My LaCrosse bc900 died after 3 weeks!
02-19-08, 04:03 PM
#26
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Ever since I got my charger, the battery in bay 1 would always show "3.7Ah" when it was fully charged. Obviously, this was incorrect but I decided to let it go. Spurred by this thread and a quirk I noticed with my own BC900 charger, I decided to open the thing up and take a look.
Improperly soldered joints! Solder bridges! And, a missing part! I'm an electronics technologist by training so I know what I'm looking at. I fixed the bad soldering, cleaned all the old flux residue off the board, and set to work on that missing part. Guess what? It was part of the circuit for the first battery bay. Each bay has the same group of parts, and I determined that the missing part was a 1000 ohm resistor. Once soldered in place, I put everything back together. No more 3.7Ah reading! Yay!
I must say, while the operation and design of this charger is pretty good, the quality control is severely lacking. I won't be so quick to recommend it should anyone ask.
Improperly soldered joints! Solder bridges! And, a missing part! I'm an electronics technologist by training so I know what I'm looking at. I fixed the bad soldering, cleaned all the old flux residue off the board, and set to work on that missing part. Guess what? It was part of the circuit for the first battery bay. Each bay has the same group of parts, and I determined that the missing part was a 1000 ohm resistor. Once soldered in place, I put everything back together. No more 3.7Ah reading! Yay!
I must say, while the operation and design of this charger is pretty good, the quality control is severely lacking. I won't be so quick to recommend it should anyone ask.
02-19-08, 05:20 PM
#27
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Ever since I got my charger, the battery in bay 1 would always show "3.7Ah" when it was fully charged. Obviously, this was incorrect but I decided to let it go. Spurred by this thread and a quirk I noticed with my own BC900 charger, I decided to open the thing up and take a look.
Improperly soldered joints! Solder bridges! And, a missing part! I'm an electronics technologist by training so I know what I'm looking at. I fixed the bad soldering, cleaned all the old flux residue off the board, and set to work on that missing part. Guess what? It was part of the circuit for the first battery bay. Each bay has the same group of parts, and I determined that the missing part was a 1000 ohm resistor. Once soldered in place, I put everything back together. No more 3.7Ah reading! Yay!
I must say, while the operation and design of this charger is pretty good, the quality control is severely lacking. I won't be so quick to recommend it should anyone ask.
Improperly soldered joints! Solder bridges! And, a missing part! I'm an electronics technologist by training so I know what I'm looking at. I fixed the bad soldering, cleaned all the old flux residue off the board, and set to work on that missing part. Guess what? It was part of the circuit for the first battery bay. Each bay has the same group of parts, and I determined that the missing part was a 1000 ohm resistor. Once soldered in place, I put everything back together. No more 3.7Ah reading! Yay!
I must say, while the operation and design of this charger is pretty good, the quality control is severely lacking. I won't be so quick to recommend it should anyone ask.
02-20-08, 12:54 AM
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Ever since I got my charger, the battery in bay 1 would always show "3.7Ah" when it was fully charged. Obviously, this was incorrect but I decided to let it go. Spurred by this thread and a quirk I noticed with my own BC900 charger, I decided to open the thing up and take a look.
Improperly soldered joints! Solder bridges! And, a missing part! I'm an electronics technologist by training so I know what I'm looking at. I fixed the bad soldering, cleaned all the old flux residue off the board, and set to work on that missing part. Guess what? It was part of the circuit for the first battery bay. Each bay has the same group of parts, and I determined that the missing part was a 1000 ohm resistor. Once soldered in place, I put everything back together. No more 3.7Ah reading! Yay!
I must say, while the operation and design of this charger is pretty good, the quality control is severely lacking. I won't be so quick to recommend it should anyone ask.
Improperly soldered joints! Solder bridges! And, a missing part! I'm an electronics technologist by training so I know what I'm looking at. I fixed the bad soldering, cleaned all the old flux residue off the board, and set to work on that missing part. Guess what? It was part of the circuit for the first battery bay. Each bay has the same group of parts, and I determined that the missing part was a 1000 ohm resistor. Once soldered in place, I put everything back together. No more 3.7Ah reading! Yay!
I must say, while the operation and design of this charger is pretty good, the quality control is severely lacking. I won't be so quick to recommend it should anyone ask.
02-20-08, 09:44 AM
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The inadequate soldering was functional, but not up to any standard (IPC, for example). The missing resistor was a surface mount component, and it looked like it had been soldered on one side at some point, but broke off some time later. The unit was still functional, but I suspect the resistor was some part of the monitoring circuitry and its absence meant the battery measured at the absolute maximum the charger was capable of displaying, regardless of what the current actually was. I'm just glad that this flaw didn't blow up my batteries.
