heater, switching in a VFD) If you want something to be left on for long periods your usually better off with just a contactor. Best for resistive loads, they don't handle inductive surges well.

Years ago we used to build home control boards and in one of them we used a similar arrangement but simpler as the input voltage was known - hence resistor into the zero-crossing opto-triac then the same components on the right. We used 15A triacs on heatsinks and controlled 2KW heaters no problem.

I messed around with some triac circuits some years ago which were basically schematic equivalent to this thing. Had no difficulties powering incandescent lights, occasionally some difficulties with compact fluorescents (the holding current you mentioned). One thing that I think would be extremely good advice is to be VERY CAREFUL about powering heavy loads and/or heater loads with these devices. When the triacs got warm, they tended to self trigger, so that even when the opto-isolator circuit was turned off, they would still pass current. (negative temperature coefficient of solid-state devices) If you are thinking of controlling a heating device with one of these, I strongly recommend using an electromagnetic relay instead -- especially given clive's teardown results showing you can't trust the printed current rating.

'with a little bit more design effort' a true saying for most bargain Chinese products!

Always nice to see what you're really getting in these modules.

This is one I needed to see, but I didn't know that till I saw it. This is amazing to see the insides of something I have used so many of!

Thanks for posting, it's good to see the insides. I used an SS40DD (to switch a DC 3A load) controlled by an arduino GPIO pin. I was using it well within spec, but it got very hot indeed and all the case melted and twisted. I built my own after that :) :)

It's fascinating to see what I've been using for the last six years! I'm glad now that I acted on impulse and used them conservatively, and only for personal projects. But they have worked without complaint.

I love how you have teardown videos of the random stuff I buy from ebay.

Stumbled across this whilst going through your older videos - and I just happen to have one of these sat on my desk! Very useful teardown and glad to see they aren't all that bad.

Just got one of these to control the heated bed on a 3d printer I'm building. It was a relief to hear your verdict that it may be up to the job. Fingers crossed.

Christ... I had one of these explode on me today, an SSR-40 DA unit rated to 40A. Opened it up to find the same bloody triac as the one in the video!

Have used 25 amp solid state relays but when load was more then 3 amps would mount it on a heat sink and use heat conducting paste. Have just used a 6 by 6" aluminum plate that was 1/4" thick for loads up to 50% of label. Nice vid.

I cant get my head around the concept of faking a 25A SSR and selling it for a couple of pounds on ebay when they could sell it for the same price rated and labelled as an 8A device instead. It would still be a very competitive price but legitimately rated.

OMRON tops there SSRs all the way with sealant. Very seldom have any problems with their components, but they are quite pricey.

Well done Clive. Good investigation.

It is always interesting when you take things to bits. More spacing! More potting compound! Ya, for limited usage, looks OK.

I love your videos, big guy (I am a big guy, also). This one in particular is motivating. I have long wondered why solid state relays rated at 25 amps do not perform as advertised. After a really looooooong research, I found that the amperage rating is bullshit. It is all about the wattage. At 5 volts, sure the relay will switch 25 amps, but at 280 volts, it will only switch 1 amp. So, people that want to switch mains power (120 v in the US) are tricked into thinking that they can switch 25 amps, when they can only switch about 300 watts (2.5 amps)

I did not expect even that quality for that price.

Thanks for warning us about this kind of devices ! I tested mine today, the led lights up, but it doesn't work at all.

Thank you for sacrificing this relay to show us how it works. I am concerned that when there is 240V AC on the relay it is showing about 10V AC between the backplate and ground or neutral. I wanted to bolt this to a grounded chassis but with a potential between them it sounds like a bad idea.

Two RC constants in the circuity is using two time constants or double time constants is to make full use of the triac for more efficacy. Thus making use of the negative and positive parts of the sine wave

I prefer the Use of Crydom SSR's. I have a bunch of Crydom SMR 4850-6 which can handle 96-480VAC at 50Amps. To control these thing you need a Supply Voltage (8-32VDC) to power the internal Logic, and then you can use the inverting or non-inverting control input to turn this thing on and off. It also has a N.O. and N.C. Alarm output and a integrated red Alarm Status LED to show abnormal conditions. A green LED shows normal operation when switched on. The Encapsulation is made with thermally conductive Epoxy.

