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meppso
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Posted: Sat Apr 18, 2015 7:42 pm |
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Joined: Sat Jun 23, 2012 8:21 pm Posts: 299 Images: 6
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The heater appears to be attached firmly to the Bi metal strip, it's the wire which has come loose, I tried to solder it back on but I'm not getting enough heat into it to melt the solder. I only have a 25w soldering iron! I will let you know how my Engineer gets on with the silver solder.
After looking through the Horstmann T20 cells I noticed that some of them have two heaters for some reason.
The majority of the Zodion ones I have are Electronic. No nice click when they switch on!
Regards,
Andrew.
20150418_083046192_iOS.jpg [ 260.19 KiB | Viewed 11050 times ]
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Phosco152
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Posted: Sat Apr 18, 2015 8:35 pm |
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Joined: Mon Nov 09, 2009 5:38 pm Posts: 3408 Images: 27 Location: Salisbury
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Interesting picture, didn't realise they had 2 heaters. A 25W iron should be sufficient, it may be difficult though to get the new solder to flow onto the old joint.
No wonder the mechanism was simplified as time went on - its very much an "engineers" internals in that one.
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meppso
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Posted: Sat Apr 18, 2015 9:40 pm |
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Joined: Sat Jun 23, 2012 8:21 pm Posts: 299 Images: 6
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I know it must have been expensive to manufacture.
I have just tested some SS55 zodion cells, one of them just made the lamp flicker when it was supposed to be off. I decided just to bin it, the build quality is very poor on the controllers and the base. The older stuff like the ss34 seemed to be better.
Regards,
Andrew.
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Phosco152
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Posted: Sun Apr 19, 2015 7:24 am |
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Joined: Mon Nov 09, 2009 5:38 pm Posts: 3408 Images: 27 Location: Salisbury
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You have highlighted another failure mechanism, especially for the RT thermals. There is a small spring strip in those which snaps the contact to make up for the gradual movement on the bi-metallic strip which would otherwise cause the contacts to arc.
When this fails, it prevents the bi-metallic strip moving too far, which in bright sunlight can cause the strip to bend to far and result in a day burn.
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meppso
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Posted: Fri Apr 24, 2015 6:08 pm |
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Joined: Sat Jun 23, 2012 8:21 pm Posts: 299 Images: 6
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sotonsteve
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Posted: Fri Apr 24, 2015 6:30 pm |
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Joined: Mon Nov 09, 2009 5:27 pm Posts: 1818 Images: 200
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Zodion photocells are very poor. Aside from the "flashing" you can see at switch on and switch off time, another variation is that at switch on time a Zodion photocell will switch on the lantern, then half or one minute later switch it off, then a minute later back on, then half a minute back off, and so on for a few cycles. Outside the front of my house two thirds of the Zodion-controlled lanterns repeatedly switch on and off at lighting up time.
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Phosco152
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Posted: Fri Apr 24, 2015 7:12 pm |
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Joined: Mon Nov 09, 2009 5:38 pm Posts: 3408 Images: 27 Location: Salisbury
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Zodion cells have very simple electronic circuits that lack hysteresis which results in flashing at the switch points. SELC and RT cells are far more advanced and the latter monitor several time periods to check each one is getting darker (or lighter). When they have (I think) 4 periods whereby each darkens or lightens, then they will switch.
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meppso
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Posted: Fri May 01, 2015 7:44 pm |
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Joined: Sat Jun 23, 2012 8:21 pm Posts: 299 Images: 6
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Hi,
You can see there isn't much to the newer Zodion cells on the circuit board. The older SS6s seemed to have a lot more components on board including some kind of op amp circuit.
Regards,
Andrew.
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meppso
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Posted: Sat May 16, 2015 9:44 pm |
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Joined: Sat Jun 23, 2012 8:21 pm Posts: 299 Images: 6
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Page 6 of 9
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[ 85 posts ] |
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