The gap in the pad is so the solder doesn't bridge over the hole during wave soldering.

I have a dimmer like this on my salt lamp. When the bulb burnt out I couldn't find a replacement so I just got a new socket and replaced it, but I took apart the dimmer to see how it worked. At the time I had no idea what I was looking at, but after a few years of watching your videos I definitely understand now. Just thought I'd share that and thank you for making these. I've learned SO much from all your videos, and been quite entertained along the way! :D

You may _hear_ the soldering iron? All those years as an electrician, Clive can now hear electrons flowing and he thinks everyone else can too.

I think the channel motto could be, "That didn't last very long".

As an Amateur Radio operator thanks for mentioning the electrical noise from these terrible triac switched devices. We all need to avoid generating additional RFI.

I get the feeling that these cuts in pads shown in 5:17 might be made that way so the hole won't close when everything is soldered by wave soldering. After some searching it looks that making that cut in pad helps preventing filling that hole with solder.

I can never look at "the nice solder" again without thinking "Juicy Lead-Based Solder". Kester should create a line called "Big Clive's Juicy Lead-Based Solder".

I'm so stoked you did this dimmer. I reverse engineered one of these using one of your old videos as a guide, and so getting to see you work through it like this gives me confidence that I actually understand your older video.

Most lamp cords sold in the US and Canada are configured as two separate conductors, each with their own insulation jacket, stuck together in parallel rather than being enclosed in an outer insulator. I guess they’re actually molded in one piece with two channels side by side. However they’re made, they’re very easy to split into two separate conductors without any danger of cutting a conductor or accidentally removing the insulation. That may be the type of cord that the dimmer manufacturer had in mind - it’s marginally more consumer-friendly.

"Clive fiddles with knob, not clickbait"

I bet Clive has to swim through a sea of ebay tat to reach his bed.

I enjoyed his very smooth drawing of a diac and triac in one continuous motion without lifting the pen.

Always love watching Clive strip on camera.

Actually, the 20K resistor limits the brightest setting, not the dimmest setting. When the variable resistor is set to minimum, the 20K resistor still limits how quickly the capacitor can charge up to 32V so the start of the waveform is always chopped off a bit. The dimmest setting is at full resistance, where you have 520K total which makes the capacitor charge up much more slowly, thus delaying the firing of the diac and triac.I'm not really sure why this is needed except perhaps to limit the triac gate current in the (very) short time between the gate conducting current and the main triac conducting current.

No, don’t toss it in the bin yet; you still have to do a proper EOL video where you short the bulb, turn the dimmer up to full, and then plug it in so there’s a loud >bang< and smoke and fire inside the dimmer! Then you can toss it in the bin. 😆 P.S. A long extension cord is not required, but is suggested. Also, make sure the camera is recording and is pointed at the soon-to-die dimmer innards, so that you can post the video to KZfaq!

Brilliant. I had one of these delivered but had absolutely no clue how to plumb it in. Now I not only know how wire it in, but the entire physics of everything inside.

Have just fitted one of these to a set of vintage Pifco Fairy Lights , glad i found your video because there is NO wiring diagram or any sort of instructions with it . It seems to be working very well so far - i dim the lights to about 80% brightness to save stress on the vintage screw-in bulbs and its stopped the bulbs over-heating . The lights are rated 22 watts .

Yes, Hams still use those bands, and we have some new ones which are susceptible as well.

The board should be rotated 90 degrees.

Re: rfi from triacs. As a radio amateur Clive - I think triac dimmers are the least noisy of the present crop of noise sources available to consumers - anything switched-mode is usually MUCH worse - these put out 'birdies' that wobble and drift all over the bands at multiple frequencies, sometimes even wideband crud up as far as 15MHz. :o(

What cost more this time around... The ink or the item?

You'll probably find the neutral is supposed to be routed on the component side of the board

Thanks Clive. I'm a HAM radio operator and dimmers are a nuisance on "Short Wave" 0-30 Megahertz.

