Hi! In a previous video we have taking a look at my studio LED lights here which I've got a remote control for and I can actually switch these on. You'll notice this one up here. Wat wat wat wah. it's flickering.

Look at that. So we've got a problem and I've had another one fail as well. There we go. I've got them all on now, but one has completely failed.

that one there and that one is just flickering. so the other one there. that's actually a air-conditioning vent and there's no lights there cuz what these lights do is they basically wrap around my bench here where I stand and actually do most of my tear downs. And you know any sort of bench filming I do there.

So it's kind of like you know, it comes from behind and the sides like down and an angle like that. So I found that's you know, a fairly optimal angle apart from you know, setting up proper softbox studio lights and all that sort of stuff which are a pain in the butt when you're just you know, filming stuff. kind of like just randomly where you don't have a particular setup and they do a decent job for my mailbag stuff on that bench as well. Anyway, we got two that have failed so let's take a look at her.

If you haven't seen inside the drop ceiling before there we go. There's just some of my our controllers. One of those ones has failed because there's this panel here that's gone. It's almost certainly not the panel and the air conditioner system.

and there's all the other, you know, just loosey-goosey wiring. Didn't make any attempt to do that and they just plugged into power points you can see just hanging there from the roof, so it's a bit of a mess. But anyway, let's get these controllers out because almost certainly it's a controller that's failed here. And here's the driver from the flicker one and overwritten flick on there.

So I know which ones are which and these are a Lifford brand one and they aren't exactly one hung low. they're one of the better I don't know I wouldn't probably call them the best on the market. they're certainly a rep, you know, brand lead driver and I do remember actually I believe paying more for these at the time over like the cheapest I went yeah I want the good quality drivers so I paid a bit extra and oh hello hello well there's your problem Oh here I was thinking I'd get like a repair video of a bloody capacitor or something. that's the active wah-wah Wah-wah Well, that's bloody hilarious and embarrassing at the same time, isn't it? I Expected.

You know, electronic fire in this thing and based on that, like the flickering my just bloody contact, that's ridiculous. That's that's my fault. Effectively I think I'm the one who. oh no.

David why had a few in yeah I'll playing him Yeah, blame the blame the employee, why not? So I find that interesting how that could flicker like that? Tighten that puppy up. That's pretty good now. I Like that. this has got like sort of an integral clamp dramedy clamp thingamabob on it.

Just plugged it into my test panel here. seems to be working just fine. Well, that still looks pretty good, doesn't it? And the a She if you pronounce them like that brand caps, they still look fine. There's no bulges in there.

Yes, there are. they are. Chinese Casper they're probably one of the better. Well, one of the best Chinese caps you can get 125 degree C raided and they look pretty beefy so nothing another electrolytic over there doesn't look like there's any issues in here at all.

I think we just add a Dickey connection doing the flickering. so maybe there was some like little arc over kind of, you know, stuff happening in which you cause it to flicker on and then it breaks the contact again and then it just causes that's sort of, you know, power up flickering kind of effect. Actually, it'd be interesting to see if I can force it to do that. So I've undone the active screw.

they're gonna pair it up. hooked up to this panel and let's see what happens here. All right, dick around with that. Oh geez, Oh yeah.

ah Kim don't know if you can see that. Oh yeah, Whoa. sparking. Hang on.

Oh yeah. Sparky spark. But I will say these are the poor quality. sort of like spring leaf ones.

which I don't like. They're not the proper cage clamp ones that come down. The cage clamp ones are infinitely better. These are like, you know, some sort of leaf spring one and they don't make nearly as good of contact.

It's the proper cage clamp one, so that's probably part of the reason here. And the other good thing about these is look, they're not densely packed together and quite well spaced out for the power. What is this? like? a 70 watt driver or something like that? You know you could have made this more densely packed, but the thermal performance inside a smaller are you know, enclosed case like that or mostly in closed case would cause a problem, but this one's quite large and well spaced out. I Really like the design of this.

It's nice. Alright, so here's the other one. Take a look and these things don't get hugely hot up there, by the way. And it's not hot in that ceiling Because we're in the middle of a big corporate office tower here.

