Damn, damn damn.

[Dave]

Bought one of those fancy rechargable toothbrushes a couple years back, that
are supposed to do an extra fine job of cleaning your teeth. Came with a
one-year warantee against defects in manufacturing and workmanship. Lasted
two years, then only seemed to operate at something like 1/2 or 1/4 power.
Took it apart to see if I could find anything obviously wrong, and maybe fix
it. First clue should have been the way the cover nearly snapped in half
while taking it off. But I'm clueless.

Following a series of frustrating failures to fix first one thing and then
another, I have come to the conclusion that the damn thing was built to
self-destruct if ever taken apart or touched with a soldering iron. And it
originally failed due to corrosion on the battery terminals, inside where
you can't get to it to clean it. Corrosion resulted in poor electronic
connection of the battery, which resulted in the "motor" running at
half-power.

Nowadays that same toothbrush is sold in pairs, for an absolutely outrageous
price. Apparently they figured out that they had a high failure rate, and
tried to compensate by giving you an extra. Couldn't drop their price any
at all, so they give you a replacement up front and actually charge more.

I am trying to decide if I am willing to pay the money to get the newer
model. Will probably come back to this one later, and try again to effect a
fix. Currently I can't get solder to "take" on a portion of the etched foil
pattern on the PC board that controls everything. Everytime it sees heat,
it releases some kind of resin that coats the foil and refuses to allow
solder in. Pisses me off. Deliberate efforts to sabatauge attempts at
repair do that to me. sigh.

On the other hand, by junk box might have some new fancy stuff to fiddle
with. :) An iductively coupled rechargable battery holds a lot of
potential. Might try to make a high-intensidy LED flashlight out of it.
Put it on the hall desk, so it's ready for a power failure. sigh again.
I'm a hopeless tinkerer.

Pleasant thoughts to all.

Peace.

Dave

[Trevor]

Why not just get a new toothbrush - is this model really expensive or the
best at cleaning, Just wondering not like it would be the first time for me
to try and fix something I had no hope in doing and there was no real reason
to even try. The sodder problem could be the sodder itself. The resin you
see is from the sodder and helps it stick. For example plumbing sodder will
not work as electronic sodder first because it is so thick but even if you
get a small piece because of the sodder content in it.

"Dave" <db5...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:CfKdndrEK9_t5gzR...@posted.internetamerica...
> x-no-archive: yes
>
> "Thomas Dehn" <thomas...@arcor.de> wrote in message
> news:8f7hku...@mid.individual.net...
>> x-no-archive: yes

>> They probably design them to fail after a 13 months.
>> That is, they design them such that multiple components
>> begin to fail almost simultaneously after 13 months.
>>
>> If they had designed them to fail after 25 months, they
>> would have given you two years warranty.
>>
>>
>>
>> Thomas
>>
>
> Hey Thomas,
>
> Yeah, I guess what frustrates me most is it seems to get worse every year.
> sigh I ought to know better by now...
>
> Managed to put it back together and get it running at least as well as it
> was before I took it apart, but no better. Suspect it's a component
> failure after all, and not just a poor connection,. And something digital
> at that. Not just a run of the mill electrolytic capacitor that dried out
> or shorted. Oh well.
>
> Dave
>

[Dave]

This model costs over $100.00, and it really does do a good job at cleaning
teeth (or used to, at least in my opinion.) And I feel like I got stung,
and dont want to feel like I got stung twice (fool me once, and all that
business.) Figured out, BTW, that what I thought was a complete systems
failure in it was just a failure to sense that the brush attachment was in
place on the rechargable handle. I guess I'm not giving up hope yet, hoping
that maybe it actually *is* just a run of the mill capacitor failure. In
the meantime I'm using an old fashioned manual brush, and it is okay, it
just doesn't have the vibratory enthusiasm of the motor driven unit. :)

Think I'll go work on it some tonight... I'm currently obsessiong over a
couple of books, and tinkering in my workshop is much cheaper than browsing
Amazon.

Best,

Dave

"Trevor" <acr...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:cYOdnXuSN_mf5w_R...@tbaytel.net...