Opening the charger.

[jonnym]

hello

Having just repaired two eBay replacement chargers I'm hankering after my original one.

The only thing stopping me is working out how to get into it without partially destroying the case. Now I have to accept its just scrap taking up space in a draw so I'm going to get the tools out this week and have a look.

Before I get busy with my arsenal of highly destructive tools, does anyone know how to get the top off without too much damage?

thanks

Jon

 

[drolem]

Looks to me they are ultrasonically welded, so opening it without damage could be a very tough nut to crack. Normally, what I do with similar gadgets is that I put them into a vice, tighten them until they start to bend, release the tension, then tighten them again in a different position, hoping that eventually the weld will crack. Sometimes this technique works, other times it does not.

You can also try a heat gun hoping that they used a glue and not ultrasonic welding.

 

[jonnym]

I managed to open it with a dremel. Its complicated in there, I confirmed the cable and magnetic plug were OK using a continuity test and that the power pack had failed (not sure why at the moment). The cheap ebay power packs work OK but the magnetic plugs are very very poor. So I decided to chop off the cheap mag plug and join it to the original cable and mag plug.

I now have a fully working charger with a very long cable!

After opening up two cheap mag plugs I'm surprised they lasted as long as they did.

Thanks for the help

Jon

 

[dionyx]

My apologies for replying on such an old post but this may come in handy for future readers.

We just opened up the charger by applying a few atmosphere of compressed air on the USB port (sealing it using a little rubber mat with a hole). The lid blew right off with a loud bang. It was glorious! I'm still laughing.

This makes for a much cleaner repair than using an angle grinder or a vice.

Happy holidays!

 

[sharpuser]

... We just opened up the charger by applying a few atmosphere of compressed air on the USB port (sealing it using a little rubber mat with a hole). The lid blew right off with a loud bang. It was glorious! I'm still laughing...

Congrats.

I hope nobody tries this to replace the screen !

 

[CrippsCorner]

You need to do that again and record it for us... sounds fun

 

[toaf]

I second that...I'm tempted to try it for fun... did it glue back easy?

 

[Hydranix]

SP3 stopped charging, definately long out of Warranty.

Multimeter said ~7vAC was on the 12V lead on the chargers blade connector relative to it's ground lead. Middle lead had about 3v DC relative to the ground lead.

No oscilloscope to confirm, but meter said it was 60Hz, but that likely isn't really the frequency.

Tablet is undamaged from the odd AC voltage.

Used air compressor to open the case on the power supply. It worked, but not without a little damage. Regardless, worked much better than original plan to use a rotary tool and hammer would have.

Results:

Adapters output cord was clipped to the board, so it came off nicely. Turned out the adapter was definitely malfunctioning. Tested several points on the board and it appears that some solder heated up and shorted on the underside of the board on it's low voltage side.

No potentially dangerous failures were observed, so that's good.

Attached cord to another 12v 2.5A SMPS and it works well.

Cheers.