Many years ago I bought a dimmer of the sort that's typically installed in place of a wall switch, often used for dining area lights to give a little "atmosphere". This got installed in a standard electrical box along with some outlets, and worked well for me for many years. The initial application was dimming those incandescent lights that were all over the tree that never got watered enough and invariably dried out way too quickly, but later on it dimmed my bedroom night table lamps. Oh, and that thing did raise merry hell any time I tried to use a standard AM radio anywhere in the house, no filtering at all. Fast forward a number of years and I offered to build one for my lady, so we went to the store and bought what I thought were pretty much the same parts, only it's behaving a bit oddly. If you turn it all the way down, then when you turn it up nothing happens until you get to a certain point and then the lamp comes on rather brightly, at which point I can turn it down to where I want it. Not the best for having to get up in the middle of the night... I have yet to disassemble the thing and see what sort of extra stuff they've put in there. Some time back I was given a couple of LED bulbs for those bedroom lamps, said "dimmable" on the package. I tried them out, and the problem was that they would "sing", rather loudly. This was never going to do for a bedroom situation where I wanted quiet, so the original incandescent bulbs went back in, and those LED bulbs went back in their boxes, to be used elsewhere eventually...

Love how the Patreon email title was "Really crappy inline dimmer" and the KZfaq title is "Low class inline dinner...". I wouldn't put it past KZfaq to demonetize the word "crappy".

Those macro prints are truly amazing.

I brought one, no instructions anywhere on internet it seemed.. so glad one of my favourite youtuber's was on it.

I was trying to wire up one of these all wrong, as had no instructions, thanks to you I now have a working dimmer lamp❤

I can see why these don't play nice with some LED lights. Since only the live is being used the load is the implicit connection to neutral to provide a voltage reference for charging the RC circuit that fires the triac. Normally a standard incandescent filament acts like a shorted link when its cold, but an LED with a power supply in it will probably do weird things if its not for use with one.

It seems you can actually solder the wires on opposite corners if you use the pin of the switch instead of the hole. That should make for a bit better wire placement inside

Big Clive, you did not install the wires correctly. The circuit board has anti stress holes for a reason. (Safety) The wire is mounted threw the un-tinted side and then soldered to the tinted wire board connect. By mounting and soldering wire threw hole this way keeps some yahoo from pulling wire lose from the circuit board and causing severe injury, or even death. I know you already know this. But, by you doing the soldering job in this manner in the video would give someone the opinion that this is a safe practice because Big Clive did it this way so it must be safe. Right? I hope this does not sound bad. That was not my intention to sound haughty. Thank you for your time in the production of these mini doc's.

I think the break in the pad is to stop surface tension from closing the hole if they're using wave soldering.

The purpose of the capacitor is to integrate the voltage during each half cycle. If instead of a capacitor there was a resistor (which would constitute along with the potentiomenter a voltage divider), the diac would always trigger when the latest, at the cusp of each half cycle and the dimmer would only be adjustable in a 50%-100% range

Literally the same ciurcuits can be found in drill speed regulators, just in a different case and with linear potentiometers.

I'm fairly sure this is a clear version of the black-cased salt lamp dimmers they recalled a few years ago in Canada for their amazing self-destruct and fire starting capabilities.

Hey Clive, THANK YOU! This video saved my life. I ordered the exact same dimmer, except mine was rated for 110V. You took me from total confusion to easy peasey!!

I just had an idea, I've come into some lava lamps lately, the previous owner replaced the bulbs with different wattage lamps nothing to hight but just high enough that one works to well and the other works. A guy could get a dimmer and control the flow of the lava lamp. All of this happened while falling asleep. In and out of sleep. I used to watch your videos at the end of the day to relax. But my situation has changed, I tend to watch them in the morning. But today being my birthday I didn't watch any videos til now. 10pm. Almost dropped my phone in my lap dozing off. Anyway very cool video. I whish they made more stuff in clear plastics. Cheers from freezing rain kansas.

