FIXING FRENZY Part 1 

Time Stamp Introduktion 00:09 Crackly Speakers 00:45 Handsome man talking about PCB WAY 5:31 Google Nest Mini 6:25 Bissell Carpet Cleaner 16:48 Portable Spot Welder 31:48 Listen to this man 55:59

Hi Vince, with the spot welder I think it's just the design. I had a NOCO Boost Pro GB150 car starterpack given to me as a present, I charged it up for the first time which took hours to do, I never used it but placed it in my glove compartment and forgot about it. When it came time to use it during a cold spell it was flat, no lights nothing. After opening it up the Lipo was totally flat and showing signs of puffing up. I contacted the manufacturer only to be told that the warranty period was up, so no help from them. It had never been used, came with a flat battery, the instructions only state charge before use, the charge lights did come on so anyone would think it is ok unless you use a usb volt meter. A lot of these companys just don't care, it sells, makes them money, it lies for a while in your car and damages the battery, by the time this has been found flat, too late the battery, and warranty is out. All wrong, and potentially dangerous.

I just love that you're planning to leave carpet cleaner to your kids in your will. They are very lucky😊

I can't wait to see you fix the Corona beer. ;) This looks like a fun batch Vince.

That what happens when the circuit uses a soft power button, unlike a mechanical switches The soft power button will eat up or drain the power bit by bit. Because that soft button is tied up to a chip, that needs constant power to function. The designer might think, that the buyer must be using these tools daily, and always put on the charger, after daily work. the only way to fix it, is to find that offending chip, and install a switch to cut power to the chip, whenever the tool is not in use.

Loving the series so far Vince, we had 2 Bissell pro heat carpet cleaners, it was common for us to snag it on a rugs edge and it snaps the belt, I have 2 belts here and some tools scattered about if I can find them I will send them to you 😊, don’t forget to go over the carpets you have cleaned prior with the machine in rinse mode as the carpet shampoo can leave a sticky residue that will attract dirt. The spot welder look up the spec to see if it’s li-po or super capacitor….. ? Thanks can’t wait for part 2

Hi Vince. The correct solution for use on volume controls and variable resistors, etc, is the deoxit fader solution. It's in a green package. The red deoxit can desolve the tracks on controls. I found out the hard way. Good luck.

Obviously, that Spot Welder has a construction error, but if you want to modify it so that it can work, connect the battery regularly to the switch that you install on the housing and tap to prevent the battery from draining.

Hi Vince! Hey, you can use a small drill bit and bore into the green part of the pot very carefully and get cleaner in the pot. If you look carefully, you can see the green section of the pot has more than one section. On a channel selector like on a CB radio, it has several sections, but it is similar to what you have there, you have to bore a hole in each section to get the cleaner inside. When I say this, you have to be extremely careful and not punch the hole in to deeply, which of course the bit would ruin the internal parts of the pot. Once it is cleaned and flushed and some Deoxit inside, you can rotate it as you do and then seal the holes with a tad of hot glue. This is very effective and will last much longer than trying to get it down the shaft. That said, it appears you got it good enough good job! I also agree with the poster who mentioned deep well sockets that does help and makes the for a cleaner job and does not scratch up the nuts on those pots or selectors or damage the plastic around them.

I have a similar tab welder (albeit just the bare battery/board) and with the standby current from soft power off it will absolutely fully drain the battery if left alone for a few weeks. My solution is to disconnect the battery when not in use. I've had the welder for something like 3 years now and every once and awhile I connect the battery and give it a little charge to keep it around 80% and she still runs just fine.

For those noisy pots, like that volume control - I doubt you got any of it actually inside. Take a little drill bit, with your fingers, drill a little hole in the top. Now you have a way to get the deox inside. EDIT: I'm amazed what you did fixed it.

Hi vince! love your videos! When checking for continuity sometimes I use a needle to pierce thru the insulation and then I put the multimeter probes in the needles. That way I dont end up with a lot of uninsulated wire.

