Spa Control Board success

[HoosierBuddy]

Guys,

Kind of OT but I wanted to report on a recent control board success I had that might help with HVAC too.

My 18 year old spa quit working. Upon disassembly I could see where all the magic smoke got let out of the control board. It had one of the 230V heater terminals burnt completely off the board and the adjacent relay was (literally) toast. Of course the world has moved on since 2006 when this Sams Club Spa rolled off the Jacuzzi line (based on the included parts....no where on this thing does it say Jacuzzi).

I checked all the usual sources and the control board is unobtanium.

My "hail Mary" before breaking down and replacing the spa was to send the control board off to an eBay seller that advertises "We repair control boards". Just under $300 and 2 weeks and it came back. The soldering looked pretty rough....but did I mention there was a 230 V terminal melted completely off the board when I sent it to them?

Anyway...I screwed the board back into place and hooked up all the wires and the spa works flawlessly now.

Maybe everyone is aware that you can send off a circuit board to a service that will repair it and return it, but I was not. In the past, if I could see the board is melted, I've figured it's beyond repair.

 

[BrandonV]

The soldering looked pretty rough....but did I mention there was a 230 V terminal melted completely off the board when I sent it to them?

As someone who used to do PCB repair like this all the time, a lot of times that is due to the conformal coating applied to the boards. Even after stripping the coating, it can be rough to get solder to flow properly.

 

[HoosierBuddy]

As someone who used to do PCB repair like this all the time, a lot of times that is due to the conformal coating applied to the boards. Even after stripping the coating, it can be rough to get solder to flow properly.

Good to know. I'm curious about something. In this sort of case where they are repairing many types of control boards, do you think there's any ability to function test it or determine if the logic IC hasn't been damaged? It's hard to imagine they'd have the ability to function test the board, economically, with all the different boards they might get in at any time.

Maybe they just "repair and hope". They do offer a 30 day warranty on the repaired board. I think I would have only been out 1/2 of the shipping if the returned part didn't work.

 

[BrandonV]

Good to know. I'm curious about something. In this sort of case where they are repairing many types of control boards, do you think there's any ability to function test it or determine if the logic IC hasn't been damaged? It's hard to imagine they'd have the ability to function test the board, economically, with all the different boards they might get in at any time.

Maybe they just "repair and hope". They do offer a 30 day warranty on the repaired board. I think I would have only been out 1/2 of the shipping if the returned part didn't work.

If factory service manuals are available, it's often possible to verify functionality via major rail voltages, etc. A lot of the times the ICs aren't damaged.

Other boards like fire systems, we'd hook up the bare minimum accessories to verify functionality.

End of the day if the customer says, "this doesn't work" we'd issue a refund but that was more often than not rare.