The slot in the solder pad is used to prevent the hole in the solder pad to be covered by solder during wave soldering. After wave soldering, a cable/wire is supposed to be fed through the hole and soldered to the pad. Standard practice :-). I lived in the world of one-sided-PCBs in the late 1980'ies in a Danish company that developed and manufactured parts like circuit breakers, dimmers, remote controlled relays and similar for 230VAC installations: LK a/s. The dimmer you draw a schematic of, was the standard configuration in the 1980'ies. A Triac, a Diac, an ajustable resistor (plus one), a capacitor, two connectors (and a required fuse), - that was it. The shelf price in the stores in 1985 was £15, - the result of missing competition. -- Added info: In 1964, LK a/s had ~4200 employees. In 1995, LK a/s had ~1000 employees. Today LK a/s have ~100 employees and is a part of Schneider Electric, France. luv /JD

did you say nano farts ?

Could the gaps in the pads be there to stop the hole filling with solder in production?

Keep the case and put a more interesting circuit in it.

As a Heathkit builder from age 13 (I'm 63), the quality of the stuff Clive gets on eBay is just crap.

Lamp cord over here looks more like mid grade speaker wire: it's easy to cut one side and zip them apart a little on both sides of the cut.

Thanks for showing me something else I knew nothing about

I have always had a slight problem in dealing with people. I always seem to think that everyone I speak with knows what I know. Well especially if they are in the same field as I am. Point in fact, back in 1974 I was stationed at Fort Bliss Texas, I was in charge of the Radio Teletype Section, as well as voice communications. So we decided to build ourselves a mobile communications van on the back of an old Duce and a half truck that had a shop shell on it. So we built on it and were nearly finished.. One day I was busy with meetings at the main commo shop, the truck was in the motor pool, which is where trucks should be when not in use. So I sent two of my fellow communicators down to the motor pool with some switches and an exhaust fan which was to be mounted in a port in the rear of the van. They came back and reported that the fan must be burned out since they had put in 3 switches and all three burned out when they turned them on. Well being the good supervisor I was, I finished my meetings and went with them back to the motor pool. I had them put in another switch for me so I could see what was happening. they did as you suggested, wired one side of 24 Volts DC to one side of the switch, and grounded the other side, before they could turn it on and burn out another switch I stopped them and gave them an impromptu lesson on how to wire in a switch. These guys were trained to operate radios and switchboards, install telephones and even wire in AC lighting in the field, but they could not fathom how to install a switch.

@13:37 ... nano farts? I really don't understand circuitry, but I still enjoy watching all Clive's videos. I might learn something. 🤓

As a ham radio operator, I was pleased to see that item go in the bin where it belongs.

7:05 that's to the customer's benefit. No need to fully unscrew each and every one if you mount hundreds of them. It's the same with screw terminals; you should NEVER supply them in a product with every terminal screwed down.

Just a correction ..the real function of the 20k series resistor is to stop the current inrush blowing a hole in the pot track when at zero ohms, at this point the on off switch closes and places a 0.68uf cap directly across the end resistance of the pot which blows the wiper off the end .... I sorted a identical error 30 odd years ago in a 150 kva welder

Ah, Listening to the interference from a rack of unsuppressed dimmers - the sound of a nest of angry wasps. Would that be phase anger control?

It puts the wires IN the holes, or else it's going to get the hose

I got one of these (in black) on a cheap salt lamp. Used it, mostly because I didn’t know any better, until the Triac went bang unexpectedly in the night. Replaced the whole thing with a proper UL-rated lamp set. Still have the circuit board somewhere in the shop

I've found this exact same dimmer in a lava lamp, the resistor underneath the potentiometer was burnt out and I couldn't read what it was supposed to be, so I instinctively replaced it for a 10K one. It was a pain in the ass to replace. Worked like a charm afterwards. Had to re-solder the cable because it was really poorly done, and I think because of that, it was bridging some paths and that's what caused the resistor to burn out. That little plastic case was so annoying to take apart and put back together, especially cause mine didn't have screw holes, it just clamped together. Oh, and I could NOT find a circuit diagram for it anywhere. Really unfortunate that I didn't find this video when I needed it. 10K should be fine, right?

Some great old school wire stripping and one handed soldering!