We actually use similar relays. Allen bradley drives switch it to power a 120 volt brake on sew eurodrive motor. Works great. Great video as usual Big Clive ⚡️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿⚡️ Our relays are allen bradley or omron.

if you use one of these make sure you derate it by 50% especially if you don't use a heat sink. (ebay sells them) I have had quite a few fry spectacularly (fire smoke total met down) controlling a 1500 watt heater 120 v. swapped out for 40A rated ones (almost same price) and stopped the fire hazard. BTW they work very well connected to output pins on arduino boards

Just received my second batch of these for some small arduino projects. They've all withstood a couple of months of switching 5A every few seconds. Very happy with them. Obviously not a fully Professional part though.

I'm using a pair of DC-type SSRs to control the electromechanical spring brakes on a 12.8m satellite dish (former NATO, we're restoring it for scientific use). The control system is 24VDC, as are the brakes, but the brakes are higher current than the controller can sink, so, SSRs. They're notionally rated for 40A, but I'm guessing the truth is much less. They came with heatsinks and the brakes are only putting a roughly 4-5AMP load through the relay output--rather more than the controller can directly sink. I've been an electronics tinkerer since 1973, and this is my first experience with SSRs. I also picked up some 24V contactors, in case the SSRs didn't work out, but, so far, they're fine. I placed large (30A) diodes across the brake coils, because it wasn't clear whether there was any kind of snubber network inside the SSR.

I use this one for my brewing temprature controller. It works well in that application with a 12v signal from a PID to trigger it. If I was to market the unit I would probably use better relays and pid's though.

Zero crossing is not great for inductive loads. I've used these FOTEK relays quite a bit, however I generally use them @ 1/10 spec. Doing that I have never had any trouble and they are cheap enough that such over-specing is very affordable.

I ran a 2kW (~8A) heater through this thing.. in about 30 minutes the room was filled with melted plastic smell. The damn thing melted into a blob

Great stuff,i would like to see inside a proper non clonned one,just for reference.Cheers Clive,love your vids.

Real ones have about the same inside, but better clearance and filled generally with a glass bead filled resin to save the cost of the expensive resin. This one is filled with a powder filled resin ( probably chalk powder or some milled dry clay) so keep it dry, it probably is hygroscopic. The 2n ceramic snubber is probably the same 10n 2kV Class Y ceramic used in SMPS use, where it has quite a good pulse handling and also will fail open circuit. Not a bad choice, cheap but will do the job better than a film unit. Anyway, standard appnote, and the zener does double duty as reverse polarity protection for the opto, though the LED indicator will die with reverse voltage, but who will ever see the red inside a cabinet in any case. As to the triac, I doubt it has any compound, relying instead on the resin seeping under to fill gaps from the screw bending the tab, and if the screw is loose it will keep it in place as well. Isolated tab, so not really meant for more than 5A of load, unless you really use a decent heatsink, which that zincalume casting is not. Rating 220VAC 2.5A with a peak of 5A is more appropriate for it.

Thanks for doing this video, I have used this in my arduino controlled espresso machine, I didn't pop it (rare for me!) I figured it would be encapsulated, there are a few brands on the bay, identical except the red 'fotek' brand. Price was the same, so I went with the Fotek, although mine is also lightweight and airy and I also expected it to be potted full. Learned a little and a lot here today, I am running mine at 5v switching and only using it for a 1300w-ish heater under supervision so for me I am sure it will be fine. Great video!

Only just come across this, and I imagine that at time of watching (Dec 2023) any SS relay on eBay priced at under £5,- isn't even going to have a 10A TRIAC in it. 100mA or even 1A perhaps (Whatever will just about withstand a 30s inbound test on a 20A load) but definitely not 10A! 📦💸😉 That aside; Living in an all-electric flat I'm struggling a lot with cost of heating and I keep considering ideas like running TRIACs and ICs close to their upper tolerances and benefitting from the heat this will give off as a biproduct. Even if I have to swap in new TRIACs every week it's probably still going to work out a lot cheaper than running my 3kW convection heater at the present 36p/kWh for a few hours each day! ⚡🔥💡

So if i understand this correctly these relays would as you say be used to switch power on and off on say a AC single phase or AC 3 phase big foxtrot motor/pumps etc and then that would mean that the other side of the relay could use a much smaller dc or even ac voltage, switch and wires negating the need for big Foxtrot cables, wires running through to the switch and cabinets etc. Great idea really, I guess you just leave the switch in the on position until you want to turn it off, way safer way to handle all the switches inside cabinets on low voltages and smaller cabling... always wondered how they worked Thanks Clive...

