I think this is the smoke tying to escape. I think you should hook it up to a power supply and ramp up the voltage until it learns its lesson to not do it again
That's why marine electronics is conformally coated! LOL (speaking of which, I'll be doing a teardown video of a boat power distribution panel in a few weeks, if anyone's interested - there's some nice stuff in it)
Had a couple of transistor radios that I once found on a beach pretty much like that. I think they were washed up from a boat. Must have sat on the beach for at least a year. Lots of rust, leaky batteries (still in them) etc. I literaly hosed them off replaced a few compenents including the speakers, and re did the battery compartments. Good as new. Sold them on e-bay many years later when I can across better examples. I've also had some pretty bad radios from farms and sheds with rodent droppings and who knows what else.
I have seen the effects of salt water on a board for a skid steer loader that spent time aboard a ship on the St-Laurence river here in Canada. It was old enough to be a through hole board. Many traces were replaced with 30AWG wire wrap wire. Many vias needed to be repaired by feeding through a wire and soldering on both sides. All the new wires were coated with liquid electrical tape to seal and fasten them down. The loader has worked for decades now on land.
Battery leakage is a pain. Got a substantial amount of Varta High Energy leaks recently. One of them destroyed a Hue motion sensor where components and PCB coating corroded away just like in your video. On my DMM I fortunately blew a fuse recently just to find the Vartas have started to leak too. Luckily only messed up the battery compartment yet. Moved to some eneloops in some devices, never seen any leakage.
Duraleak FTW. Yes i've seen pictures of such carnages on automobile alarm sirens with an integrated NiMh battery (common fault on Volvo XC90s). As this headlamp, it's a completely sealed enclosure. Maybe when there is no air to get inside, the chemistry of batteries produces gases that also helps in eating away everything?
It just looked like battery leakage to me, as soon as you opened the back, but yeah i agree it's spread so widely and you don't normally see it wick everywhere like that.
Not a valid comparison, but I've seen amazing corrosion on a unit of test equipment that occurred within 24 hours of leaving the facility. When I worked for a company that made radio test equipment we won a bid for a slightly customized variant to be provided to the US Army. As soon as we had samples ready they were taken across town to be tested for meeting the stated specifications when subjected to vibration and temperatures and humidity required by the contract. Of 12 units one was functioning after 2 hours of temperature cycling but failed before 3 hours of the 24 hours required. All the others had failed more quickly from temperature, humidity or vibration testing. Had any survived 3 hours they would have been put into the next test and then the third. Then the combination tests. The units came back partially disassembled because they documented what failed. Every possible place there were dissimilar metals in hardware used structurally or electrically. Lots of rapid corrosion. Paper speaker cones all failed. Modules, wires and rigid coax came loose. It was total carnage. We reworked everything and cleaned up the design flaws and assembly procedures and made lots of units for them over the life of the contract and another contract followed in a couple of years for a much more customized test set.
Humidity-freeze tests are very harsh. I've had products that look like they have been dragged to hell and back. It's amazing how plastics turn to powder, etc. Thermal cycling can also cause pressure differentials that cause gaskets to deform allowing humid air to be drawn in that later condenses resulting in trapped water. Amazingly one of my products survived the range of tests, however it technically failed as one of the switch contact block holders deformed causing the contact block to separate from the button.
Working as a tech I once had a telematics unit that was returned as "not reporting", opened it up and found that it was basically wearing a fur coat of mold, except for the parts where the board had been totally eaten away by water ingress. As the units were in the vehicle cabs and should have been perfectly dry it did make me wonder if the company had taken to employing dolphins as drivers. I also had a tough PDA come back as "suddenly not working". A routine inspection of the outside showed no damage. However, upon opening it up I was confronted by an LCD screen shaped like a banana. Obviously the driver had deliberately run it over. Amazingly, after replacing the screen the device worked perfectly, and continued to do so until it was retired.
Wow! I don't think I've seen any electronics quite that crusty before. It's possible the light could have been sitting at an angle and all the electrolyte to just run over the side of the battery holder. The electrolyte also seems to wick along everything too.
A family member brought me a remote control to a piece of AV equipment that looked similar to that thanks to battery damage. Turned the traces into Swiss cheese.
Is it worth spinning a new board the same shape and size and with the same mounting holes, designing a new circuit and saving the LED assembly and backing plate?
