Our repairs on a DVD player with bad capacitors

Over the years like most people i have noted that electronic gadgets just don't seem to last that long. I have replaced tv's, video players, dvd player etc. In the past i have just threw the faulty goods into the the great ever increasing landfill. These days however we have to think about our environment and take responsibility for the world we live in.
The Internet and world wide web has proved to be so useful in enhancing our knowledge and sharing interests and experiences. Indeed you can find new hobbies and learn about almost any subject.
I've  done just that in the past. Recently  one of our long serving DVD players decided to just die completely on us. This player had served us well and was over five years old.
The symptoms was just a red flashing light at the front of the dvd player and everything else completely dead.

Matsui DVD225

On opening the case i noted that dreaded electronic disease "bad caps". The Internet is full of reports on this type of failure and by googling just "bad caps" you will find many topics on this subject. The bad cap problem seems to have effected every kind of electronic device.
On opening the case of our DVD the main power supply PCB had 3 bulging capacitors. On close examination with a magnifying glass you could also see that 2 of the capacitors had leaked their contents onto the PCB.
The next thing to do was to un-solder those bad capacitors. I used my new 30w soldering iron with one of those solder suckers to remove the bad caps. The faulty caps were rated 1000uf, 470uf and 220uf with a voltage rating of 16v. I had some new Rubycon capacitors of the same capacitance value and a voltage rating of 25volts. I carefully soldered the new caps closely baring in mind the correct polarity. Then after putting the case back on and switching on was very pleased to see the dvd player come back to life.
The whole repair excluding my own labour rates was under a few UK pounds. And the time of the full repair was less than half an hour.
The most joyful experience is the satisfaction of repairing and learning along the way.

I have also recently purchased one of those esr meters for testing capacitors and will blog info on this soon. The meter i purchased for my basic electronic tool kit was very good quality purchased from the internet but also very reasonably priced.

Hope you have enjoyed my blog today and don't forget feel free to leave any comments below.
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