How NOT to 'repair' precision measurement equipment (Keithley 6517A), R18+

[cowasaki]

This looks like someone tried to do the soldering with a 6" nail in a pair of mole grips.  That is absolutely painful.     

[vze1lryy]

The transistors look like they are "taking a bow"

[Cyberdragon]

This looks like someone tried to do the soldering with a 6" nail in a pair of mole grips.  That is absolutely painful.     

They definately used either a large pencil iron or gun iron, likely a hundred watts.

[cowasaki]

This looks like someone tried to do the soldering with a 6" nail in a pair of mole grips.  That is absolutely painful.     

They definately used either a large pencil iron or gun iron, likely a hundred watts.

It beggars belief.

[james_s]

At first glance I thought "That doesn't look so bad" then I started looking more closely and overall that's probably the worst molestation I've ever seen. Most of the individual issues could almost be forgiven but someone has so thoroughly destroyed that board in so many ways that it boggles the mind.

[wkb]

my $DEITY...  people who do things like that should be taken behind the shed and shot.  What were the actually trying to achieve? Basically everything has been wrecked.. Why?  Flamethrower would have been more subtle..

[cowasaki]

I will watch with interest to see how and if this can be resurrected.

[slurry]

Ouch.. a clear attempt of blowtorch repair 

[bitseeker]

On one of the ICs, it kind of looks like one of the pins broke off near the plastic package and they melted it to get enough solder to bond. 

[Cyberdragon]

Ouch.. a clear attempt of blowtorch repair 

A torch would have left dark burns. A torch powered iron maybe.

[Shock]

This is what happens if you use solder wick kids.

[bitseeker]

Good ol' Weller. Mo' powah!

[Old Don]

Take a piece of chalk and draw a pentagram on the floor, place the device in the center of it. Say magical chants and burn some hair of the dog that did this to it and hope that bad juju smites him! 

[nikonoid]

TiN,

I feel you pain. I have a younger brother of your 6517a. My 6517a is much cleaner, but also a redo of previous unsuccessful repair by someone without experience. I fixed VFD and fixed few obvious issues on analog board including leaked capacitors, missing components and eaten traces.

My issue is that I also have a blown transformer and cannot even test if analog board repair was successful or not.

If you decide not to fix yours, I would be interested in buying transformer from you. I think MM also has 6517a with either digital board or screen blown. We might have options here. Let me know.


PS. This is one of my favorite desoldering techniques:

[TiN]

As some mention already, analog board was indeed BER even for crazy volt-nut people, and I was not willing to piss that much time into this unit.
So unit owner ended up buying another dead 6517A for donor parts, which had analog board without any attempt of repair, recently fresh too, made in 2011.
To fix VFD glass, he got 7001, so I did a glass swap too.

That didn't solve front panel issues right away, as one of driver chips was dead, having 3rd grid stick lit. I didn't want to waste too much time on it, so I replaced all driver PLCC chips at once in 10 minutes.
Yay, we get no stuck grids, but one character is copied to next grid. Okay, sounds like digital problem, so replaced PLCC MCU on front panel board from 7001 donor FP PCB too. That fixed it completely.
Front panel drivers and MCU are same on all dual-line VFD instruments from Keithley, that I know about.

VFD brightness is so-so, but it's completely usable level.

Then I progress to digital board testing and analog board troubleshooting, minor repair (at this point) and initial diagnostics.

This was done over the course of 3hour livestream:

.

[HighVoltage]

This was done over the course of 3hour livestream:

You are definitely the Keithley repair king !
Thanks for sharing your repair thoughts.

Looking forward to your next video.