Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Check Your Panastereo's! Battery Leakage!!!!!!

This is topic Check Your Panastereo's! Battery Leakage!!!!!! in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 12-20-2016, 03:16 PM:

A friend IM'd me today about battery leakage in a CSP-1200 on the Control Logic card. So.... I went and yanked my card out to find it had also just started to leak and it had just started. Mine will clean right up, his is pretty much totaled, but luckily he had a spare one for his customer. The battery is an easy solder in replacement VARTA-55615603940. They are available from The Battery Store and even Amazon.com.

Not even sure WHAT it backs up because the software lives in an ROM chip thats factory programmed. So perhaps "last format used" or to keep things in the selected format in a power bump or something like that.

Mark

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 12-20-2016, 04:16 PM:

Yes. The battery keeps the last format and volume settings between power cycles.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 12-21-2016, 05:42 AM:

The voltage is 3.6? Should be easy to replace this with a lithium which won't leak (although there is that pesky explosive bursting into flames thing they've got going on). You can get lithium in 3.5v for sure, 3.6v may be tricky. Thing is, they pretty much have got leaking solved with alkalines -- Energizer claims their AAA and AA Energizer Max brand are now guaranteed not to leak.

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 12-21-2016, 07:04 AM:

This is a rechargable NiCd or NiMH. Putting in 'something else' may give you more trouble than with the same type of cell. Not every cell is built to be recharged, or recharged under the same conditions as the existing NiMH. You don't want a Lithium cell exploding in that device. Put the same cell type in, and attach a sticker to the device with a mention to check again in 10 years or so.

- Carsten

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 12-21-2016, 04:07 PM:

What Carsten said.... Lithium requires a completely different charge circuit than NIMH does. I wouldn't want my CSP-1200 going up in flames. I may however look at relocating the battery elsewhere.

Mark

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 12-22-2016, 01:41 AM:

Oh, wow! Through-hole! How quaint! [Wink]

I see a few solder joints that I'd want to look at with a Magniscope, however.
I can't tell whether that's a void on the right hand leg of C24 or it's a shadow from the camera flash. If it is, indeed, a void it wouldn't pass for Class-2. It might pass for Class-1 but we don't do Class-1 where I work.

(Class-1 = General -- Class-2 = Continuous Use / Mission Critical -- Class-3 = Life Support.)

Kidding aside... Through-hole with lead solder is far more reliable than SMT with lead-free solder. SMT probably wouldn't have survived the battery puking its guts like that PCB did.

Yes, you can often tell the difference between lead-free and the good stuff just by looking if you know what to look for. [Wink]

BTW... If that IC that says "Maxim" is what I think it is, you might actually be able to substitute a lithium battery in there.

I think it is a battery supervisory circuit...
https://datasheets.maximintegrated.com/en/ds/MAX690A-MAX805L.pdf

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 12-22-2016, 09:04 AM:

Yes, it's a MAX 692... I would have to check with Ray Derrick before I installed a lithium in place of the nimh because. IF it is only used as a voltage monitor then I agree its likely fine. However, I do not need any flameouts... These processors are hard enough to find.

And yes, the solder is fine. If there was one thing Smart Devices could do was flow solder properly.

Mark

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 12-22-2016, 10:16 AM:

To be sure, you can't tell from only a photo unless it's a macro photo.
You'd have to look at the of the bottom of the board, too.

I look at so many circuit boards, every day, that I automatically have a critical eye.

I've also seen so many of those chips go by that I can almost recognize them on sight.

You're right.. Even if the chip is designed to work with lithium batteries or super capacitors you still need to know how it is hooked up.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 12-22-2016, 11:59 AM:

I believe the correct VARTA number is 55615603059.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 12-23-2016, 07:44 PM:

On the old CPA-10 Automation units that had that 3.7v battery that was soldered in, I had a hard time finding batteries for this board.

Thus, I did a workaround: took two "D" Alkaline batteries, wrapped them together, soldered leads to the polarities and soldered the leads to the board.

When, these units were replaced by digital, this workaround install was still keeping the programs in these old dinosaur automations.

-Monte

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 12-24-2016, 02:01 PM:

What do you guys think about putting in some kind of battery holder instead of repeatedly soldering to the board?

The more times you reheat solder connections on a PCB, the more chance of failure. Repeated heating cycles weaken the intermetallic layer (the microscopic boundaries between components, solder and the copper traces on the board) and increases the chance of forming dendrites (solder whiskers) which can cause shorts or other failures.

By the time a consumer receives a piece of equipment, the PCBs inside might have already gone through three or more heating/cooling cycles at the factory. Double sided boards are heated twice in the reflow oven. Boards with transformers or heat sensitive components may have gone through a wave solder machine. Boards with special components might have to undergo selective soldering and/or hand soldering. That's four heats, right there! If there is rework or RMA, there could be five or more heats!