About the spot welder, you cannot really measure a Lithium batteri immediately after charging it because the chemistry in the battery simply can´t level out the voltage 10 seconds or even 2 hours after you unplug it. the best way you test a lithium battery is to have it fully charged, unplug it, wait AT LEAST 24hours before you start measure it, then you take 1 measure each 24H, it is normal that it drops some voltage after charging over time but it will stabilize itself when you leave it and it will drop very slowly after this if the cell is healthy, there are graphs for this for those who don´t know what you should expect to see. but you can expect a cell to drop 0,1 volts during the initial 24 hours and then it should stay pretty much the same but every Lithium battery have a slow internal discharge over time, but a fully charged cell should not keep drop voltage quickly with no load because that is a bad sign. The low charge is because that cell has no internal BMS and the logic circuitry in the device is never really turned off and it pulls current over time and it has no complete protection that turns it off. The trickle charge is correctly made however, people are dead seriously terrified for lithium batteries dropping below 2,5 volts but it is not a general rule to make a battery dangerous, it truly is not good for it and you usually lose quite a bit of life and capacity when it drops too low, if the battery is drained because it have failed and short this is where the trickle charge comes into play, because if the voltage never reach the 3volt safe line it never starts to charge with high current which will lead to fire eventually. but if the battery nicely climbs up again it is usually fine as long as it have not puffed up or drop down in voltage again too quickly. Overcharge, imbalance and shorting cells are what cause the general highest risk of fire in lithium cells and soooooooooo many devices do not include a proper BMS in their multi-cell battery packs and it causes individual cells to be way too over charge or even reverse charged and then you go booom. one last thing, The probes on the welder is supposed to be safe to short out when the device is turned off because there will be no current, the voltage you read is the electrical leakage through mosfets, they are not relays that completely cut the connection when they are off, some small leakage will be seen, BUT I would not be surprised if the device have a voltage sensing resistor with some voltage applied to the probes that you can measure because how would the device know when you poke the probes to a desired weld? I am sure the device prime the Mosfets when the probes referense voltage gets shorted and it is likely working exactly as it is designed to do. albeit a standard Chinesium shortcut budget design. it could had ways to truly turn the device off but that would be probably triple the payed price for the product in the end if not more, you get what you pay for

Really enjoyed this mate. Had no idea batteries could do that. I’ve fern trying to charge one on my exercise bike for weeks ! Looks like I need to figure out how to replace it.

Interesting fixes I would say that the spot welder has one of those FETS faulty and causing voltage to be on those probes permanently. The probes are connected to the battery constantly and all it's doing is shorting the battery when doing a weld because the FETS are not all working one is more that likely leaking.

I've charged several completely flat lithium batteries and they've been completely fine. They even make special lithium profile chargers to do so. I don't think they're unsafe to use, but sometimes it can shorten their life. Now it does depend on how long they've been flat. As long as it doesn't swell while charging back up then they're safe to put back in service.

I would have checked if that welder would weld when turned off. Possibly modern multimeters don't apply much voltage but I remember years ago when doing resistance checks on speakers you would get an audible crackle.

Of all the "fix it" YT'rs Vince's delivery is wonderful and he's the only one who legit makes me think that I COULD fix something if I had the right tools and the ability to apply reasoning to the problem. Thank, Vince, for sharing your troubleshooting steps - they're wonderfully helpful. Stay safe, all!

@my mate vince. One other thing as these draw alot of amps i wonder if the battery is rated or wverytime it has a power draw you get instant voltage sag. You could fix it by installing a switch to the posative to just switch and disconnect the battery and when you use it just flick the switch. The bms could be trying to balance the cells

you talking about the google mini triggered my google box and I got a long speech about how good it is and the differences between mine and it... lol

55:00 There in no undervoltage protection and the MCU is always ON although it draws only few mA, it is enough to flatten the battery. TP4056 is the battery manager but i don't see a small two MOSFETs for under/over voltage cut off atach to it, also there is a boost converter that is always ON - SX1308 at 39:04 that makes the 5V for the MCU.

I've had a very similar issue with a Google Nest Audio as you with the Google Nest Mini. Initially, the device was supposed to be on mute; however, upon arrival, it was functioning. A few days later, it reverted to being mute. Upon disassembling the speaker enclosure, I discovered that one of the copper wires from the speaker was cut improperly at the factory (there were cut marks on the wire, but it was still half attached). It was sticking out the speaker itself and touching the metal housing. I cut the excess wire off, and it's been working flawlessly since December. I guess it was working after delivery because it got moved quite a lot, which moved the wire away from the housing for a short while and after a few days it settled back into the position which cut the audio. Loved the video, hopefully the speaker continues working for you!

