22-Sep-2015, 19:33 (This post was last modified: 22-Sep-2015, 19:52 by Manoet.)
Sorry but at the risk of beginning to sound like Devialet, I'm again going to fail to meet my own goal of having the thermal pads done today and maybe not before the weekend. Getting the old thermal pads off the old contacts and inside their cooling pores is grueling. Clean pic shows the dirtiest one which I opted to tackle first to get it out of the way. After almost 6 hours into it I'm at maybe 90% done. This done with aerosol electronics cleaners like trichcloroethylene, 93% isopropyl alcohol, soft toothbrushes, tons of cotton balls & compressed air. I dare use nothing more aggressive for fear of removing PCB paint or the gold plating. Second pic shows the second-worse set of these and you can imagine another 4 or so hours there and there's two more similarly affected areas after that then measuring, cutting and affixing multiple pads on each contact to get precise pad thickness. Seems the hotter a contact gets the more the thermal pad dries, hardens and adheres to it.
So at this point I won't play Devialet any longer and instead will post texts & pics as projects are finished rather than announcing them ahead of time. I'm worried now I may not even make RMAF but I simply won't rush this. I'd miss 10 audio shows before cutting corners on this project at this point
More as & when I can is the best I can offer for now.
Statements in my posts are opinion only, not to be construed as fact. Any projects I engage in are at my own risk! Their outcome cannot be assured and may result in success, small/no change or catastrophic failure. I encourage no one rely on anything I say or do as gospel and to realize your mileage may vary!
22-Sep-2015, 22:24 (This post was last modified: 22-Sep-2015, 22:31 by Manoet.)
Thanks guys! I tried a heat gun at very low temps early-on. Its more of a hindrance than a boon. The volatile plastic/paint-safe solvents I'm using simply flash-off (evaporate) too rapidly to soften the crystallized pad material if boards are any higher than room temp. Freezer actually works better but adds more time & steps than I want to throw at it. I finished cleaning the power supply stage a half hour ago and I have nothing left in me to start on the next area today. A nap is called for methinks.
PITA is a prolifically apt statement!!!
Statements in my posts are opinion only, not to be construed as fact. Any projects I engage in are at my own risk! Their outcome cannot be assured and may result in success, small/no change or catastrophic failure. I encourage no one rely on anything I say or do as gospel and to realize your mileage may vary!
23-Sep-2015, 09:07 (This post was last modified: 23-Sep-2015, 09:09 by Manoet.)
My reluctance to use mineral spirits is based on its inherently slow-to-evaporate quality of a petroleum distillate. It can remain liquid/wet within poorly sealed pockets/vessels, ie; electronic chips, coils and windings et al for weeks at a time before fully evaporating. Not the kind of surprise I want to experience when reintroducing power to the D200! I've little to no fear of explosion but significant concerns of a short circuit due to retained component internal liquid residue with mineral spirits.
Yes, I'm in the US
Statements in my posts are opinion only, not to be construed as fact. Any projects I engage in are at my own risk! Their outcome cannot be assured and may result in success, small/no change or catastrophic failure. I encourage no one rely on anything I say or do as gospel and to realize your mileage may vary!
25-Sep-2015, 01:26 (This post was last modified: 25-Sep-2015, 08:07 by Manoet.)
Seems like days since I was last here ;-) I just finished up all the PCB thermal pad installations. The one last pad that is absent in this pic is the one for the large squarish PSU ceramic ferrite heatsink pad missing in pic since I opted to install it in the relief pocket that Devialet CNC'd for it in the underside of the top. The mate to that one that goes inside the ceiling of the PSU cover is cut & ready to be applied as it will be the 'only' pad used inside that cover on reassembly. All other remaining 10 heat generating contact points under the cover that were previously handled by thermal pads will now be cooled by convection instead, least on a temporary basis. If I sense I'm leaving some additional cooling on the table I'll go back inside the cover and experiment with more pads as the cover is easily accessible/removable once belly pan is removed without disturbing primary PCB.
I still have the 2 largest pads to go, ie; the 26mm X 146mm one along the aluminum spine that is centered up/down between the GUI and the logo tab in the cover below it and attached to the digital cover box. And the massive digital cooling pad that is 60mm X 148mm that is sandwiched between the digital board bottom and belly pan floor. Those will be done upon final closure before reinitializing power. The pad responsible for making the belly pan so warm. And all I can say is I hope that belly pan gets hotter-than HELL! Reason being, that single thermal pad of this super efficient pad material alone is valued at over $409 US!!! The smaller one at $338.50 US!! By far & away the single biggest expense of this entire project! *note* Black lines in pic on pad protective covers are leftover ink measurement marks and not actual cuts in the pads as they appear. All pads are 1.5mm thick and one-piece save for the 3mm pads that are two-layer thicknesses and stacked. Basically all lower left quadrant pads in pic are dual thickness while all others are single-layer thickness pads. Devialet made this necessary by CNCing the lower left quadrant (ceiling when assembled) of housing 3mm deeper and only 1.5mm deep elsewhere and the thermal pad material I purchased is all 1.5mm thick requiring doubling up on some thicknesses.
