The community repair thread

Adey

I think that the cheaper models have plastic / nylon gears in the gearbox that can strip. If you make a mould of a good part of the gear you can use it to recast the stripped section  with epoxy and glass fibre strand / tissue.

BillDL

@Neilybob, before you disassemble the drill, just check to ensure that there isn't any accumulated debris or a splinter preventing the speed or forward/reverse selectors from being fully pushed into position.

rsvmark

Our Henry hoover is dead. As a dead thing.Challenge to self is a repair. 

Take apart Henry……

Diagnosis step 1 complete, the fuse in the plug isn’t blown. Step 2 complete- checked the master switch and that’s still ok. Step 3- checked the main motor windings/carbon brushes and that’s fine. The final step in the diagnosis (I am not doing anything more clever than researching via Google) appears to be the pcb wired to the full power switch. Replacement part now arrived, swapped in, and reassembled. 

Henry is back to full fitness and hoovering like a champion. Very smug with myself.

Emp_Fab

Congratulations and well done !  I grabbed a Henry from the local tip (not allowed to take stuff but if you time it right, they won't see you).  It was full of wet sawdust.  Some genius had obviously tried hoovering it up and it shorted it.  Somehow, a load of wet sawdust had made its way into the main power switch.  I cleaned it all out, took the motor out and put it on top of a radiator for a couple of days to dry out fully.  Reassembled it.... hey presto !  Bought a set of Henry official accessories and I've got myself a (almost) free Henry !

ewal

Our Wilfa Svart bean grinder is playing up. Apparently there's a known issue with a bad batch of capacitors, the fix being to replace the capacitor. Pretty confident I could dismantle it and replace the capacitor. Just not sure whether I'd be able to put it back together again...

BigMonka

@Danny1969 (& others) - any suggestions on what I might be able to do with a completely dead MacbookPro A1708 please? It was all working fine but now doesn't power on at all and plugging in the charger doesn't make even the keyboard lights come on. I've tried the charger with another device to check that that's not the problem.

Danny1969

BigMonka said:

@Danny1969 (& others) - any suggestions on what I might be able to do with a completely dead MacbookPro A1708 please? It was all working fine but now doesn't power on at all and plugging in the charger doesn't make even the keyboard lights come on. I've tried the charger with another device to check that that's not the problem.

The  first thing I would do is use a USB-C voltage / current diag  tool to see what's happening. These cost around a tenner from Amazon and are very useful.

What should happen is 

When you plug the diag tool inline with the USB-C cable into the laptop you should see the voltage jump up from 5V to 20V and the current should move from 0 to hovering around the 2 to 2.5A mark

If it doesn't move from 5V to 20V  then it's normally the MUX chip, the one that does the handshaking with the USB-C charger thats at fault. 

If it does jump from 5 to 20V but stays on 0 amps then it's normally something a little further like a pair of MOSFETS not getting a gate voltage so remaining open circuit. 

Things you can try without any diag tool. 

Clean ports 
Remove bottom cover by taking out screws and sliding bottom cover before lifting off

Remove the large TORX scres that holds the battery connector to the motherboard. pull the connector up and press and hold power switch for 20 secs. 

Good luck, I hope it's something simple but in my expereince it's often the board that's at fault due to the stupid USB-C system. The last 2 I did I fixed by changing the whole board. Course the SSD is soldered on the board so tthat didn't help with the data 

BigMonka

Thanks @Danny1969 ; - if it is the MUX chip or a pair of MOSFETs then is that something which someone sensible and a competence with soldering iron could fix?

Danny1969

BigMonka said:

Thanks @Danny1969 ; - if it is the MUX chip or a pair of MOSFETs then is that something which someone sensible and a competence with soldering iron could fix?

It's all very small SM pitch work on all modern laptops so proper SM hot air gun and micro soldering magnification needed really. Plus you need the chip to have the correct code in it. The actual chip, a CD3215 is a BGA chip so the joints are underneath so can't be removed or replaced without a hot air soldering gun. I've always used chips from macbook boards I have kept that had faults in other areas. 

You also need the schemetics and the essential board view software PDF,  as at this small pitch  components often have no  legends to identify themselfs,  like U3200 or Q81 etc and a tiny blob could be a inductor, a diode, a resistor, a fuse etc . The board software is the only way forward. 