Great video

Brilliant video Vince, just what I needed after a very stressful day at work. Looking forward to the next one.

39:25 you can see the date 20230105 printed on the edge of the board for that spot welder. Interesting video, keep up the excellent work.

Yet another quality video uploaded as usual; definitely 1 hour of my life if happy to spend it watching you.

The speaker fix was helpful. Ive got a set of pc speakers with a sub that crackle. I thought it could have been a dry solder and id have to dismantle the lot. I now know potentially i can just open up the control box and clean the controls. 😁👍

I used to fix crackerly volume controls as a kid 40 years ago. Contact cleaner from RS was a great investment :)

You need a ultrasonic cutter, so that you can open speaker boxes like the one in the Google nest thingy

Another frenzy production. The voltage on the probes of the welder, even when supposedly switched off, hints at a design flaw. I was eagerly waiting the plier-slip shorting test. Most battery monitoring systems just light LEDs etc when the voltage is nearing not safe to recharge, but that in itself drains the battery further. You can design ultra-low current monitoring systems (something has to detect when a charger is connected) but that adds substantially to the cost. Which INK track is that? (4:35).

To get the very best results with carpet cleaning, pre-treat the area 1st, same solution ratio (or stronger on specific areas that need a deep clean), leave it to dwell for 15 minutes and then use your machine as normal , the difference is in the dwell time, the soap sits and loosens dirt for much longer, just like using snow foam on a car really.... if you do a whole room ( and I do several rooms), you can use a garden sprayer, pressurised bottle to the same end. I like watching and listening to you, the B&O was really interesting, always makes me laugh when you are taken a back by something which as a child of the 70's was just the norm!

Some CRC fast dry Contact and Electrical cleaner is a great product for the potentiometers. Then follow up with the Deoxit.

I have the handheld Pet Pro I think it is called, basically just the hand version. What I find is really great is to use a drill brush to scrub the carpets for stubborn stains.

old school speaker test, use a battery, a AA and connect negative, as soon as positive is connected it should make a sound like a pop as it moves. May have been a strand of wire that wasn't soldered and floated across to make a contact at the speaker itself. Wiggling the wires just moves it? it is possible.

Thats very interesting about the voltage drop thing. I have a Hyundai power station which is supposed to be 1kw an hour and that drains when its off by about 10 watts a day. The only way to keep it operational is to leave it on all the time and plug it in to boost the 10watts up every night. If I turn it completely off, it loses about 300watts in one fell swoop. I think it is a battery management issue. I have read loads of Australian reviews describing the exact same problem.

Think that spot welder is faulty - I have the same model, unused for three months or so, and the battery is 3/4 charged still.

Another excellent video Vince, thank you 👍👍👍

That spot welder is a case for the recycle bin. It obviously has no discharge protection. Considering the high currents needed for spot welding, this thing is simply a fire hazard. It would have been interesting to see how much current it draws when off. Since you can disconnect the battery, you can just insert your multimeter in current mode. Also how much current is drawn when you short out the terminals when off.

Vince, as a former Bissell service center repair tech. Bissell are designed to work with their own brand of detergents. Using other brands will cause the heater to build up with soap residue that looks kinda like sheet rock when it comes out.

I have what looks to be an identical model spot welder. Your video got me worried so I got it out and tested the voltage (I haven't used the unit in over a year), I got a voltage of 3.81V.

I cleaned up my Bosch Flexxo vacuum cleaner today. Almost bought a new turbo nozzle.

I was watching the part with the spot welder and just realized the frame of the device is aluminum. It's very likely that the two probes are discharging to each other through the aluminum frame since the circuit is always live even when off.

35:36 i got the same amp meter and mine does the same under low current it won't show anything some batteries have a BMS that has a mosfet that disables it when it goes below a certain threshold, i think its working like it should you could check with your multimeter and do a current mesurement and see what the idle current is

4Bissell are pretty good for dishwasher parts too.

Love ur vids Vince! Keep on doing this!

