electrocub
New Member
I have a friend who purchased a "brand new" Thunder AC6 battery charger at a garage sale. He took it home, plugged the 110 volt cable in and nothing. No blue lcd screen; No power. I fixed a radio for his dad so now I am an "electronics guru" (ya'll know better) and he wanted me to look at it.
I took it home and noticed a 12 volt barrel adapter on the charger and since I already had a laptop power supply plugged in and ready to go, I plugged it into the charger. Viola, it lit up and as far as I can tell, it should charge batteries.
Then I opened the case of the charger and the first thing I saw was that the ac to dc adapter is a laptop computer power supply, just like I plugged into the barrel connector.
Looking at the PCB, I noticed what looked like a cold solder joint where the wires from the dc output soldered into the pc board. I re-soldered it and plugged the 110 power cord in. Still no luck. I metered the output of the power adapter to where it plugged into the pcb and the meter reads 12.4 volts. I don't have an idea of what the amperage is. While I had it apart, I plugged in my laptop power supply into the charger and it reads 16+ volts. According to the instructions, it can handle from 11 to 18 volts so my laptop power supply is within tolerance.
The dc output from power supply included in the charger is connected to the barrel input via traces on the pcb and is electrically the same. There shouldn't be any broken traces. I am a novice when it comes to electronics;I can read schematics and can follow traces around a pcb so in my limited experience, it looks like the included laptop power supply is bad. How can I test the power supply to make sure it is bad? I am guessing it has voltage, but no amperage. I can give my friend the external laptop power supply, but it would be much neater if the supply was in the charger. Where do I go from here? TIA
Carroll
I took it home and noticed a 12 volt barrel adapter on the charger and since I already had a laptop power supply plugged in and ready to go, I plugged it into the charger. Viola, it lit up and as far as I can tell, it should charge batteries.
Then I opened the case of the charger and the first thing I saw was that the ac to dc adapter is a laptop computer power supply, just like I plugged into the barrel connector.
Looking at the PCB, I noticed what looked like a cold solder joint where the wires from the dc output soldered into the pc board. I re-soldered it and plugged the 110 power cord in. Still no luck. I metered the output of the power adapter to where it plugged into the pcb and the meter reads 12.4 volts. I don't have an idea of what the amperage is. While I had it apart, I plugged in my laptop power supply into the charger and it reads 16+ volts. According to the instructions, it can handle from 11 to 18 volts so my laptop power supply is within tolerance.
The dc output from power supply included in the charger is connected to the barrel input via traces on the pcb and is electrically the same. There shouldn't be any broken traces. I am a novice when it comes to electronics;I can read schematics and can follow traces around a pcb so in my limited experience, it looks like the included laptop power supply is bad. How can I test the power supply to make sure it is bad? I am guessing it has voltage, but no amperage. I can give my friend the external laptop power supply, but it would be much neater if the supply was in the charger. Where do I go from here? TIA
Carroll