The guidelines that I am trained to work by say that two or three heats is the goal for maximum number of heating/cooling cycles. So, for instance, if I see a double-sided board with a defect on the first side I might hold it back and not send it to rework until the second side is built but that all depends on how many steps in the build process the board is supposed to have. It can get pretty complicated.

For instance, if a board has a BGA (Ball Grid Array) processor chip, we might have to send it to rework, right away. BGAs are more sensitive to reheating and, once they are soldered down, it is very difficult to rework them. You basically have one chance with a BGA. Through-hole components are more forgiving to reheating.

We get very specific work instructions as to whether a given board is Class-2 (Industrial/Mission-Critical) or Class-3. (Life-Support/Military) Once I get through my probationary period, I'm supposed to take classes for IPC Standard-610 which outline very specific workmanship standards. If you don't have your IPC-610 certificate, you can't do certain jobs in the place where I work. This is a big deal if you are working on a project, for instance, where the boards you make will go into the control systems on an F-16 fighter jet or something like that.

While this stuff might not be as important when you are talking about sound systems in movie theaters, I can tell you that, for some projects, we are as serious as a heart attack! There are certain boards, on certain projects that we aren't even allowed to touch with our bare hands.

Static-safe gloves. Anti-static wrist straps. Anti-static shoe straps. Must wear anti-static smocks at all times. When you enter or leave and re-enter the shop you have to stop at a check station to verify that you anti-static devices are working, even if you only go to the bathroom. If you don't, your name shows up on a display board for all to see. (You have to punch in your employee number each time.)

We're not allowed to have a pencil while on the work floor, even if it's only in your pocket. Ball point pens, grease pencils or Sharpie markers only. We're not even allowed to have ordinary paper on the shop floor unless it's inside an anti-static sleeve.

There is a blue line around the perimeter of the shop floor. If you step over that line and you're not following the rules, you can get sent off until you fix whatever problem you were caught for.

So... Long story short...
I know that the boards in cinema processors aren't as critical as the ones that go in EKG machines or heart defibrillators but, if you want to keep your equipment working, this is something to think about. Especially if you're talking about vintage equipment that will be difficult or impossible to replace.

Overworking solder connections might cause a failure down the road.

It might be worthwhile to consider a no-solder solution if it is practical.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 12-24-2016, 03:26 PM:

I think that there just isn't enough call for it to worry about. So you get 10-15 years on each battery change. So with two battery changes you are out to 45-years. How long is anywhere here going to worry about it?

However, along that same line of thinking, when our AT&T partner system started acting up because the voice mail battery failed (it pretty much took the whole phone system down). We did indeed solder in a cordless phone battery socket to make for speedy changes. Now the cordless phone market isn't what it used to be (who has land lines anymore? However, that battery has been on the job for probably 15-years now. The original only made it about 5 years.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 12-24-2016, 03:47 PM:

And in a small screening room with a competent operator you don't really even need it. It was there mainly for automation reasons I decided I'm leaving mine out.

But, yes. Locating it off board would be very easy to do.

Mark

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 12-30-2016, 09:52 AM:

Without the battery, all of the fader memory functions don't survive a power cycle (nor probably any software configurations but I know, for sure that the fader will wake up at 7.0 without the battery and in Optical Stereo).

So I've looked around where we have Panas installed as well as what we have at the ready for repairs to existing systems. It would appear that if you have one that is powered on regularly, the battery decay is MUCH slower than one that is constantly on the battery. So if you have a spare module (as some of my sites do), then that battery is probably showing decay. However, if you have yours powered up daily, then they show almost no signs of decay...even after 13-years.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 12-30-2016, 01:27 PM:

Thats good to know. Mine only gets powered up a few times a month and I am leaving it out. The firmware is stored on a programmable EPROM chip that plugs in so there is no issue with software. We actually had Ray write a special version of that firmware to work around some goofy automation systems a customer had and didn't want to get rid of. However... EPROM's are also not an absolute permanent storage place for code, although they last a very very long time. In one of my Test Equipment groups a guy had an HP54111-D Scope where one of the EPROM chips became corrupt. Another guy offered to read out and store the code off the ship and reprogram his. Well, I sent the guy my set of four chips and the code was all extracted and his scope was saved. Plus the code is now on the HP Group web site for anyone that needs it. This same issue will eventually happen to many of the EPROM chips out there once they get to be 20 to 30 years old.

Mark

Posted by Kristo Nalo (Member # 9748) on 01-05-2017, 07:28 AM:

So glad to see this thread I thought I never found some information about this leakage. Thank you for all the member that give their own advice that based on their experience. Happy new year and wish you all a good health and more blessings to come.