Author Topic: Repairing water damaged electronics  (Read 16978 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline EntropiaTopic starter

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 53
  • Country: fi
    • My blog
Re: Repairing water damaged electronics
« Reply #25 on: October 07, 2012, 07:46:59 am »
Quote
Entropia:  Your gallery hosting software looks great!  Is it open source, by chance?
Nope, it's a bought service, the software is prorietary to the gallery service provider.

Anyway, some progress, I guess. Cleaned all the boards "enough" and tried plugging in the power. It draws a constant 150 mA with only the battery+ terminal switched. If I connect the ignition-pin to 12V the current draw doesn't change. 150mA is way too much for "sleep" current anyway. I've been searching for a service manual / schematic like mad but there just doesn't seem to be one on the internet. I even asked the Finnish authorized Blaupunkt service but they said they don't ever get the OEM stuff manuals. Dead end. I could ask Blaupunkt at Germany directly but frankly I don't expect any miracles...

Someone suggested desoldering all the parts but that's just out of the question. I tried to solder a few testpoint wires to various power supply components but frankly, it's impossible. The corroded solder will not melt. I even blasted the solder at 450C for as long as I dared but nothing. I fear the PCB tracks will lift off before the solder melts. I tried applying shitloads of flux and using good quality solder but in vain.

Tracing out the circuits is also impossible. The main PCB seems to be 4 or 6 layers. This is turning out to be a harder than I thought!
 

Offline amyk

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 8240
Re: Repairing water damaged electronics
« Reply #26 on: October 07, 2012, 12:55:01 pm »
Someone suggested desoldering all the parts but that's just out of the question. I tried to solder a few testpoint wires to various power supply components but frankly, it's impossible. The corroded solder will not melt. I even blasted the solder at 450C for as long as I dared but nothing. I fear the PCB tracks will lift off before the solder melts. I tried applying shitloads of flux and using good quality solder but in vain.
A careful bit of grinding might help penetrate the layer of corrosion. Of course, you should have a blob of molten solder on the iron for good heat conduction.
 

Offline Rerouter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 4694
  • Country: au
  • Question Everything... Except This Statement
Re: Repairing water damaged electronics
« Reply #27 on: October 07, 2012, 01:01:00 pm »
i know the level of oxidistaion he is refering to personally (had an insturment cluster that had been through a few weeks of flooding) the only way i could break it down was to first scrape at the joint a little to get some metal exposed, hit it with the desoldering braing to remove the solder and then flick off the corroded layer with a scribe (it actually seperates fairly easily) it was just a pain in the butt like what your working on now in that it had a few hundred joints, and also damaged traces,
« Last Edit: October 20, 2012, 12:00:48 am by Rerouter »
 

Offline Dago

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 659
  • Country: fi
    • Electronics blog about whatever I happen to build!
Re: Repairing water damaged electronics
« Reply #28 on: October 18, 2012, 07:18:32 pm »
This SMPS I have had layed in the ground for years in the rain, with a thorough washing and drying it's (almost) as good as new :)! http://www.dgkelectronics.com/fixing-water-damaged-ascom-48vdc-switchmode-power-supply/
Come and check my projects at http://www.dgkelectronics.com ! I also tweet as https://twitter.com/DGKelectronics
 

Offline Zero999

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 19345
  • Country: gb
  • 0999
Re: Repairing water damaged electronics
« Reply #29 on: October 19, 2012, 05:58:56 pm »
This SMPS I have had layed in the ground for years in the rain, with a thorough washing and drying it's (almost) as good as new :)! http://www.dgkelectronics.com/fixing-water-damaged-ascom-48vdc-switchmode-power-supply/

Hmm, I'd be suspicious, just because it works, it doesn't mean it's still safe. The isolation between the primary and secondary on the transformer may have been weakened.
 


Share me

Digg  Facebook  SlashDot  Delicious  Technorati  Twitter  Google  Yahoo
Smf