Ask Electronics

Jesus, this isn't a slight against you OP but as an electronics engineer I feel I need to have a rant about the shoddy design here:

First of all, I have no idea what that component is dangling off the burnt-out through-hole resistor is or why it's there.

Surely it can't be a part of the temperature control loop, so I would guess it's a thermal fuse to shut off the blanket if that resistor burns because it handles power to the heating element.

If so, what THE FUCK were the designers thinking?! Couldn't afford even a small power resistor with a heatsink and a cheap thermocouple to a temp sense IC?!

Nah it'll be ok, either it burns out the resistor and the customer is not injured or the customer's house burns down. Either way no deaths, just complaints about our shitty build quality.

Second, they're using WAY too much solder for these surface mounts components.

And third, why has R16 shifted from it's pad? Bad soldering job from too much solder? Bad placement from the PNP machine? Or, god forbid, something gets hot enough to cause the solder under that resistor to start melting?

It's genuinely shocking the amount of stuff that's just being allowed to be sold these days.

If you can't get the blanket repaired OP, please consider sending this to Big Clive as he'd have a field day with this.

I would be extremely careful, since it failed for a reason and you were very lucky not to set the house on fire, which looks like it came pretty close to.

Technically, since they are throughhole components and nothing specific (Fried resistor, 0,1uf capacitor and maybe a damaged thermal fuse.) this would be a great starter project for soldering. The issue is that those components failed becasue of something happening and unless you find out and fix what caused this you can change those components as many times as you want they will just blow again.

Any chance of identifying the burned-out part on the left? If not, I'd leave this to professionals (repair cafe, maybe). A throw blanket works at mains voltage, so errors might have serious consequences.

Apart from that, you don't know what caused that burn, so that cause might still be around, and instantly burn down any repaired board again.

So my recommendation is: NO.

The thing seems to be not even two years old - maybe you can return it?

If those components are the only issue then that should be reasonably easy to fix with a soldering iron. The yellow box is a film capacitor of some kind, you can most likely just find one that is rated for the same or higher voltage and the same capacitance (0.1uf). The part that burned is a power resistor like you said, the color bands on the part can tell you what resistor value it is, and i would guess it's rated for 0.25W perhaps

There is something on the U1 chip, is that just some dirt or is it damaged as well?