No battery leakage required. Just some conductive moisture and DC current. You get a nice reaction where the negative connection will release hydrogen gas while the positive connection will release oxygen. But copper is fairly reactive and the positive side will NOT release oxygen gas, instead the oxygen will immediately react with the copper producing that nice green copper oxide. But I've seen crustier. Way back when I was a child, I attended an Altar8800 demonstration with my father. And I happened to win the door prize which was a calculator kit. Now, we're talking old school. The calculator used 6 AA batteries (they were in the rear half of the case, held together with 4 screws). In any case, one day my sister "borrowed" it and visited our grandmother. While there, grandma gave my sister some wet cucumbers, which she prompted put into her purse along with my calculator. Batteries and impure water being what they are, caused the batteries to discharge, causing all that lovely electrolytic corrosion. And 6 AA batteries have quite a few joules stored to cause quite a lot of corrosion.
I've seen only one crustier: a pair of active "hunting" headphones to pass sound but block loud noises. I bought it for something like $3, hoping to fix it or at least use the housing for my own active audio testing. The entire thing ended up being a loss, with the circuit board on one ear cover covered in corrosion. The board was pitted like a macbook with water damage, corrosion in the wires that went to the external microphone (busted) and the speakers (rusted).
I’ve seen that with Alkaline batteries on a pinball machine that retain the high score. The battery pack is mounted to the pc board, and it gets crusty like that and eats all the copper away. No water necessary! Except maybe what’s in the air.
Since I took up diving, I've come across electronics on the bottom of the ocean a time or two. I've definitely seen at least that bad. At some point, it becomes hard to quantify what would be worse. Kinda looks like salt water + batteries in that light. Maybe someone got it wet and then removed the batteries thinking they might be able to clean it up?
That'd definitely be a 'no parts required' repair job👍 Should clean up the outside all nice and schmick, then go leave it in the dumpster room and set up a hidden camera for a laugh🤣🤣🇦🇺
Years ago I had an old Dynatec multimeter with the same problem, a 9V battery, ate my PCB too. So that one was for the waste bin. Good I had another new one. But yes this looks familiar to me.
Surely, that is a battery leak that for wahtever reason the last user didn't notice, maybe it dripped through slowly due to the orientation of the lamp in storage and had dried by the time the next user replaced the batteries. I've seen this in battery powered gadgets that were left in cars for years and years, cycling between cold overnight and boiling hot during the day.
The PC modules in the US military aircraft was coated in formvar in the 1970's when I served in the US Navy. When I replaced the components, I had to brush on a fresh coat over the areas I chipped off. We had broken sewing machine needles we got from the paraloft guys in a trade soldered to the voltmeter leads to penetrate through the formvar to troubleshoot. Simpson 260, Baby!
Yes 3 different conformal coats used in the stuff I worked on, one solder through, one not, and the third was sort of in the middle, in that it produced cyanide gas. All 3 tough enough, in that if you put a board in the ultrasonic cleaner, which hit it with boiling trichorethane and ultrasonics, it would take 20 minutes to remove, though the GRP board itself would delaminate totally in 3. Normally we would do a 5 second dip to clean them before application of new conformal coat in the areas worked on. When it was fluid change time all the ground support stuff would be put through, stripping all the dirt and hydraulic fluid off. Aluminium castings came out looking like they had just been cast.
I've seen military hardware that looked like this inside when it finally broke and needed repair. It was often cheaper to throw it out and buy a new one.
I've run across (and repaired) some pretty bad corrosion from electrolyte leaking out of capacitors, but this is on a whole different level. The electrolyte damage was bad, but still repairable (it had only eaten through one component leg that wasn't just an easily replaceable part, along with many traces on the board). I don't think there's any hope for this thing - chuck that thing right into the f__k-it-bucket!
ROFL, coincidence or not, the crustiest piece of tech I found recently was also a headlamp kinda like that one. Not the same brand though. Some parts of it was so corroded it basically kinda fell apart. Similar thing, components just fell off in pieces. And just to be clear, I never took that headlamp to the beach or somewhere you'd expect more corrosion and rust... but I did forget batteries in there, and they leaked and corroded the whole thing.
YEs, seen multiple lights like that or even worse. Battery-leakage and moisture from the air. Or even just the salty sea-air that corrodes anything especially with a little rain that keeps all moist. That cristals just suck the moist air in to capture it... ;-)
battery leak and DaveCAD sweat will do that! :P do a repair job on it! ... ive seen worse get fixed!.. been watchin some guys do console repairs lately...some crusties out there that they have resurrected!
