Hi Zak, OzAaron. The spade is formed into an L, with the lower leg resting on the top of the switch. The lower leg is riveted onto the switch terminal. The failure occurred at the rivet, but it retained low resistance continuity even when I was troubleshooting. Looking back, I should have noticed the blackening of the wire at the terminal and used that as a clue to the failure. Anyway, it's now working.
On Tuesday, September 15, 2020 at 2:49:57 PM UTC-7 OzAaron wrote: > > Unfortunately with loose connection problems, it will often test OK on > your multimeter in continuity mode. It is only when you put a load on the > connection (and sometimes it may also require heat and/or vibration) to > measure the problem. You are then dealing with line voltages during your > measurement, so not recommended for a home gamer. I believe you might be > able to locate these kinds of issues using something like FLIR though. It > is quite common in electrical fault finding; failing connections will often > heat up considerably. In this case here you can see that part of the switch > has slightly darkened, which would indicate excess heat. I think you'd be > able to discern the difference between this heat and the heat of the boiler > itself, but I don't have any first hand experience. As devices like the > FLIR phone attachments become more prevalent, you might find they become a > really handy tool for diagnosing machines like this. > On Wednesday, September 16, 2020 at 5:33:14 AM UTC+10 zak...@gmail.com > wrote: > >> Good job, thanks for sharing. All our machines will start to fail with >> these weird sort of age related problems. >> >> I looked at the picture and still couldn't see any blackening. Was it >> where the spade connected to the switch? >> >> Other than that pesky 50% repro - couldn't you debug this with a >> multimeter? >> >> On Friday, September 11, 2020 at 12:30:32 PM UTC-7 MDR wrote: >> >>> Hi All, >>> I recently had a problem where my Brewtus II (+PID) would reach temp, >>> allow me to pull a shot, then the brew boiler would shut down. This message >>> is to record the solution for future users >>> >>> Of course, the issue was intermittent, happening about 50% of the time, >>> so difficult to debug. The high limit temp sensor on the boiler seemed to >>> be the issue, but I couldn't figure out why it only occurred >>> intermittently. Finally discovered that the spot weld where one of the >>> connector spades attaches was loose, causing an intermittent connection. In >>> wiggling it around to troubleshoot, the resistance increased so much that >>> it caused the joint to blacken - I finally spotted it. >>> >>> Link to image - you can barely see the darkened spotweld on the near >>> connector. >>> >>> https://photos.app.goo.gl/xnbodXratDnTN2TM6 >>> >>> So, be aware of intermittent connections when you troubleshoot. >>> >> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Brewtus" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to brewtus+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/brewtus/c6b10890-a6b6-4175-a14d-c685a2a0a3d2n%40googlegroups.com.
