LED indicators poorly made

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Stuart
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LED indicators poorly made

Post by Stuart »

I chose some LED indicators to go on my Tiger but noticed recently about 5 individual LEDs had stopped working on one unit. I popped the circuit board out & saw one LED was loose! Turns out there was some bad soldering in there! I also suspect that the actual solder used was the Lead Free variety (joints not shiny). This stuff doesn't flow right, to my mind, & I suspect that over time, we may see it causing problems on other electrical & electronic parts.
I fixed this indicator with my soldering iron & good, old fashioned, leaded solder :-)
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All good now!
All good now!
view from the front
view from the front
Some of the bad solder joints
Some of the bad solder joints
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henneberg
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Re: LED indicators poorly made

Post by henneberg »

yes, leaded solder is legal to use privately :oops:

I have made ( with leaded solder wire ) the following small electronic indicator relay to mount inside the handlebar to control the indicators at the ends of the handlebar:
Lenker_blinkerelektronik.jpg
I can provide the schematics in case anyone have interest :)
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Rhynri
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Re: LED indicators poorly made

Post by Rhynri »

Stuart wrote:I chose some LED indicators to go on my Tiger but noticed recently about 5 individual LEDs had stopped working on one unit. I popped the circuit board out & saw one LED was loose! Turns out there was some bad soldering in there! I also suspect that the actual solder used was the Lead Free variety (joints not shiny). This stuff doesn't flow right, to my mind, & I suspect that over time, we may see it causing problems on other electrical & electronic parts.
I fixed this indicator with my soldering iron & good, old fashioned, leaded solder :-)

Lead-free soldier is part of the reason the Xbox gets the Red-Ring of Death. It's not so much that it's not useful, but it requires higher heat than the leaded variety when you are floating the circuit board, and no-one has adjusted their process yet.
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Stuart
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Re: LED indicators poorly made

Post by Stuart »

Rhynri wrote:... but it requires higher heat than the leaded variety when you are floating the circuit board, and no-one has adjusted their process yet.
Are we talking ball grid arrays now? They are the main reason laptops fail.
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Re: LED indicators poorly made

Post by Rhynri »

Kind of. The consoleboxes have soldiered CPUs/GPUs, whereas the laptops are socketed (with the ball grid arrays for intel chips), they were having issues with board flex and heat and all sorts of other things. And of course vibration and jarring (which we have to worry about with our bikes) cause the soldier to crack easily if it wasn't heated to a high enough temperature.
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