I think this is the smoke tying to escape. I think you should hook it up to a power supply and ramp up the voltage until it learns its lesson to not do it again
Lol
A flooded engine computer that remained connected to 12 volts
That's why marine electronics is conformally coated! LOL
(speaking of which, I'll be doing a teardown video of a boat power distribution panel in a few weeks, if anyone's interested - there's some nice stuff in it)
ahh people will forget about it in a few weeks :/ better remind us
Had a couple of transistor radios that I once found on a beach pretty much like that. I think they were washed up from a boat. Must have sat on the beach for at least a year. Lots of rust, leaky batteries (still in them) etc. I literaly hosed them off replaced a few compenents including the speakers, and re did the battery compartments. Good as new. Sold them on e-bay many years later when I can across better examples. I've also had some pretty bad radios from farms and sheds with rodent droppings and who knows what else.
I'm thinking water ingress mixed with the batteries rather than pure battery leakage in a sealed unit.
I have seen the effects of salt water on a board for a skid steer loader that spent time aboard a ship on the St-Laurence river here in Canada. It was old enough to be a through hole board. Many traces were replaced with 30AWG wire wrap wire. Many vias needed to be repaired by feeding through a wire and soldering on both sides. All the new wires were coated with liquid electrical tape to seal and fasten them down. The loader has worked for decades now on land.
Battery leakage is a pain.
Got a substantial amount of Varta High Energy leaks recently. One of them destroyed a Hue motion sensor where components and PCB coating corroded away just like in your video. On my DMM I fortunately blew a fuse recently just to find the Vartas have started to leak too. Luckily only messed up the battery compartment yet. Moved to some eneloops in some devices, never seen any leakage.
I absolutely like the sheer enthusiasm of this video. I rarely see such exhilaration for such decrepit PCBs.
Duraleak FTW.
Yes i've seen pictures of such carnages on automobile alarm sirens with an integrated NiMh battery (common fault on Volvo XC90s). As this headlamp, it's a completely sealed enclosure. Maybe when there is no air to get inside, the chemistry of batteries produces gases that also helps in eating away everything?
It just looked like battery leakage to me, as soon as you opened the back, but yeah i agree it's spread so widely and you don't normally see it wick everywhere like that.
Not a valid comparison, but I've seen amazing corrosion on a unit of test equipment that occurred within 24 hours of leaving the facility.
When I worked for a company that made radio test equipment we won a bid for a slightly customized variant to be provided to the US Army. As soon as we had samples ready they were taken across town to be tested for meeting the stated specifications when subjected to vibration and temperatures and humidity required by the contract. Of 12 units one was functioning after 2 hours of temperature cycling but failed before 3 hours of the 24 hours required. All the others had failed more quickly from temperature, humidity or vibration testing. Had any survived 3 hours they would have been put into the next test and then the third. Then the combination tests.
The units came back partially disassembled because they documented what failed.
Every possible place there were dissimilar metals in hardware used structurally or electrically. Lots of rapid corrosion. Paper speaker cones all failed. Modules, wires and rigid coax came loose. It was total carnage.
We reworked everything and cleaned up the design flaws and assembly procedures and made lots of units for them over the life of the contract and another contract followed in a couple of years for a much more customized test set.
Humidity-freeze tests are very harsh. I've had products that look like they have been dragged to hell and back. It's amazing how plastics turn to powder, etc. Thermal cycling can also cause pressure differentials that cause gaskets to deform allowing humid air to be drawn in that later condenses resulting in trapped water. Amazingly one of my products survived the range of tests, however it technically failed as one of the switch contact block holders deformed causing the contact block to separate from the button.
Working as a tech I once had a telematics unit that was returned as "not reporting", opened it up and found that it was basically wearing a fur coat of mold, except for the parts where the board had been totally eaten away by water ingress. As the units were in the vehicle cabs and should have been perfectly dry it did make me wonder if the company had taken to employing dolphins as drivers.
I also had a tough PDA come back as "suddenly not working". A routine inspection of the outside showed no damage. However, upon opening it up I was confronted by an LCD screen shaped like a banana. Obviously the driver had deliberately run it over. Amazingly, after replacing the screen the device worked perfectly, and continued to do so until it was retired.
Wow! I don't think I've seen any electronics quite that crusty before. It's possible the light could have been sitting at an angle and all the electrolyte to just run over the side of the battery holder. The electrolyte also seems to wick along everything too.
A family member brought me a remote control to a piece of AV equipment that looked similar to that thanks to battery damage. Turned the traces into Swiss cheese.
I have seen electronics like this before! I have taken apart stuff that was left outdoors for many years and some of it looked just like this!
