The magic blue smoke monster “skill badge” is here

Bluesmoke

The skill badges you can pick up in our store (and soon earn for free) are great ways to share and show your skill set, but we’re also going to celebrate some of the mistakes we all make with electronics 🙂 Say hi to the magic blue smoke monster. This badge is available starting today.

Index-2

Magic smoke – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Magic smoke (also called factory smoke or blue smoke) is smoke produced by malfunctioning electronic circuits. The origins of the magic smoke have become a running in-joke that started among electrical engineers and technicians before it was more recently adopted by computer programmers. The actual origin of blue smoke is the black plastic epoxy material that is used to package most common semiconductor devices such as transistors and integrated circuits, which produces a bluish coloured smoke during combustion. Smoke from other components that do not use this epoxy may vary in colour, but still be identified as the same phenomenon for purposes of the joke.

Our little friend does not have a name besides “magic blue smoke monster” but here are some suggestions that were made from the community 🙂


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4 Comments

  1. Thought of another name the other day, don’t know why it didn’t occur to me before:

    Chip

  2. In honor of this new badge I thought I’d re-share: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCPXckfT-6g

  3. You MUST make vinyl tool box decals!

  4. Ooooh….Id hate to “earn” this one, haha.

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