the pins of the charging head on cobalt are de-soldered. Any fix known ?

[fnog]

Hi,

as it says in the title. During a recent charter in the Maldives, I had the inconvenience of my Cobalt1 not charging. It was at 88% and I could have maybe completed the remaining 15hours of diving without loading it.... Luckily , the next day I managed to get the pins to contact and charge by putting a very messy pattern of inner tubing loops around the Cobalt body and the charger head. This reassured me a bit. Once back on land, I unscrewed the charger head and saw that most of the copper pins are loose. They were previously soldered at a 90% angle directly on the PCB. Out of 6 pins (3 on the DC trafo side plus 3 on the USB side) only one is still soldered. In fact, the pins can slide out of the head and drop on the floors, if the connector head is bumped or shaken. I really have no clue how to re-solder this, as that does not seem doable with my skills and tools. Does anyone know a fix for this problem (better trick than the tube loops, that is.) ? Ideally those pins should be soldered to a tiny spring that is attached in the PCB, instead of the brittle direct soldering.

On a completely unrelated note: my buddy has now a Seabear H3, and we wonder what GFlo and GFhi should be given to Buehlmann ZH-L16 so that we get a good match to my Cobalt. We usually get some deco in mediterranea while diving 15l single of air down to max45. But never more than 15 min DTR. Anyone knows how to set those Buehlmann gradient factors to match the Atomic RGBM for our profiles ?

 

[guruboy]

So this is on the part that plugs into the computer, right?

You could try contacting atomic for a replacement. This is just poor quality.

 

[fnog]

So this is on the part that plugs into the computer, right?

You could try contacting atomic for a replacement. This is just poor quality.

Yup, this it the black plastic shell part that goes from the mini-USB to the back of the computer. I have sent a mail to Atomic in germany. I never mistreated the charger head but it just broke down. In fact I made a mistake: I normally put all fragiles and essentials in my carry-on luggage, including the Cobalt1. But I have sometimes put the trafo and cabling and charging head inside my checkin luggage, 3 or 4 times. That may be how the pins got desoldered, while flying in the hands of undelicate midnight luggage handlers. It could have been a better design, but I have one of the early models, from 2010 IIRC, so this is lilely down to design teething problems that only crop up now, so many years later. When you buy the first and only computer model from a challenger company, you know this fairly can happen, but I found that the overall reliability of the Cobalt is excellent. I have seen that kind of design issue before, with rusting keypad magnets, and the problem was handled superbly by Atomic, by just sending me a replacement keypad with improved/repaired design (free of charge!).

 

[guruboy]

If it had been made properly, it would have bent/broke under rough treatment.

Things cannot just become desoldered. If they do, it just means it wasn't soldered properly. Solder is like a weld and has to be melted at high temperature.

 

[fnog]

If it had been made properly, it would have bent/broke under rough treatment.

Things cannot just become desoldered. If they do, it just means it wasn't soldered properly. Solder is like a weld and has to be melted at high temperature.

If you own a Cobalt, I invite you to take a screwdriver and look at this soldering. With that shape, it is only logical that under rough treatment the solder point is what breaks. The PCB attachment has a lot of surface, and the pins are cylindrical and made of harder metal. The weak point is the solder.

Do you have some advice regarding gradient factors ?

 

[RonR]

I think what happened is that the tall sockets on the board got hit with enough force to break them free of the board substrate. They are supported by the plastic molding, but there could be enough leverage to pull the traces off the PCB if they were hit hard. Since the adapter worked when it was under pressure, the contact (and solder joint) is probably still there, but the copper traces have pulled up off the board surface and become partly detached. Sometimes leverage on the cable connectors can pull up traces on the plug end, but it's unusual for the sockets to break off the board. The two sides, USB and wall charger, are independent, so it's possible the sockets on the other side are still good.

Just contact Atomic for a replacement adapter. Extra points for coming up with a good field solution!

-Ron

 

[guruboy]

If you could post some pictures I could get a better idea of what happened.

But solder doesn't break if done properly. The pin would.

 

[2airishuman]

USB connectors are not physically strong. Easy to break one

Those should not be difficult for an electronics tech to repair. I have soldered under a microscope, but freehand, at a pitch of 100 leads per inch. The USB connectors aren't anything like that small. I don't have any special skills. Any experienced electronics tech should be able to fix it for you.

 

[RonR]

The OP's problem is almost certainly not that the solder joint itself has failed, but that these sockets, which are custom made hollow gold plated cylinders with internal contacts for the Cobalt's pins, and are fairly tall (1 cm +?) and narrow (base fits in a .100" pitch) are attached to the PCB via a surface mount to a solder pad. So long as the socket is supported by the plastic housing all is well, but enough force will break the solder pad free of the board substrate- that's where they will fail. Once the board trace itself is lifted or broken fixing the board is very difficult. Far easier just to get a replacement from Atomic. This doesn't have anything to do with the USB connector, that's at the other end of the adapter.

Ron

 

[fnog]

@RonR, thanks for the more accurate description of the connector head. mine was rather approximated.

It is indeed the DC side of the connector that broke. The miniUSB side is just fine. But contrary to your description, I can see that the PCB traces have not lifted or peeled in any way. It is really the surface mount solders themselves that snapped.

I have sent a request for a new head to germany 5 days ago, but no answer :-( I am still hoping they just made the shipment without communicating about it...

Do you have any idea how I can set the user gradient factors on ZH-L16B to best match my air deco for non-repeat dives on Cobalt ? I am on moderate, and aged 45. If the formula is not to be revealed online, I would still be happy to get a PM about it. My girlfriends' gradient factors (the infamous GFGFs ) are currently 35/75.