|
|
My battery charger recently started playing up and as these chargers are popular within the vaping community i thought i would share my findings so that others can benefit.
The charger stopper charging batteries, but not completely, the blue power light would flicker and the charging lights would go off, then it would carry on again as usual.
As i'm (fairly) electronically competent i decided to take it apart and have a look inside to see if i could diagnose the problem, if i couldn't, i would have to buy a new one anyway so there's nothing to lose.
Taking the case off there is nothing immediately obviously wrong, no burned out patches on the board or damaged components.
But ... if we look a little closer at the controller IC we can see a tiny little ball of solder shorting out 2 pins ...
that certainly isn't going to help things and could easily explain the reason the charger was dying, i didn't bother to look up that chip because its very difficult to see its markings.
Looking elsewhere on the board you may have noticed a bulging capacitor
I managed to get a replacement capacitor from RS for £0.35 for a nice quality Nichion cap of the same ratings and same size. The cap which came out was Nitecore branded, most likely a private labelled cap from another make.
I also saw that another capacitor which was Nitecore branded was re-sleeved
i took the sleeve off and found a ChongX underneath ... shame!
Anyways, i replaced the capacitor, cleaned off the solder ball along with some other solder spill on the underside of the board, and re-assembled it.
Now it all works perfectly again  |
|
26-11-2019 20:36:07
Author