Before you get into anything check the little liquid spill markers. Little round indicators on the board and other parts of the laptop. These should be white. If they go red then the board has got wet and I wouldn't bother fixing it as the faults caused by liquid damage tend to be multiple. 

If the data on the laptop is important then I would look at getting the board fixed.  But if it isn't I would just buy another machine with a different fault cheap  to get a board or buy a board from someone like Cambridge Accessories, who have supply me with good boards when I need them. There was an LCD cable issue with this machine, it was basically too short and failed on a lot of machines. As the cable is integral to the screen meaning a whole top and had to be sourced many are sold as faulty but the actual board is good. The Keyboard used to go bad a swell which also helped put some good boards on the market. 

In all honesty these aren't a great machine and are a bitch to work on. But if you want to have a go, watch some Louis Rothman videos to get an idea of what's involved. I probably have a couple of donar boards in stock for this model for certain chips. 

drofluf

The battery for my gtech handheld vacuum got dropped and stopped charging. Took the back off and had a look 

Looked like the contact had broken; pushing it back in place with a screwdriver fixed the fault so it was out with the soldering iron for a more permanent fix. 

Some rather messy soldering later and it’s now on charge. 

Chris.B

Any repair that keeps something out of landfill, especially batteries, is a good one.  As for the how tidy it looks - only you will know

Emp_Fab

Few things in life give me as much pleasure out of taking a broken thing and fixing it.

Danny1969

Emp_Fab said:

Few things in life give me as much pleasure out of taking a broken thing and fixing it.

You would litterally love my job then. If I'm not building my own shit I'm fixing other peoples. 

Today alone , Macbook Air, Fishman amp, UVPC lock gearbox, Fish pond pump. 

But yeah, it's a nice feeling. Especially when the accepted wisdom is you have to replace the whole thing. 
To get good at one thing is failry easy. When all I was doing was fixing Dell laptops and ThinkPads I could do them in minutes and knew what the fault was just by the customers description. the nice thing is when you haven't seen it the device before and had no idea how it worked. I spent 3 hours on the UVPC gearbox lock because I had never worked out how it all worked in tandem with the deadlocks before and I enjoyed every minute. 

I've got loads of photos to upload  from all kinds of repairs over the last 3 months, will get on and do it soon. 

strtdv

Our AEG dishwasher was intermittently giving an i44 error. The initial suggestion was to clean all the dirt traps, but this didn't solve it.

I decided to run the dishwasher with me sitting next to it for the cycle to hear what was happening (usually we run the dishwasher overnight and come town to it in the morning). You could clearly hear the drain pump running even though the water had been totally drained. Eventually the dishwasher would realise something wasn't right and throw the i44 error.

It turns out there's effectively a vacuum sensor in the sump which detects the change in vacuum caused when there's air in the drain line rather than water, at which point it turns off the drain pump. This sensor is known to get sticky over time and then it sticks in the "draining" position, which causes the error. 
Replacement was slightly fiddly, but took under 30 minutes in spite of tight access to the part.

The new part including postage was under £15, and the error code hasn't happened since.

Danny1969

Nice Work @strtdv and another bit of knowledge I've banked as well. 

Emp_Fab

My next repair (hopefully) is going to be a Roland D50 synth.  I own two, one working, one not, which is the ideal setup to fix something!  I need to extend my workbench first so I can perform surgery on both side-by-side.

I will document this on here when I do it.

gretschthumper

Emp_Fab said:

Few things in life give me as much pleasure out of taking a broken thing and fixing it.

So true, and as Danny says the fault finding is often the most enjoyable part - trying to understand what does what, and tracking down the thing that’s failed. I like to buy broken studio gear and fix it (working on GAP pre73 that hums & a WEM Copicat that doesn’t erase at the moment) - I get the things cheap, but that’s not really the point … the real fun is solving the mystery of why it doesn’t do what it was designed to do.

I was joking to my brother that I bought a mixer “for parts/not working” and I was really disappointed when it showed up fully functional!

Chris.B

Emp_Fab said:

My next repair (hopefully) is going to be a Roland D50 synth.  I own two, one working, one not, which is the ideal setup to fix something!  I need to extend my workbench first so I can perform surgery on both side-by-side.

I will document this on here when I do it.

That sounds like an interesting project - looking forward to following along when you start on the repair.