It was reported on May 1st by Aaron that a PCB in the cooler started smoking and the laser was non-functional (so the interlock works, yay!). The smoke was coming out of the bigger set of vents. It was thick and white. It subsided quickly after everything was turned off and the plug removed. Equipment looks cool and inert.
(by Luke Cyca)
The PCB in question is likely the 12V PSU that was added inside the chassis to power the circulation pumps. I disconnected it, and plugged in the chiller and after a minute the thermostat turned on the compressor and chilled the water.
I removed the 12V PSU from the chassis and disconnected the pump. The PSU seems to be toast - It produces no voltage on its output. (I also didn't observe any more smoke). I wrote “not working” and put it in the 3 week bin for recycling.
I used a bench supply to test the pump, and found that it's shorted out.
So it seems that the pump failed with a dead short (probably just due to extended use) and drew far too much current from the PSU which released some smoke and then failed completely.
Install a new circulation pump and PSU
Clean the reservoir (it's gross).