So i'm curious if it's possible to rotate the PCB by 90° or whether they maybe mounted it wrong to begin with, so one might be able to avoid the wire contortionism inside the case there. Not that i have any practical reason to be curious of that, was just a thought.

I work in a factory that makes elevator fixtures, you're using the same "special equipment" I use. Dodgy wire cutters and a self-bought box knife makes you a professional.

The types of aftermarket dimmers that used to use were the ones that were just a plug adapter with a knob on them. The type you plug into a socket whereafter you just plug the lamp cord into it.

I work in an EMC lab; it is more likely to fail the conducted emissions than the radiated emissions tests.

I bought the exact same deal except as a lamp wiring harness for US (120vac A12 base) the dimmer is identical except with black plastic. It lasted just about as long as yours, except the Triac has a crack down the face and emitted "that smell" (Ie bakekite on overbake). It was to be a nitelight for my mother, just as well, it could have started a fire. I ordered a quality one with slide pot for about $14 us, and it works great. Smallest triac I've seen pressed into line service. A 15-20a one in a TO-220 is only a cents more. I'm surprised they didn't use a neon for the diac. Maybe the price of NE-2a has gone up. Great example of overcheapening. PS - It wasn't your LED lamp that killed it - mine died in 1/2hr of 60w incadescent. Without proper filtering, I'd bet the shutoff spikes are killing the Triac with overvoltage.

Automatic subtitle jibberish: 👍 4:23 lead-based solder 🤔 4:28 led-based soda

I love watching bigclive's brain go "you should try that" in the middle of a sentence.

BigClive and random shit from ebay name a better duo

Nanofarts, sounds like a measurement of, the effect individual baked beans have on the body.

BC, you Are the Terminator.

Nice timing on the new bigclivedotcom video notification, I'm just at the end of turning 4 USB powerbanks from Poundland into 2 RC car battery packs - higher capacity and less than half the price of pre-made packs :) Thanks to Clive for his teardown video of them a year ago, they're the 2200mAh 18650 £2 version.

I suspect that is aimed more at the lamp cord style cable where you can see like 2 wires barely attached together with a wimpy middle rubber molding vs the round jacket style you have there.

These switches are worth their weight in gold for making a cheap lamp dimmable

Great to see someone else's dyslexia in action, writing the 2 before the T and then having to cross it out. I've been doing that all my life

It looks like it was meant for what is sold in the US as lampcord. Two conductors each with a single layer of insulation that are held together by a thin web of insulation.

My guess for the slit in the two AC solder points is to keep the hole unclogged, so you can thread the wire thru from the component side after pretinning.

Dimmer and Dimmer. I like how you draw out the waveforms. Cliveoscope!

I can't do this with mine. Mine is slightly different and I can't fit my big American wire in it. Our wires don't have another thinner insulation layer inside like yours. Everythings thick and not very flexible and I can't find a way to fit the wire in the housing properly.

Is this the same dimmer that's used in the cheap eBay laminated heater pads that BigClive has covered separately?

Can I fit one of the to my TV to control the brightness?

Thank goodness for this video! So, it's not just me finding it is not very consumer-friendly... I'll have a go now that I have instructions, eh. Fortunately mine has holes to thread the wires through and tie them into place so no need to solder. Phew!

We radio amateurs are loving the new SDRs such as the Icom IC-7300, but yes, man made noise is a real problem in an urban setting

I had a dimmable desk lamp years ago. Eventually the dimmer function stopped working, so it was just full-on all the time, but it had a mechanical switch in the knob like this one so it could still be turned on and off. I would guess and say the triac failed shorted.

Weird I had forgotten about this KZfaq says I've watched it and I've liked it. What's so weird it was a suggested video on the right side and I was just looking for one of these on eBay well not quite one of these but wondering if I should get one of these instead. I was given a heating pad that the fancy digital controller had malfunctioned my plan was to just cut it off and buy a in-line cord dimmer for a lamp where I can shove the cords in and squeeze the things down but I can't find them anymore at my local stores or Ebay. So I either need something with a screwdriver or soldering = more time involved.