I bought a couple of these several years ago for a brew fermentation controller (BrewPi). Hooked it up to my old fridge and when the fridge should have turned on I heard the sound of something from the compressor but it didn't start up. I assumed the compressor must have seized up after being idle for months so gave it a few whacks with a rubber hammer but still the same, Something then made me think to check the SSR and turned out it had a crazy on resistance so when hooked to the fridge, the output was something like under 100V rather than 220ish. Swapped it out for the other SSR I had and it worked fine... Invested in regular relays for that project instead. I do understand there are no shortage of fake FOTEK SSRs that likely you and I found for bargain basement prices, but the genuine FOTEKs are more reliable. What about ordering one from CPC or the like and seeing if that's any different?

Hi Clive. I really like your video's. keep up the good work! greetings from The Netherlands

Thanks clive :-D, i sort of expected it to be more heavy duty inside, that ssr looks more like on par with a lamp dimmer. I had something like that in a draw, it had a thick base and solid like a block of resin, its a black device apparently made in america, never found a use for it.

It is interesting to see how one of those commercial modules does it. I don't know about pulling multiple amperes through it with only that bottom plate for heatsinking, though I guess that depends on what you have it mounted to. And I'm assuming that the tab on that triac is isolated? I have a bunch of 4A/400V triacs on hand and plans to build one or more of these. I suspect that I'd probably use somewhat different parts for the snubber network, though. I plan to use the MOC3010 opto, I think it's the MOC3020 that's the one with the zero-crossing detector in it. Been a while since I looked at those datasheets.

I don't know what is the norm, but I tore open a US brand SSR once, and it was basically a chip and wire hybrid, bonded to the copper base plate. No PCB, no packaged components, just chips, bus wires, covered with clear silicone. The circuit was stupid simple, too, like 3 chips and no passives.

Great tear-down, really interesting! I've been using one of these Fotek branded SSR 25 DA (not sure if the one I have is genuine or fake) for about 1.5+ years to switch a 1.3kW purely resistive load at 240V AC from a 3.3V input. It was ridiculously cheap on ebay, so I guess mine is the fake one. Probably still working because I'm well within the "safe" operating envelope. Would no doubt have exploded by now if I was on 110V mains :-)

I let the smoke out of one of these, yesterday. On a temp. Controller, for my homebrew. It worked fine for the first 20' or so. Then that cooking component smell, it failed open.

99.99% of these Foteks on eBay are counterfit.

Thanks for that...I haven't used triacs in my ex-line of work so would not know but I do know now. I will be on the look out if I ever do.

IIRC real ssrs have the die on the back and everything wirebonded and then there are the mosfet based ones, which are also mounted on the back but they use back to back mosfets instead.

jumping back 7 yrs in time now. im guessing the yt algo chose this due to the words resin used so many times so that would be a logical grouping as well as triac which would then bump up the relevance.

Great Vid, especially the drawn diagram. The one thing that has always confused me about most Asian products is that they will do something about 99% right, but manage to pull the defeat outta the jaws of victory at the very last moment every time.

As somebody who has torn apart high quality solid state relays... Yes, they are typically fully potted basically to the brim.

I had trouble driving one of these cheap ones with a raspberry pi (3.3V). Had to add an opto isolator. Works well though.

After watching this video earlier this week, we had a system come in from a university that had one of the counterfeit SSRs, Luckily it hasn't been run at all.

I have bought 4 of these. one of the first two would not operate at all. I've had no issues with the other three. I have two operating in my cnc setup, switching on my spindle and vacuum system with no issues at all. My little spindle pulls maybe 8 amps, and my vacuum about the same.