The IEC in left upper corner of pic that replaces the PEM in my D200 needs to be twisted 180 degrees. That will cause me to lose the existing orientation of ground pin on top when viewed from rear straight on. Doesn't break my heart to do that as its always seemed "upside down" to me the way Devialet opts to install it via ground pin on top. But I do it for a good reason. If I leave it as-is I would have to remove the entire primary circuit board any time I wanted to remove just the IEC, the wires or the Devialet power board as the F'tech IEC wiring screws are located on the bottom and 'inside' the Devialet housing if I leave it as-is. If I rotate the IEC 180* the IEC wiring screws & the power board are accessible/removable with only the belly pan removed. Only inconvenience associated with this swap is I'll have to cross my line/neutral leads during installation but TONS easier than removing the entire PCB next time I have to chase an issue.
About all that remains after that is cleaning the fingerprint oils & smudges from the PCB then removing the thermal pad plastic protective covers and its ready to go home after putting an incredibly nice dust-free polish on the primary GUI screen and 2 optical covers on top of it and close her up. Every day now I'm more clearly than ever starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I'd like to say by Sunday/Monday but I won't due to recent events. If wishes were fishes...
Statements in my posts are opinion only, not to be construed as fact. Any projects I engage in are at my own risk! Their outcome cannot be assured and may result in success, small/no change or catastrophic failure. I encourage no one rely on anything I say or do as gospel and to realize your mileage may vary!
26-Sep-2015, 17:21 (This post was last modified: 26-Sep-2015, 18:43 by Manoet.)
The closer I get the more OCD things become and there's no better example than what this pic covers. These are all the alloy & titanium fasteners to replace all the nickel-plated and/or magnetic fasteners used in the original D200 as that relates to PCB's and belly pan attachment. Also the PSU cover which you can compare thermal pad-count on the original in a previous pic to pad-count in this one. Many/most of these screws had to be cut-to-length here as they're not available in finished sizes in aluminum or titanium. The diamond cut-off wheel in pics makes quick work of that by using longer screws then cutting to-size. The screws used for PSU mounting are a different lengths as well so I keep them with the cover until time to remount it to the PCB. Additionally I need to lap the anodizing off the PSU cover base before mounting as the anodizing isn't conductive and the cover needs to be grounded to earth via the PCB contact it sits on.
The new F'tech ICE has now been wired. I'm using Crystal Cable Ultra series AC high-current wire so its identical from the wall to the D200 power board. It will also be soldered directly to the power board rather than any use of spade terminals. The Ground wire will be connected 'thru' the primary PCB and directly into the D200 chassis rather than the spade connection Devialet uses. No chance for a bad connection with this device! The dual high-current conductors for line/neutral are .75mm each 97% 5n pure silver with 3% gold infused. These two dual conductor leads provide the current that is the par-equivalent of an OFC/cryo'd copper stranded lead that is 8.5AWG from quadruple dedicated 20A lines running thru 8 F'tech GTX-D Rhodium outlets! In other words... SERIOUS/SILENT high current availability!!!
Even the tiny 2.5mm steel dual lens GUI bezel screws get replaced with non-magnetic screws! Same with new aluminum PCB stand-offs. As of today there's nary a SINGLE magnetic or nickel-plated fastener remaining in the D200 anywhere! None, nada, zero, zilch... bupkus!!!
I'm still clinging to the ideal of reinitiating power to the D200 tomorrow or Monday (knock wood/fingers crossed).
Statements in my posts are opinion only, not to be construed as fact. Any projects I engage in are at my own risk! Their outcome cannot be assured and may result in success, small/no change or catastrophic failure. I encourage no one rely on anything I say or do as gospel and to realize your mileage may vary!
27-Sep-2015, 00:30 (This post was last modified: 27-Sep-2015, 00:31 by Manoet.)
I got a full 10 hours in today and everything's looking great! Did a dry-run assembly and tested all earth grounds for continuity tho I had to remove a few spots of anodizing under the tapered bores that the belly pan attachment screws seat against as I'm relying on totally different belly-pan-to-case grounding than Devialet did. Went perfectly and quickly! Tomorrow's plan is to final-install the primary PCB and treat the 258 board pins with Caig Pro-Gold so I won't be expecting to be bowled over at first listen. In fact I expect things will be a little bright at power-up... perhaps even a bit 'shrill.' In my perfect world that'll blossom into warmth, articulation, depth, detail and its new persona over the first few weeks. Where it goes from there is out of my hands at this point but I'm hoping for the best. Actually I'll be happy with slightly cooler temps and normal, albeit perhaps a tad bright SQ that first week. Long as I don't have to go invasive on it again for awhile I'll be tickled to death! This project has gotten a bit long-in-the-tooth for me so I know the honeymoon has to be well over for you guys as well. It needs to end.
If everything checks out on initial power-up the plan is to leave it running, playing music 24/7 at -26-32dB for a full week. I'll have my first A, D and Supply temp comparisons 3 hours later if I don't have to power-down for some unknown reason. After that its on auto pilot for a week at the above settings without too much attention paid to SQ during that week. If it makes the first week's 24/7 run-time without incident I'll assume everything's working ok and its mechanically/electronically in order. Then I'll become a little more analytical/critical.
Could happen tomorrow but I'm not counting on it but unless something goes seriously south in a banana boat its hard for me to imagine to imagine going past end-of-day Monday before its warm, has a pulse and is eating again
Statements in my posts are opinion only, not to be construed as fact. Any projects I engage in are at my own risk! Their outcome cannot be assured and may result in success, small/no change or catastrophic failure. I encourage no one rely on anything I say or do as gospel and to realize your mileage may vary!
