Pinecil died after first use, housing gets very warm plugged into USB

[deftdawg]

If you think it's faulty, please don't plug it into your computer Although computers tend to have short-circuit protection, it's not perfect.

Alas, pine's email support said if the device DFUs it's "working", so my only course of action was to attempt to DFU firmware on and hope that somehow fixed it...  

I would really not expect it to get so hot in just 5 minutes in update mode. The controller and screen should not be drawing enough current to do that.

When powering you should leave the tip connected I believe - otherwise if it is trying to heat the tip it's got nowhere but the handle to dissipate it.

Until you get to the bottom of what is going on, it's a smart idea not to leave it alone!

You should take it out of the housing and figure out where the heat is coming from - I would expect to see a chip getting pretty hot under that plastic cover - should be obvious with your thermal camera.

Prior to it dying, I tried to turn it on without a tip and the screen just shows a "no tip" inserted icon and won't heat.   No that it's dead with the tip inserted the tip still won't heat up; so that's good I think (fail safe).

I agree, I'm going to have a go at disassembling it...  Maybe the folks at Pine can see something that could be fixed for future batches.