Is it worth spinning a new board the same shape and size and with the same mounting holes, designing a new circuit and saving the LED assembly and backing plate?
No battery leakage required. Just some conductive moisture and DC current. You get a nice reaction where the negative connection will release hydrogen gas while the positive connection will release oxygen. But copper is fairly reactive and the positive side will NOT release oxygen gas, instead the oxygen will immediately react with the copper producing that nice green copper oxide.
But I've seen crustier. Way back when I was a child, I attended an Altar8800 demonstration with my father. And I happened to win the door prize which was a calculator kit. Now, we're talking old school. The calculator used 6 AA batteries (they were in the rear half of the case, held together with 4 screws). In any case, one day my sister "borrowed" it and visited our grandmother. While there, grandma gave my sister some wet cucumbers, which she prompted put into her purse along with my calculator. Batteries and impure water being what they are, caused the batteries to discharge, causing all that lovely electrolytic corrosion. And 6 AA batteries have quite a few joules stored to cause quite a lot of corrosion.
That is a Krusty Burger indeed
that A3000 with the motherboard battery leak that you tried to fix many years ago was pretty ruined too, i still have that as my desktop wallpaper :)
1:02 Ah, the look of pure, innocent joy on a kid's face when they find a new toy to play with!
Dave is 1 sweaty boi
I've seen only one crustier: a pair of active "hunting" headphones to pass sound but block loud noises. I bought it for something like $3, hoping to fix it or at least use the housing for my own active audio testing. The entire thing ended up being a loss, with the circuit board on one ear cover covered in corrosion. The board was pitted like a macbook with water damage, corrosion in the wires that went to the external microphone (busted) and the speakers (rusted).
2:02 TFW when you can't remember which parts went where because you LITERALLY SCRAPED OFF THE SILKSCREEN DESIGNATORS
Yes, I have an Arcade PCB that looks like it was stored in water. One day when I'm bored, I'll probably try to repair it :)
The traces look in remarkably good condition, but it looks like it's attacked every thing else.
Only the ENIG gold is there, the copper under is almost totally gone. Even the tin from the solder is corroded away leaving the gold plating behind.
I’ve seen that with Alkaline batteries on a pinball machine that retain the high score. The battery pack is mounted to the pc board, and it gets crusty like that and eats all the copper away. No water necessary! Except maybe what’s in the air.
I have worked on boards that look just like this. Usually it’s from a pet urinating on the device. Power strips, game consoles, routers.
Since I took up diving, I've come across electronics on the bottom of the ocean a time or two. I've definitely seen at least that bad. At some point, it becomes hard to quantify what would be worse. Kinda looks like salt water + batteries in that light. Maybe someone got it wet and then removed the batteries thinking they might be able to clean it up?
That'd definitely be a 'no parts required' repair job👍 Should clean up the outside all nice and schmick, then go leave it in the dumpster room and set up a hidden camera for a laugh🤣🤣🇦🇺
duracell's that's what
Years ago I had an old Dynatec multimeter with the same problem, a 9V battery, ate my PCB too. So that one was for the waste bin. Good I had another new one. But yes this looks familiar to me.
Looks like it got durahelled, then left nice and damp for a year.
Surely, that is a battery leak that for wahtever reason the last user didn't notice, maybe it dripped through slowly due to the orientation of the lamp in storage and had dried by the time the next user replaced the batteries. I've seen this in battery powered gadgets that were left in cars for years and years, cycling between cold overnight and boiling hot during the day.
Looks like its been underwater at sea for months, but hot flux will likely fix most of the board damage.
The PC modules in the US military aircraft was coated in formvar in the 1970's when I served in the US Navy. When I replaced the components, I had to brush on a fresh coat over the areas I chipped off. We had broken sewing machine needles we got from the paraloft guys in a trade soldered to the voltmeter leads to penetrate through the formvar to troubleshoot. Simpson 260, Baby!
Yes 3 different conformal coats used in the stuff I worked on, one solder through, one not, and the third was sort of in the middle, in that it produced cyanide gas. All 3 tough enough, in that if you put a board in the ultrasonic cleaner, which hit it with boiling trichorethane and ultrasonics, it would take 20 minutes to remove, though the GRP board itself would delaminate totally in 3. Normally we would do a 5 second dip to clean them before application of new conformal coat in the areas worked on. When it was fluid change time all the ground support stuff would be put through, stripping all the dirt and hydraulic fluid off. Aluminium castings came out looking like they had just been cast.
