maanantai 30. joulukuuta 2013

Everything's falling apart

I seem to be plagued by electronics breaking down right now.

First office laser printer (multifunction device; printer, scanner, copier, fax) refused to power on after a weekend. Since a printer is absolutely necessary for deliveries and invoicing, first thing I did was to call supplier. Response was what I expected, "old model, not worth repair, buy new similar unit for 400€, we can get it delivered there in two days."

So what an curious engineer is to do, but to open up the old one. And surprise surprise, I found two electrolytic caps that were bulging severely (I'd put in photos, but this was some weeks ago, before I even considered blogging, so I have no photos of that. Sorry.)
So a quick trip to local electronics parts store later I have functioning printer again, for total cost of about 50€ (parts and labor). Time well spent.

Next thing to die was home Blu-Ray player, a Samsung BD-P4600. It could play Blu-Ray disks but not DVDs or audio CDs. Because of this I suspected the laser module itself (which would be pretty much unrepairable), but I decided to open it nevertheless.

The player has external, 12 volt/3 amp power module. Because of this I expected to find several on-board regulators, each with their own electrolytic caps, and I was kinda hoping that one of them would be failing, causing the problem with disks. No such luck; I did find the regulators, but to my surprise main PCB has no electrolytics at all; it was all large chip ceramics. So back to original hunch, and since new players cost less than 100€ now, I abandoned further attempts, but only after admiring the quite beautifully systems-engineered device; everything in it was built nicely for easy assembly (and disassembly).
No photos of that either, but I still have the player somewhere, I'll try to add them later.

And now my home computer display from 2008 is dying (22" 16:10 ratio - I absolutely hate 16:9 displays). I first noticed some flicker on some shades of grey about a month ago, and by now it was getting more serious. Quick search confirmed it; most likely power source is failing. I opened it up, but both power and driver modules look healthy and voltages are stable. Damn. Guess it is time to go display shopping again. In the meantime, I think I'll put it together again and put it in less critical use, waiting it to die. Maybe I can find the real culprit then and fix it.
And third sorry here, no photos of that either, yet.

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