Hi, slightly late to the party, my company use SSRs to switch 240v 10A motors with 12v DC, we are talking literally thousands of motors, we use SSRs from a certain UK supplier and they're very reliable, except when the SSR fails, they go open circuit across the switch, that then obviously causes the motor to run continuously until the thermal cutout detects that it's glowing and about to catch fire, or it actually catches fire. So, we got a few of these to test, not based on cost, and sure enough, we managed to get one to fail and it just died and didn't go open circuit, brilliant, or so we thought, we then passed these SSRs to our tech guys who threw them in the bin and said that 'if we ever put that shit on one of our units without consulting them first then there'd be trouble', they said that these things were 'lethal' and they'd rather kill motors than engineers.

I have several of those SSR. You need 5V to switch them on; 3.3V doesn't gonna make it. I made my first SSR with the same components before buying them and have it working for more than a year in a Sous Vide (1 KW heater), so, component wise, them seems reliable to me.

thank you so much for this video i keep learning more and more from you keep up the good work sir

One thing you didn't test is the turn on voltage. Triacs are not the same gate turn on in all quadrants. You will see that below 3V (2.2 - 2.7V) the SSR will only be half wave. That could damage some AC devices which are inductive and that may be very close for 3.3V devices. More expensive SSR like CRYDOM use a constant current circuit and LED drive current will be a constant 2ma from 3-32V. You get what you pay for.

We used a 75A SSR in a safety analyzer (bit like a PAT tester). It needed to switch 20A inductive loads and pop a 20A fuse on fault without popping itself. So ... yeah - do it right. If you've spent $4000 on a big brand safety analyzer, it had better "bounce" and not break when you abuse it a little.

The better high power SSR's use back to back SCR's rather than TRIACS because SCR's are more reliable when driving large inductors like motors. I talked to Motarola years ago and they told me you have to overdrive TRIACS to reliable switch high inductance loads in all four quadrants. This is easy to do if you know what voltage your going to be driving from but can be more problematic if you really do have to have a wide input control voltage. We were buiding our own SSR's so we controlled the input switching voltage and could set the gate driving voltage and thus the current.

Here is a reply I received from an Amazon seller after leaving a review of their fake SSR. It's a pretty sad excuse. "I'm very sorry. I know our mistake made you a little disappointed, but please give me a few minutes to explain that，this product is from OEM and delivered within the period of novel coronavirus pneumonia ,at that time China is lack of raw materials and lack employee .Most of the worker, including engineers, was on vacation. Only a few people stayed in the factory. (originally, SSR-25AA used BAT24 Chip,SSR-40AA used BTA41A ) Due to the fact that engineers can't get to the company in time, many employees can't go to work in time because of pneumonia in China. Pneumonia affects the closure of the city) which leads to the following mistakes. Originally, our brand is eqiek, but due to the negligence of the printing staff, they make the label FOTEK instead of EQIEK . But we confirmed that there is only a batch of part labeled printed wrong. In fact, the main drawing of our products is eqiek(Pls check OEM brand EQIEK as attachment ) We have confirmed with the factory that we have ordered 1000 pieces of ssr25da and ssr25aa respectively. More than 900 pieces are produced with bat24a. Only a few dozen pieces are produced by BTA12A within a period of novel coronavirus pneumonia , engineer can't back to office immediately ,one worker mistaked BTA12 instead by bta24a, When we found out, more than 1000 goods had been delivered to Amazon's warehouse. We contacted Amazon to return the goods. However, due to the impact of pneumonia in the United States, there was no reply. Last , we have no idea to deal with returning the goods. .AMZ service answered :Because 1000pcs SSR-25DA with SSR-25AA have been diverted by AMZ warehouse .we feel very helpless about this matter. But we will be responsible for our every customers.Please Believe us, we only do honest business, we will not deceive every customer. On behalf of our company, I apologize to you. Now our company proposes two solutions: we will refund the money to you, or we will send you replenishment from China (this time we promise SSR-25AA 100% function and with BTA24A chip ) ,However, the US postal service is very slow and may not be able to deliver it to you in time as the spread of pneumonia in USA ,so hope your advice to us . Hope you can forgive us and hope you can give us a chance to service for you .We will cherish this chance .we are willing to return payments for you .Thanks for your time to read this long email . All best wishes for you and your family Happy everyday JESSICA"

Opened up an eBay Fotek SSR-40 VA (phase angle controller) you'll never guess what! It's (the triac) not rated for 40A but 25A. At the price it's worth buying two to tare one apart before using the other. I would advise a PSR-25 if you are looking for something a little more tried and tested for phase angle control.

i use these in pinball machines that have ac motors controlling backbox animations they are easy to drive off the 24v solenoid lines and don't have woefully undersized traces on pcbs to burn up without blowing an 8A fuse

I just bought one of these. After watching this I stated wondering if I fill it with resin it might be better than it is now. The load that it needs to handle would be around 8 amps so it should handle that well.

