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Rowenta DG580 repair

2015/10/01 By staze

Rowenta DG580Mother-in-law, ages ago, gave me her broken Rowenta DG580 steam iron to me saying it was broken. The switch was basically doing nothing. So, I sat on the thing for months not wanting to touch an iron (boring). But, finally took a look recently. First up was the o-ring on the fill stopper. I ordered a replacement from Rowenta, but it didn’t fit at all. I also ordered a whole new cap, and it worked, but looked ugly. So I went to a local o-ring shop, and managed to find a replacement o-ring that fit pretty well. It’s a -208 silicone o-ring. It’s not a perfect fit, and a -312 might fit better, but they didn’t have any. The only difference being the thickness of the o-ring.

DG580 triggerNow, the trigger. Opening the iron required a security torx bit, then pulling off the top of the handle. The trigger, at this point, was obviously broken at the narrow point. My first attempt to fix this was simply some two part epoxy made specifically for plastics. This held for about 2 shirts worth of ironing before re-breaking. My second fix was what I should have done in the first place. I took a soldering iron on “low” (about 600F), and melted a line down the length of the narrow part of the trigger, then “mixed” the resulting plastic together then back down in the channel than had been created. Effectively “welding” the plastic back together. I then went around the periphery of the narrow part, to further weld it back to the main trigger. While not pretty at all, it does hold, and I was unable to break it with a moderate amount of force, and also pulling the trigger as hard as possible. If this fix does not work, my next step is to make a mold of the trigger with silicone rubber, then make a resin cast replacement of the trigger (I’ve also thought about 3D printing a replacement, or worse, having a metal trigger machined). Sadly Rowenta stopped making replacements some time ago.

Not sure if this will help anyone with this issue, but hopefully someone will find it useful. =)

Filed Under: Electronics Tagged With: DG580, repair, Rowenta, trigger

Global Specialties PW-2120 repair

2015/09/09 By staze

Global Specialties PW-2120I recently picked up a Global Specialties PW-2120 Sweep/Function Generator at a local electronics shop for $30. They had it in back as broken, but didn’t have the time to repair. At the time they only mentioned that the knob was broken (it was, the whole PCB had “popped” off the back of the rotary encoder. But, some prodigious application of hot glue fixed that). The bigger issue is while the buttons and everything worked, there was zero output. Changing to any frequency, sweep, or wave shape resulted in nothing on the outputs. More interestingly, the frequency counter function worked perfectly. So that wasn’t it.

Getting out the FLIR, I was able to see that the CLC522 (variable gain amp), and the 5V regulator (7805) were both getting pretty warm. More interestingly, checking the resistance between the +5v and gnd, there was only 500ohms. That’s not right (or, at least, doesn’t seem right). Visual inspection showed something a bit worrying. U1 on the main board was missing. Now, it COULD be an add-on chip, but that seems unlikely for a chip labeled “U1”.

So, first thing’s first. I contacted GlobalSpecialties to ask for schematics or a technical manual. First response I got back was the general manual, which I had already found. So, emailed them back, and the next day received a nice zip file of all the schematics! Awesome!

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Electronics Tagged With: Global Specialties, PW-2120, repair

Surebonder PRO2-100

2015/08/19 By staze

Surebonder Pro2-100Hot Glue may be one of the most under appreciated tools of doing electronics (or any) repair, building. It’s extremely versatile, water resistant, and generally, non-conductive. Can’t figure out how to repair/insulate something? Give hot glue a go. I, for years, have used tiny hobby glue guns, and never been overly happy with their performance. Plus, with my desk wiring, I like to keep all my tools plugged into a single “hot” power bar, so that I can turn them all off with a single, separate, switch (basically, so I don’t forget to turn off the soldering iron). But, I don’t really want them all on when not in use, either. So, a glue gun with it’s own on/off switch was something I’d been wanting for a while.

Amazon reviews all seemed to point to the same gun, the Surebonder Pro2-100. But, $30 for a hot glue gun was a bit much. Then, on a video by Applied Science, he mentioned this gun as well, so I just bit the bullet and bought it. And boy, am I glad I did.

The “gun” came from Amazon in a couple days, and first off, it’s big. It’s physically larger than my desoldering gun (and, really, uses almost as much power). But, it feels great, and the full length handle gives very good control over the amount of glue dispensed. Heat up take a while, largely because the glue chamber seems to be on the large side. I say that because the gun takes almost a whole 10″ 1.2″ glue stick before it dispenses anything (so, the glue chamber is probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 18in^3) ((Half inch gluestick has a volume of .25*π^2 * 10 (24.67in^3), and figure 3/4 of that is filling the chamber)). Because of this, I really suggest getting the 10″ (or 15″ if you can get them) sticks if possible. 4″ sticks would be brutal. Especially since the gun CAN dispense a LOT of glue at a time (they rate it at 2.5lbs per hour).

The gun, though, works great. While I also purchased some black glue sticks, I actually purchased a separate gun for those so I wouldn’t have to waste glue switching between black and clear glue.

So, that all said, the glue gun is awesome. I really do like it. My only problem has been the added size has made it hard to get glue into small spaces, but there are some replacement tips you can get to alleviate this. Not sure when/if I’ll bother buying those. I also wish the on/off switch was a little bigger, and that there was an LED to show power/heating status. Small quibbles, but would be nice for a future revision.

[xrr rating=4/5]

Filed Under: Reviews Tagged With: Hot Glue Gun, Pro2-100, Surebonder

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