Here's something new. Let's bring your collective experience and knowledge to bear on a particular case brought before Made By Monkeys.We recently highlighted a Mercedes key fob failure - please see Key Fob fails for surface mount leads - and lots of pics of the problem are available for inspection. We've identified seven possible causes of failure, but what are your thoughts? Multiple answers are possible, and feel free to suggest Other causes.
If you have any suggestions for future Made By Monkeys polls, do leave a comment below.
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Comments (2)
Sure, glue may have helped reduce the mechanical stress on the joints, but in my experience the surface-mount soldering of plugs/sockets/switches in CE is frequently poor.
There is possibly a problem of insufficent heat in soldering for the large mass of metal in the switch/socket leads, and/or the switch/socket leads are oxidised so make poor joint from day 1. This may relate to insufficiently active flux, or partly just due to lack of heat.
Posted by Andrew | June 17, 2009 12:18 PM
Re Merc keyfobs. This problem has been about for some years. A friend showed me her keyfob which had failed, this was about 4 years ago. It took 3 minutes to fix with a bent paperclip acting as a switch to fix it. It is still working in 2009. Simply a case of poor design of a switch which will be used 100's of times.
Posted by Mike Castro | June 17, 2009 12:39 PM