This is dangerous stuff. By most electronic safety regulations you;d expect 6.4 mm CL/CR between the live circuit and the 30V circuit on PCB material. that means for a DIL package you need all of it!

if you use one of these make sure you derate it by 50% especially if you don't use a heat sink. (ebay sells them) I have had quite a few fry spectacularly (fire smoke total met down) controlling a 1500 watt heater 120 v. swapped out for 40A rated ones (almost same price) and stopped the fire hazard. BTW they work very well connected to output pins on arduino boards

Thanks Clive. Have the 40a version switching my home theatre as the 10a relay kept welding shut!

Watching this was interesting I just replaced one on my T-shirt heat press, fully repaired for a few pounds.

"ekoenig" is actually german for roughly translated "e" for electronics and "koenig" or "König" ("oe" is spelled in germany as "ö") for "king". So the seller seems to be a king in electronics.

I pulled the DC version apart, it had a BJT transistor, with the part number on it, good for about 8A, nowhere near its 25A nameplate. Fraud from China. At 8A it dropped 3V.

I have seen 100 AMP 60 volt DC SSRs on eBay I highly doubt they can sink 100 AMP heat dissipation in the same form factor package that you have FOTEC without liquid cooling. My interest in the DC SSRs was for a golf cart speed controller. The limit however is the PWM response. Others have said the max PWM response was 800 to 900 cps. Krydon brand SSRs are better and can have a slightly higher PWM from 1000-1200 cps but still is within audible hearing range. I would like to see you test and tear down a 100 Amp DC SSR. Thanks for the video.

Always wondered what was in them, thanks for the teardown.

Thanks for showing BTA

I used one on my off grid solar set up to turn the immersion heater on when the batteries were full.

The Crydom unit is fully packed with resin and with an admixture of whst appear to be very fine fibres.The unit failed quite expressively by blowing out part of the top on the a.c. side. Looks as if it may have been the resistor -capacitor network. Another blow out on the upper rh side looking at the unit from above.Further dissection looks like it will destroy any components left.

While to great in design for general use this looks quite decent. I've always been afraid of buying these on Ebay but I think I'll grab a couple now for personal projects.

Be careful with this: I used a 25 A of this type to switch a 2000 W 230 V water boiler , so less than 10 A. However, after a few weeks it completely burnt. (It was hanging on its wires open in the air, so it could cool on the air (20 degrees C). I am happy my house was not set on fire.

Today my 40a fotek ssr burnt out after a good few years of switch a 2kw heater so I decide to lake a look, the triac was a bta24-600b rated for 25A. Thought I would share as this may be useful in relation to Clive's video.

One thing that was omitted in this teardown is a review of the triac to baseplate isolation. It is critical that the line voltage is isolated from the heatsink.

This is niftiness incarnate. I've been looking for a thing like that for a while now.

I have several of these that I use around the house, never had an issue driving just a few amps..

thank you for reverse engineering and the nice schematic (which I copied) for future reference. great engineering work!

Have two Crouzet Gordos ones and a opto22 that are faulty, all 3 are a plastic outer shell filled with resin and a sticker on the terminals. No way of a taking them apart.