Nice work mate love youre vidios

Re the spot welder, I've dealt with li ion batteries that are so low, and they consistently have high self discharge like what you see here. So it doesn't need to be a bad battery, just badly managed after assembly

I bought a Hoover carpet washer around 6yrs ago (maybe 7yrs ago), used it a few times, but then gave up on it, just too bulky of a product. December-2023, I bought a Hoover spot cleaner, best, investment, I ever made. I use that thing more than I use the carpet washer, it's portable, easier to use, has just as big a fluid and waste tank, and I don't need to do a full wash of carpets.

Good battery management circuit would cut power from the cell once the cell has dropped below cut-of point, and only wakes up when it sees the charge. At that point the Lipo/ Li-ion can stay in storage for very long time without worrying about discharging.

You got lucky with the volume knob, I would've expected worn-down internals like on game controllers rather than dirt somehow entering that seemingly quite closed-up assembly.

Good to see the nest uses all the same screws and no security torxs

Hi Vince, would you have a link to buy a multimeter like yours ? Seems like the whole internet is looking for one, or if you could recommend one of your choise

I have a spot welder which has a different design but draws power when is not in use like yours in the video. If you don't let it in for charge 24/24hrs in max 7 days the battery is flat. Sadly I think all of them have the same design and faults. The problem is that you can't find batteries for them.

@my mate vince if a lithium cell drops below the "storage* voltage you can kickstart them manually, and afterwards they are safe to use once returned . I have and loads of others have done this repeatedly. Now the problem is when someone who doesnt know a sausage tries it tries to being the voltage up too quickly and they dont stop when they reach the base level. Nake no mistake they are dangerous and should not be attempted by anyone who has no electronics understanding. So im not endorsing it for everyone. You only have to see the result feom vape modders who were modyfying their vapes and claiming they did nothing and they exploded but later found out they were doubling the battery without a batt management and the internal one wasnt rated, there was a big rhing about it on the 18650's a few years ago. Like anything wlecteic treat it with the utter most respect.

I think that the spot-welder was meant to spot weld terminals on to (for example) 18650 batteries, not to be powered by them! Those kinds of batteries often have little tabs spot-welded onto them to attached the leads to.

I have a slightly newer spot welder with the display but the probe terminals are always hot even when the charger is off. Just FYI. At 95% charge it reads 4.31 volts at the probe terminals. Don't know what kind of battery it has in it. After about 3 months, it drops to about 70% if it's not used. I charge it every 3 months.

When are you bringing out part 2 Vince

I have a smart TV remote that links with the TV using Bluetooth and stuff . I'll find it always drained of battery and having to buy AAA like every month . Finally ,took it to a shop cause warranty was over and a new one costs way too much money ,they found it had a 0.007 amp drain on the board ,very minute for hinder its functioning but a drain is a drain ,it was the main chip and it was pre programmed from factory so it can't be replaced .So the shop guy basically put a new physical switch that would cut off power from battery to the board , the remote isn't pretty anymore with the new red switch but hey ,it works like a charm :)

For scratchy speaker controls you don't always need to take them apart. You can spray the volume knob with silicon spray (not silicone) or WD-40 contact cleaner (about £4-5 in the UK). Shouldn't have a problem after that

Just curious if the end cap of the spot Welder is causing a short. In your video it resting on both prongs..? If that makes sense 37:22

I was impressed when you got a de-soldering station and a capacitor test unit, in fact I was envious. I'm Danish, so I love all your B&O projects.

Fantastic vid as always Vince, which watch is that?

Bissel carpet cleaners are way better than those store rentals. Cheaper to operate, and you can be sure that you aren't slinging filth in your carpets from who knows how many other hundreds or thousands of houses the rental machine has been in.

Grrat video 😅😅

I use CRC 05103 QD Electronic Cleaner on volume takes the scratching sound out like new from amazon

very interesting video but when testing the spot welder it looked like it sparked towards your right hand did it shock you? at 51:12 keep up the good work!

could you mod the spot welder to run of 5 volt adapter instead of the battery?

Speakers are generally 4, 8 or 16 depending on the application.

In power off mode that spot welder shouldn't draw more than microamps. It shouldn't drain more than half the charge in a year. I suspect a faulty component on the circuit board leaking a tiny bit of current. Probably not enough to give it a heat signature. I am pretty sure it shouldn't be voltage at the pins when it is powered off.

