Tajima S-Card fixed

Sulp

Had a S-card burn up on me a couple weeks ago and got a couple quotes to fix it. I pulled the card out and could clearly see what I thought was a Resistor that had fried up. It was $650 to fix or $1000 for a new card. The marchine is a TMFX-II 1506 and is 10 years old. I also know nothing about circuit boards or electricity AT ALL. But I did some reaseach on the part that was burnt just for the heck of it and found out it was actually a Thyristor or Thermistor..I think it wound up being a Thyristor. Anyway, there was a number on the burnt up component that said 5d-18. I called 20 electrical places trying to see if they could get them for me to no avail. Half of them didn't even know what I was talking about and the part # I gave them wasn't showing up anywhere. I have 2 machines but couldn't afford to have 1 down for very long so I was getting ready to send it out to be repaired for the $650. I did one last search and called a place I hadn't called. A super nice guy got on the phone and actually knew what a Thyristor was...He was also able to find info on the part #5d-18. He said he didn't have the actual part in stock but thought he had something similar that might work. In a previous call to my Tajima tech (who also couldn't find this part) he told me that the Thyristors were under powered on these machines and that if I did find it, get a cople of them and to solder 2 together, in sequence, instead of just the one. So I ordered 6 of them just to have some extra laying around. I went out and bought a $15 soldering iron and removed the burnt Thyristor from the board and cleaned it up the best I could. The parts arrived and they were 1/4 the size and looked nothing like the one I removed. I figured maybe they have just gotten smaller over the last 12 years. I took 2 out, wrapped the legs together and soldered them up (the first time I really soldered anything either). I watched a few videos on youtube about soldering circuit boards and then went at it. It took me all of 10 minutes start to finish. I crawled under my machine, re-installed the board kinda knowing it would never work. It was just too easy. I stood up and flicked the switch and the machine actually came ON! I waited a few seconds and sniffed around for that electrical burning smell and it never came. The machine just sat there waiting to do it's job. I was THRILLED!! I have been around machines for 25 years and I've fixed a lot of stuff, but never circuit boards. It was a great feeling and I just had to share!

It cost me $15 for 6 Thyristors including shipping, $15 for the soldering iron, & $5 for the electrical solder. So a $35 fix.

The moral of the story is that most anything can be fixed by yourself if you just spend a little time to figure it out. Sorry if I bored anyone with the story, I know it's not all that exciting, but saving all that money and figuring it out just felt really good. And it was SIMPLE!!