Must have been Duracell.
I've seen military hardware that looked like this inside when it finally broke and needed repair. It was often cheaper to throw it out and buy a new one.
Oh that's a spectacular specimen!
Ah, she’ll be right mate - chuck it in the ultrasonic cleaner!
I've run across (and repaired) some pretty bad corrosion from electrolyte leaking out of capacitors, but this is on a whole different level. The electrolyte damage was bad, but still repairable (it had only eaten through one component leg that wasn't just an easily replaceable part, along with many traces on the board). I don't think there's any hope for this thing - chuck that thing right into the f__k-it-bucket!
ROFL, coincidence or not, the crustiest piece of tech I found recently was also a headlamp kinda like that one. Not the same brand though.
Some parts of it was so corroded it basically kinda fell apart. Similar thing, components just fell off in pieces.
And just to be clear, I never took that headlamp to the beach or somewhere you'd expect more corrosion and rust... but I did forget batteries in there, and they leaked and corroded the whole thing.
But a wee scratch, will buff out.
Looks like someone used it hiking in the rain and prooved it isn't water proof lol
YEs, seen multiple lights like that or even worse. Battery-leakage and moisture from the air. Or even just the salty sea-air that corrodes anything especially with a little rain that keeps all moist. That cristals just suck the moist air in to capture it... ;-)
I've seen that before on devices that were drowned while still powered
Yeah, but does it still work?
did you find that on the side of the road
Found a Hitachi AA battery in a device last week, from '81. Not a spot on it.
looks like a Jackson Pollock painting.
Dave, you should use white vinegar.
I work at a place that services engine ECUs etc I’ve seen stuff on par or worse than this
That thing was found beneath the Antikythera mechanism! 😂
30-50 percent of it still useful Sir
Looks like something you'd expect some far future archaeologist digging up the remnants of our civilization to dig up.
I had HP n36l micro server that was home to a number of generations of gecko's that beats that.
Salt water yes. SWEAT. It’s a head lamp and foreheads are awash in sweat. And sweat is crazy amount of organic sand corrosive compounds
dissolved by human sweat
more likely leaked batt
This as the same level as SamCrac Aston Martin Body Control Unit 😂😂
a toothbrush and some jumper wires over decomposed traces an you can get it to work again !
Last time I checked water and electricity don't mix well.
*conductive solutions, not water
My first thought was moss or algae.
Looks like a dog pissed on it. But can you get it working?🙂
Was that fished up from the Mariana Trench?
That's definitely crusty 😮
that's 100% saltwater damage, probably less so the battery.. it sat in salt water, and just corroded everything away
Power up the LED! I bet it still works.
My level sensor under My car looked like that....
I believe "water ingress" implies a level of decency. this has been submarined for months! it looks like part of a reef
It was a mouse that peed ammonia on him. 😆
Repair challenge!
Battery juice gone to another side by osmosis.
Looks like perspiration ingress to me! (And you were touching it 😉)
whole bottle of isopropyl 🫠🤣🙈🙇♂️
You just need to sandblast it to remove the crusty bits....:whistle:
Duracell batteries? Only those can leak that much.
Send it to Rossmann.
Send it to Northbridge to be fixed, would be funny.
Antikythera Mechanism?
Drop this in the ultra sonic cleaner
Yep, they used Duracell.!!😉
Designed by J-Rod.
I'll see your torch, and raise you this flood damaged Aston Martin control module - ua-cam.com/video/CgeUyoFmYEg/v-deo.html
Sweat is pretty salty.
Someone vomited and fell face down in it, wearing a headlight? 🙄
Nope. You win.
damn this is crazy haha :D it made transparent components :D
Head sweat did this to mine
Over 3 solid weeks of use, and 2 years left alone over covid - batteries leaked also but confined to the compartment. It was stored dry!
Couple of minutes in the ultrasonic and she'll be right
Can you fix it 🙂
Repair video? 😀
Send it to those vintage stuff 'restorers' lets see what the can do with such crusty item 😂
Well, I Was trying to eat dinner. ..... 🤑
Probably had high quality Dick Smith batteries inside.
that thing shouldn't have electronics anyway
Okay, but can you fix it? 😄
minerals!
I've seen worse. :(
battery leak and DaveCAD sweat will do that! :P
do a repair job on it! ... ive seen worse get fixed!..
been watchin some guys do console repairs lately...some crusties out there that they have resurrected!
😂😂😂 you can fix it
this is easilty fixable, put in a rice jar 24h 😁
Where did my comment go?