Nice fixes, looking forward to the next parts :) I should do the same fix to my PC speakers, same problem, scratchy volume and bass/treble dials.

hi, sorry for the beginner question, but what flux do you use and where do you buy it from ?

Is because you have an electronic board consuming in standby -all the boards consume in standby --the law of physics-you should put a switch between the baterry and the mainboard to avoid the dropping issue .simple

So ... with the welder. Is it safe to have voltage on the bits that do the welding when it is off? Surely that must indicate a serious problem on the board?

Now I'm curious if the battery for the spot welder would drain over a few days disconnected.

Nice one i would like to see a part 2

Use a pressure washer on carpet mats , spray with calcium lime and rust treatment and it works great .

I'm having Dyson belt flashbacks again

Send the spot welder to big clive for reverse engineering! "One moment please".

some nice wins there. I just had a thought, you do realise you were cleaning the Bissell, so doesn't that makes you a vacuum cleaner? 😉

Hey Vince! Why the video is so blurry? Even on 1080p the camera looks like it's smudged? Your past videos was crisp!

Vince, if you're going to touch a pcb for heat please use one hand only and put your other hand in your pocket. It really doesn't take much current to stop you heart.

The circuit doesn't have a battery protection ic because you will need high power MOSFETs in the protection circuit. Because otherwise they will burn out during the welding process. So it is better to not use a battery protection circuit, since it's only the deep discharge protection is missing😅. But I think there is a design flow in the circuit. Otherwise when it's turned off, the microcontroller should be in a deep sleep state, and should only consume a few micro amps(depending on the microcontroller). So maybe the circuit is not that well designed and that causes the battery drain.

Normal when the belts burn through or break it's usually hair wrapped around the spindle next to the bearings

The red mat gets its first battle scar.

6:15 I actually thought for a moment, that you had the PCBWAY logo stencilled on the wall behind you lol... (I then thought "That's dedication!")

The spot welder, those kind that auto sense will always have voltage across the welding probes, that is how they sense, the return voltage is sampled and that then tells the spot welder what resistance there is between the nickle strips, you were not pushing down soldily enough the first time, therby inducing wrong readings and so the welder did not pulse, try it again pressing down firmly you'll see the firing is pretty consistent. The battery draining though does indicate a design flaw in the powered construction, the drain in standby should not be that big, poor standby power managment design..... Just my 2c though.

Yeah, oh sh1t, He's got Corona, run...

Lithium batteries all die out eventually. I have to charge my drone batteries every 6 months as they continue to drain. Had to spend £200 as 2 of the batteries out of the three could not be charged back up. Also one of my 1.5v ryobi drill batteries went into low power state. Managed to get some use out of it after a video I see on RU-vid but the damage had already been done and just died again maybe 3 month later.

Shouldn’t the brush stop when you using the attachment? Like only when you pull the handle back. Also is it sucking from the brush part and the pipe? Seems a strange setup

You've hit the big time; not only do you have a sponsor, the bots have found you!

That welder might be charging a super capacitor after the battery gets connected. So, that might be the reason the voltage drops for while.

I cant find your ebay store sir...cheers!!

IPA the Kofi annan of electrics 👍😄

Love the videos. Constructive suggestion. Perhaps you could section up the video to each fix on the timeline. I personally watch them all but other maybe don't.

omg is that you "Super cap" of grim reapers on DCS?? i think i found your voice double!!

thank you for not setting off my Alexa

its an aliexpress spotwelder so its gonna stop working next time. Its probbably the fault of the probes touching at a low voltage shorting it out a bit draining it self i think.

wonder if one of the mosfets is draining the power - as i would assume that the probs shouldn't have battery voltage until the brain turns the power to the main chip. The term you are looking for in terms of idle power is standby power - all electric devices that use software switches to turn them on and off have that draw. This device may have a larger draw because of fault, or it might just be the intended standby power.

So your going o need to vacuum then prespray with a prespray then agitate the prespray wait about 10 mins or so the extract with the machine the n greem the carpet to allow to dry faster. also spot clean on the stains before if needed

lithium are suppose to discharge back to 50% and not to stay fully charge as its not good for lithium to stay fully charged.the system will be designed to discharged slowly back to 50% when not in use for a long time......so the system is working fine to start its discharge slowly