I thought I was gonna be really clever and put a few of these in my off road rig. I was all sorts of proud, of how pretty the wiring looked, show stopper... any how, I was having all sorts of troubles, and of course the last things I was to check were these batch of SSR's.... I am quite sure that these are fine in a clean power supply environment, but, these absolutely do not like choppy supply voltages. Please note, the charging system is extremely clean, by automotive standards, quite powerful too. I went as far as adding a few stiffening caps to level out the chop from the rectifier set up in the alternator, that did help lots, but still had issues still left an unpredictable temperment with these, I really wanted to keep them, as per the amount of work that went into wiring them in an art form, never mind the amount of work that would be required to yank'em out, and completely rewire the entire set up, for typical mechanical relays, of which is fine, 40 hours later...LOL... Like I mentioned, I am sure these perform great with a clean power supply, I do not recommend these for automotive use. I thought about trying to build some sort of input anti-spike stabilizer system, but, then, it is kinda defeating the point of the cleanliness and cool factor at that point.... I yanked'em.. Cool video, again!!!

Just wanted to comment that there are now ac and dc versions available from CONRAD with their own "tru component" cheap brand. I would trust those more over chinesium and if i remember correctly they are 12 bucks for the 30Amp version. I was looking for a video to show a colleague why he cant use AC SSR ones with triac for DC loads.. Theres that small "minimum load+voltage" hidden for the arduino industry module he wants to use. No real problem, since he can use a DO-pin to a relays/DC-ssr but again means more parts. I use them to switch on monitors/psus when my pc is on (zero crossing) so i dont burn up the switch when everything gets powered at once (..and blows the RCD..) Bonus: pc in standby means everything else is off, using onternal 5V not from usb)

You didn't show the actual teardown, so I can't tell if the thing was damaged in the process. I'm wondering if the rather nice case could simply be upgraded with a better triac, along with some attention to improving the isolation. Another concern not mentioned is that unless earthed, the bottom plate could become live in a failure. I'm going to be using one of these for a small kiln, so thanks for the warnings on these. I'll bolt it to a grounded heatsink, and make a voltage detector circuit that will enable the Arduino controller to check that the SSR has mains supply voltage across it when it is supposed to be off.

Wow. I’m glad I went with the 40 amp version for a heating application recently, Same brand. bought from amazon.

Brilliant! I've been concerned about this unit that I bought recently, it's for a 240v floodlight being connected to my 12v alarm, you've showed it's properties well. Thanks! Subscribed!

Purchased a few of these not so long ago. Didn't take them up the the marked ratings. Guess I won't be now. LOL I had intended on using one to switch a MOT (MircroWaveOvenTransformer) Spot Welder. I'm quite sure it would had pulled more then 10A. May have worked for some time. Would only be on for microseconds at a shot.

borrowed off the Fotek website about them some what long winded . Established 1995 FOTEK CONTROLS CO., LTD. Established in 1985, the company dedicated itself to the research, development and manufacture of industrial automation hardware in order to support the automation of Taiwan’s machine industries. As all sectors of the industry face fierce global competition,FOTEK continues to provide the guaranteed best quality through advanced technologies and strict quality control ( certified ); At the same time, the company has continue to pushed to increase production, standardization and international standards compliance of electronic controllers in order to reduce costs and increase competitiveness. FOTEK products are in use in many Taiwanese industries such as rubber/plastic machinery packaging, food, printing, parking, transportation, many major machinery producers. The company’s products are sold electronics and cabling. The company is alsoa designated supplier to all around the world, and many internationally renowned companies in Italy, Germany, the USA, the UK and more use FOTEK’s OEM services. With nearly ten thousand products, the customer’s requirements can always be met, making FOTEK best partner for the manufacturing and machining industries. Management Philosophy : → To assert quality excellent。 → To pursue company lasting operation。 → To treat Customers as forever partners。 → To research and develop over-valued product constantly。 → Innovation、Responsibility、Reliability and Performance。

Nice explanation man, tnx for all of the info.

Now we are talking as this is used (or even better the 40A version) for 3d printer heated beds that uses mains instead of a PSU so it will heat up faster.

I was wiring one of these up at work today and this video showed up in my feed when i got home. How odd. It's only switching 3 Amps but controlling a rather critical temperature. Thinking tomorrow i'll change it for one of the £25 ones from R.S.

I find hard to believe that it only have a single triac I build a very complex pulsing array for a custom power inverter... and I used 20 fet's of 45A each for a load of only 250 Amps... so it will be interesting to open one from a reputable brand "Expensive" and see if they only use one of this devices also!!!

tHANKS U SAVED ME A LOT OF MONEY AND WASTED LABOR