Where did the Magic Smoke come from?

[graffian]

I replaced the elcaps in the psu of my new CD player, well it's 30 years old CD player
and one of the elcaps had some bulginess. I bought it with the tray opening very slowly,
so I was prepared to dig around inside it a bit. But after replacing the caps the draw opened
as it should. I stuck a disc in it, it read it and I hit play and it played[it said it was playing at it
wasn't connected to anything].

So I took the CD player in to the house and left it on top of the rack, I walked by it
the next day-it's not plugged in or been used, and I can smell the magic smoke; I
haven't put the top back on yet so I tried sniffing out the culprit, seems a bit of tube
doesn't work as a nose stethoscope.
i double checked all caps are the right voltages and polarity.

So do I plug it in and use the temperature sensing finger to find the hot bit?
Or is there some posh way of doing this?

 

[slim_boy_fat]

And, you'll have a shiny new toy - we like shiny

 

[MattH]

If it's not been plugged in how can a component have shorted out?

 

[zx9]

If it's not been plugged in how can a component have shorted out?

Good question Matt.
But to answer the OP, a non contact thermometer would be one way or turn it off spray it with a freezing spray turn it on again and see where the frost dissapears from first.

 

[graffian]

And, you'll have a shiny new toy - we like shiny

And we like yellow, postie dropped this off this afternoon, I will just check how hot my coffee is;-)
Ask me how hot something in my garage is;-)

If it's not been plugged in how can a component have shorted out?

Not plugged in. I it plugged in and checked it in the garage, seemed all OK, no smoke, pushed the tray out pulled
it back in, read a disc and showed as playing.
Then I took it in the house, didn't plug it in and the smell was pretty strong the next day!

 

[MattH]

Then can I suggest then that the smell is coming from another piece of equipment that has been plugged in?

Electronics will generally smell when a component burns up, a resistor burning and going open circuit, a cap shorting and burning or a transistor shorting and exploding.
Without electricity it's fairly hard for any of those things to happen.

 

[MattH]

Also it's not very often that the same component will get hot a second time, allowing you to measure it.
If a cap has shorted it will generally stop the units power supply from powering up or cause an internal fuse to blow. If a resistor or transistor has gone open circuit then they will no longer be pulling any power and therefore not generating any heat.