Temperatures fairly well regulated: I Think the hottest it gets up there is like, you know, 26 degrees Celsius or something like that. No, that's pretty solid. so maybe this one, maybe we'll get lucky. Do you feel lucky? Punk? I Just noticed our 40 degree temperature ambient and TC is probably temperature of the controller itself.

92 Empress Top probably gets to 90 at a 40 degree ambient. but as I said, yeah, it probably doesn't get above 25 26 degrees up there in the roof. even the peak of summer here in Australia Well, that all looks in pretty good. Nick No bulges in the caps.

there. anything silly like that looks hunky-dory The other caps look good. Nothing but we blowin. Let me try and hook it up to the pedal here and it'll probably just work.

won't it bloody? Murphy No, it doesn't work. We have a bonafide failure beauty. All right. So let's have a look at this under the Tigana microscope.

And yes, there is a fuse down here. Yes, I have measured it. It's okay, so we're going to look for. you know, visual signs.

but I've had a look at the components on top. I Don't see any. You know there's no bulging caps. There's no leaking cap fluid.

No, that is that. That's just starts elastic. they're holding down the cap. You know there's no like blow holes in any of the down in there.

so nothing visually looks like it's a problem. So let's look at the bottom. Now, the thing with these things is that these lead controllers is that they do actually heat up. They do get warm, not not hot.

So they do get warm. And like that they heat up. and they cool down when you turn them on and off. So there's you know, potentially some thermal expansion there.

so maybe you know it could have a dodgy join on it? I Don't know. Let's have a look, start going around. Let's go the primary side. that's our spark gap.

I've done a video on spark gaps before. might have to link it in if you haven't seen it. It's very interesting. Everything looks good.

No, it's all good. The solder joints are a bit a little bit. how you doing just a dodgy. Know there are wavery flowed because they got, sorry, wavery flowed.

Do their waves soldered because you can see the glue underneath. That's what that color down in there is. it's actually holding. That's the glue holding down the parts.

You can see that. So they're obviously a wave soldered that common as mud. So all of our components look ok. there's one missing as a diode missing so you can see the glue down there.

How they they decided not to populate it, but it was already set up in their glue mask profile and stuff like that. So all the parts look good. You know, like the wave soldering is not the Ben but it's all fine. It just doesn't look terrific.

Okay I'm gonna have a look at some of the joints, see if there's an issue there. They look okay. The output joints there all right. Give them a bit of a bit of a wiggle.

wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle. Yeah, it's all good. It's all good. Hello! Oh wow.

we got one. We got one. Wow Look at that. it's cracked.

It's a cracks Wow It's a crack solder joint that's a Bobby does laughs that is absolutely classic. Wow Yeah, there's your problem, that's your output. Chuck Here there you go. let's touch that up, shall we? Let's turn the iron on.

So what you need to do with these joints, you can even wick that away. It was some solder wick or like. what you don't want to do is just heat it up like that Wow it's not much on there is there Wow It's remarkable. Any way you want to apply some new solder because it's got new flux I'm using this lead-free rubbish I Know that looks a bit rough as guts there that she'll be right anyway because we've had one problem on that I would go around and touch even though these look first-class I would go around and touch them up anyway as a matter of course.

Yeah, we can clean that up of course. Now, even though that's got a bit of excess solder on it, nothing wrong with that. She'll be right. it's just through-hole stuff I Just died.

You wouldn't even bother to clean that up. but I will. All right, let's plug that sucker back in Tada. No workers works like a bought one.

so there you go. Um, that was an easy repair in the end. A crack. Classic.

Absolute classic crack solder joint. Probably due to a combination of probably original like not enough solder on there originally or something. maybe some. you know a lot of thermal cycling of these things because you know these things get turned on and off all the time.

And the flicker one that I thought might have been that there's some weird-ass electrical fault turned out to be nothing in the sword. it was just a Dickey mains input contact. I presume that's the fault cuz it wasn't working before when I was plugging it into the test panel here and now it is just fine. and we had ain't No one cracked a joint in exactly the place where it could would cause that problem.

like right on the output choke there. it's just it's open circuit in the lid classic. so there you go. Not terribly interesting, but beware of crack solder joints like that and thermal cycling and stuff like that.

It's one of the you know. As I said, the steps of looking at something like this ie. go for visual failures. you know, leaking caps and other blown.

