Furnace went out last night (oil-fired 'boiler'). A little debug showed some sparking under a relay that controls the burner and circulation pump.
Bad solder joint where the relay soldered to the circuit board. A small contact lead going through a large hole, 1 sided circuit board, the thru-hole wasn't plated. Minimal solder, no fillet.
Resoldered tyhe rest of the relay connections, needless to say.
Cheap bastards.
Honeywell Aquastat L8148A
Dave
My dad's furnace quit a few years ago on Christmas Eve. Furnace guy came out, said the controller boards was dead. He replaced it, then waited around a bit just to be sure it was going to continue to work ok since the old one was intermittent and he didn't want to be called back the following morning. I looked at the old board and found a cold solder joint, luckily I just so happened to have my pinball machine reapir kit with me which had a soldering iron. Resoldered the connection on the board and had him put it back in. Worked great. The repairman was amazed, and dad was happy that he saved a couple hundred on the part. Cold solder joints are a real problem with electronics and it seems to have gotten worse in the past couple years with all the korean and chinese made junk.
I'm seriously thinking of getting a good solder-sucker. I'm surrounded by stuff just waiting to go belly-up.
Dave
They are worth having. I just have one of the cheaper radio shack suckers plus some desolder braid. I have a nice Weller temp controlled soldering station for use at home, and an el-cheapo Radio Shack pencil in the portable tool kit. You are right though, these days we are surrounded by poorly soldered electronics stuff. Even commercial and industrial stuff is built crappy these days, all the new test equipment we get at work seems to be a card stuck in a little pc running windows. Nothing like having to reboot your test equipment in the middle of a repair.
My initial reaction, I thought you were going to say it was a Carlin.
Bob
Each manufacturer is a cheap so-and-so these days. A little more solder, or a plated hole, or a hole that wasn't so oversized, and it'd last until the relay fried.
Dave
Did you check the flue for Santa Claus?
Some times he goes down the wrong chimney and gets stuck.
I had a summer job at the US Naval Avionics Facility in Indianapolis in 1966. Part of my job was to deliver the internal mail. In one part of the buildingt, they had troughs of molten solder, though which they tried to pass circuit boards, the bottoms about even with the surface so that all the joints would solder at once, without people doing it. One problem was getting a very flat pool of solder.
I don't know what the other problems were, but they had been working on it before I got there, they did so all summer, and they were still at it when I left.
I don't know if anyone ever solved this problem.
I think I'm allowed to talk about this now.
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Hi, Todays service people are mostly lack good electronics knowledge. My Carrier furnace had same kinda problem. After Googling and investigation, it was apparent due to the heat from two hi Wattage resistors on control board, couple solder joints were compromised. After resoldering and drilling few holes on the plastic cover around the resistors for better cooling, every thing is working OK again. Locally replacement board was 320.00CAD plus tax which I did not need. Tony
Hi, Koreans and Chinese make things whatever spec. calls for. They're not making junk. Given specification is junk. By whom? You guess. Tony
Yes, they did. It was up and running, and had been for some time, when I started working there in '82.
The lead-free solders are a problem, too. A lot of the techs trained on lead-containing solders don't know how to use the mostly tin replacements. Another problem with the newer ones is the formation of tin whiskers, which I believe is a crystallization process over time, leading to the degradation of the joint. The cold solders vary in quality, the best are silver-powder containing epoxies. Needless to say, most are worse, and many manufacturers do not make the design changes necessary to accommodate the different characteristics of cold solder. Ergo, defective parts.-Jitney
Why, thank you. That's so good to know. And to meet another Hoosier from Naptown.
To the others, I didn't fully explain that I know they worked on this for months or maybe years before I got there. I presume others have duplicated this, or the government has licensed it to other places.
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Nowadays, through-hole components are soldered by passing the boards over a wave of solder, as opposed to a flat pool.
Dave
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