Dave Empson

My 8yr old TV was turning off and on about every 20 seconds. The red standby light and backlight were on (as seen in a dark room), but the screen was black. I removed the main (logic) board and locally slowly heated the largest chip (integrated circuit) to about 200C for a few minutes with a hot air gun (see 'reflowing mainboard' videos on youtube). On re-assembly, it all worked again. After a few years, the solder cracks around chips that get hot ie the big chips often with heatsinks. Re-heating the solder to about melting point reseals those cracks. The job takes about 1hr and requires moderate DIY skills. Sometimes TV's fail due to faulty bulging capacitors in the power supply board, but mine were fine as were the voltage outputs, so 'reflowing' the solder can be thought of as a last resort. If this job looks too daunting, try taking it to a repair cafe.

My 8yr old samsung ue32d6530 led TV was turning off and on about every 20 seconds. The red standby light and backlight were on (as seen in a dark room), but the screen was black. I removed the main (logic) board and locally slowly heated the largest chip (integrated circuit) to about 200C for a few minutes with a hot air gun (see 'reflowing mainboard' videos on youtube). On re-assembly, it all worked again. After a few years, the solder cracks around chips that get hot ie the big chips often with heatsinks. Re-heating the solder to about melting point reseals those cracks. The job takes about 1hr and requires moderate DIY skills. Sometimes TV's fail due to faulty bulging capacitors in the power supply board, but mine were fine as were the voltage outputs, so 'reflowing' the solder can be thought of as a last resort. If this job looks too daunting, try taking it to a repair cafe.

I had two similar salter scales (model 1051) which were very difficult to turn on/off after some use. Changing batteries and licking fingers didn't work. The fix is easy, just clean the switch(es) with a solvent to remove the almost invisible coating (patina) that builds up from the grease on your fingers. Both my scales are now working like new. I used a tiny bit of 100% alcohol on a q-tip (cotton bud) and rubbed the touch-switches for less than a minute. I'm sure lots of other solvents will also work. I discovered this when taking the scales apart to fix ithem and noticed that touching the inside surfaces of the touch-switch (where there was no grease layer) successfully turned the scales on.

With a hand lens I can see the the plastic coils, which are otherwise in good condition, have worn flats at their edges where the taper on the slider pushes the coils together. Is there similar or worse wear on the metal slider? Seems unlikely. Do replacement sliders have a slightly narrower taper to allow for the worn plastic? If the replacement metal slider is the same size as the original I can't see why it would solve the problem of poor meshing of the coils when under slight load.