You know, parts blowing and things like that. Probably give it the smell test as well and you know, check obvious thing, measure obvious things like the fuses and stuff like that and then just give the back a good visual like that. I'm including all the solder joints on something on like this that gets hot fishermen cut my guts I Catch you next time. Wait, hold on to your hat will Following a red herring down a rabbit hole.

this is the flicker unit and I have to finish the video. It's quite chuffed with myself and I went to put these back up there and it's still flickered so it obviously wasn't that mains input over here that caused it. So let's get the board out, have another visual on this one. Alright, so I've looked at the topside and everything looks hunky-dory So I'm gonna concentrate on these solder joints again because if we've got if we had problems last time then I think we in get problems this time.

normally I wouldn't use the Tiano for this. I'd use the mantas just because the mantises are clearer and it's just you know you don't have to wait for the damn digital thing, focus thing to work and all that sort of stuff. It's all looking ok. yes, holding your tongue at the right angle helps.

I-i don't suspect any of the surface-mount stuff. I Think the through-holes gonna be the culprit? No, it's alright. let's go over the same place we had last time that looks all right. Yeah.

Oh Inductors Hunky-dory Yeah, let me go have a look under the Mantis. It's just better than the Takato if doing, start with visual inspection like this and yep, I found one. I Swear that looks cracked on the Mantis doesn't look nearly as bad here. Oh man, it's dodgy as I Swear it is that looks cracked.

So try and get a photo under the Mantis Finally got it. It's really difficult to get the depth of field at this angle that you need is crazy, but look at that. That is a real difficult to see unless you have a really good mantis like this. Really good microscope to view it right on an angle like that.

It's really very difficult. But as I said, through the viewfinder of the Mantis, it shows up like really wide. Just hold an angle. Boom There it is.

it's You know it's just not easy to shoot this, but look at that. that looks dodgy as you know you're looking at just a flat digital image. You're not seeing a real live image like you are on the Mantis even though you know it's 60 frames per second. By live I mean not like a 3d stereoscopic kind of thing.

But anyway, that is one of the pins on the primary side. Driver trainee there do it, wouldn't it? Alright, so we'll just touch that up. No workers. Yeah, that that didn't look good, that didn't look, didn't look very promising at all.

Might be worth actually sucking this solder off, actually putting some fresh stuff on just as a matter of course. I'll add some more stuff to the other ones. um yeah, I'll go in there and clean up all that looks a bit how you doing, but trust me, like it looks worse than it is under the under the microscope. but uh, yep, let's give that a ball.

Okay I don't see any flicker anymore on the test panel and no, it's not the panel by the way. I fixed I Guess Nope. Watch this. We've got some more dodgy joints in there.

Must have. Wow. I could get it to go off like almost completely there. Yep, there we go.

There we go. Yeah yeah, it's flickering. wasn't that joint? wasn't that one? It's another joint. Back to the Mantis Okay, I found another like three or four that maybe were a bit suspect so I retouched those and we're all good.

I think we're good now. I'll give it I'll definitely give it some more bash around TAS But I think we had like a micro crack on one of these joints which was causing the problem and that's all it takes. It's a micro crack in one of those solder joints which are very difficult, very subtle to pick up even on the Mantis which is probably one of the best things you can get for this sort of thing even with the X 8 lens and stuff like that. So like I thought I had it and didn't know it was something else.

So that that is remarkable. So these are: Lifford Lyford whenever you're bloody calm, um, they've got like solder joint issues. Is that because of the this newfangled lead-free rubbish or something? I Don't know. but they look to be susceptible to these micro cracks because that's two units.

Um, so like out of like ten. So that's like you know, 20% of my units. That's actually a lot. So that is remarkable.

Do they have some some sort of a systemic problem there? I'm like the type of Al-assad or alloy that they actually use because you can get many like lead-free solders, not just lead-free There's many different types of lead-free solder. In this particular case, um, they're being getting mobile I found more than like I found at least you know 3 confirmed micro cracks on these things. So yeah, don't like it at all. So that turned out to be more interesting I thought I thought I had a licked and then no it was.

but he's some micro-cracks sorry I couldn't actually show you the culprit in the end I just had to go. that looks a bit how you doing oh you know, re-solder that and sure enough it's um, it looks like it's now fixed anyway again. I Hope you liked it. Catch you next time.