I'm watching this because I've just bought a similar module. It was far more informative than I anticipated. I expected a simple install guide. I don't know why you didn't try rotating the circuit board 90 degrees, so the connector pair lies along the unit rather than across it?

I was there when this product was designed. The engineer in charge asked how much quality he could add to which his manager replied “don’t strain yourself”. And here we are...

@16:36 Very true. I actually had a capacitor in a capacitive dropper-powered LED bulb (in a table lamp) literally puke it's guts out (It looked like if some molten gray lava had spilled on the PCB) because I didn't realize that the dimmer in the table lamp wasn't fully off (it was a touch dimmer) and left the poor LED bulb running for a very long time. I later modified the table lamp and removed the dimmer.

I was really hopping you were going to blow the tracks off!

A leading edge dimmer for resistive loads. Trailing edge, or electronic dimmers, is what you need for capacitive loads. Can you look at one of these next Clive?

A friend of mine found a *great deal* on a "whole house" reverse osmosis filter... The listing said 2000 gallons *per minute* .... they copied and pasted all the manufacturers description, but changed the original 2000 gallons *per day* to say *per minute* .... It had a couple bad reviews saying "filter lacks flow" ....

i THINK the wire is supposed to run beside the circuit board, and i think its made for more standard peel-apart lamp cord.

the best dimmer is a variac, expensive, and heavy, but very good at what it does

ABSOLUTELY LOVE the PINK POT

I just got three of these but without cases, was going to reverse engineer them myself before making cases for them. Guess it don't have to draw out the circuit now do I. lol. Thanks mate.

Us radio hams do still use the bands those things cause interface with. There's a lot of noisy consumer devices around today like this one and cheap switch mode power supplies where the manufacturer leaves out the filtering. The noise levels at my house make operating below 30mhz almost impossible even when I operate off battery power and kill the mains at the consumer unit. On 70MHz if my cat triggers my led flood lights the noise from those things is deafening if I have headphones on. Even up on UHF at 432Mhz I can't hear much to the north west as someone in that direction has something spewing out RF. One of the worst offenders today is BT VDSL broadband. The high switching speed and overhead cables makes it radiate rather well. The noise and the fact that were in a low spot in the solar cycle means it's best to operate portable from a very remote area away from all the guff you find in a residential area.

Any chance we could get a BigClive teardown and schematic of a reverse phase dimmer.

Well Damn Clive! You let all the Nano Farts out of the Cap and now it flickers.... Bad Clive! Off to the bin it goes..... ):-D LLAP

I guess you could keep it for a shimmering, gas light effect. I actually enjoy that kind of look for Christmas lights.

Just ordered myself one of these. I use a small length of speaker wire from a plug to a 7w incandescent nightlight in a holder above the bed. The full 7w is a bit too much. But hopefully this can ease my eyes.

I wear my Sennheiser Momentum's watching your channel for years and I can't hear the soldering iron

20:07 did the thing just spark, or is it a reflection from the lights?

thank you a lot for this work, it really helps for a begginer in electronics!! thank you again!

the cable goes along-side the pcb, the cable ends up under and into the terminal holes so they can be soldered easier and wont squash the cable 😉

crazy to think that thing weighs so much for how little it is 2 pounds in America probably only Way is about an ounce or so or maybe like 15 grams at the most.

It’s not so much the need for soldering that would annoy me, it’s the lack of earths. I know most lamps aren’t earthed but occasionally they are and you end up trying to open the cable without damaging the earth wire because there isn’t enough room for a connector, but then you fail and end up putting the PCB in a bigger box, thereby defeating the point and wasting time… did this only yesterday attaching a cheap smart switch with only 2 connectors (Sonoff Basic) to a far-infrared heater, but I have done it to a lamp in my living room too. Turns a ten minute job into a several hour one, as you have to find a box, drill progressively bigger holes in it, find the grommet box, attach, zip tie, hot glue.… I have an airBnB: people will do odd things. Wires need to be so secure they could hang on them.

I think the lamp wires are supposed to go in AND out of same end of the dimmer, eliminating the wires across pointy solder/pins. Was there any info included at all?