I bought an HP all-in-one laser printer unit with a color scanner from a big-box office supply chain. It was $500, which was a bunch of money for me, but I figured it would be the last printer I would ever have to buy. This unit was marketed for office use, and I was only going to be using it occasionally at home.
I used it for about a month before I sold my house and moved. It sat in the box at the new house for almost a year before I needed it. It worked for about a month, and then it would just freeze up. Re-booting helped for a while, and then it stopped working all together.
It still had 75 percent of the original toner left in it. I had printed no more than 100 pages, and it was junk. HP suggested the problem was a “bad” formatter board. The replacement cost was several hundred dollars since the warranty had expired. HP suggested I purchase a re-conditioned unit.
I searched online and quickly found numerous examples of HP equipment that had failed similarly. While reading a blog on HP’s own site, I found one comment about removing the formatter board, unsoldering the battery, baking the board in the oven (8 minutes at 350°F), and then re-installing.
Since it was clear I wasn’t going to get any help from HP -– and I was otherwise stuck with a $500 doorstop -– I figured I’d try it. It worked!
I found the most reasonable explanation of the root cause of the failure in two blogs that I came across. One said there was a cold-solder joint somewhere on the formatter board. The other blog suggested that, since RoHS had just come along requiring that lead be removed from solder, the soldering process was temperamental. Apparently, lead-free solder was beyond the capabilities of HP’s low-cost suppliers.
I even rescued an HP printer from the dumpster at work and brought it back to life with the “take-n-bake” fix. If you do a Google search today for failed HP formatter boards, you’ll find many people having success baking their boards. Apparently, HP still hasn’t cracked this nut.
This entry was submitted by Rick Giallombardo and edited by Rob Spiegel
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As luck would have it his hp laserjet printer cartridge died shortly after the warranty period expired, and HP was ready to charge him €350 to repair it. Since that would pretty much buy a new one, he decided to try fixing the problem himself. He scoured the Internet for a solution to his problem, and luckily discovered that his printer might be recoverable for more info click here.
Yeah, dry joint in electronics product is common. I used to work with Sony TV production line and some of the major problem with the TV circuit operation is mainly due to the dry joint. You are lucky since you are quite technical and have the courage to identify the root cause of the problem. How about the others? Its really sad that HP have this kind of problem. I also have a problem with my HP 6000 office. The power supply breakdown for the second time in 2 years. To make things worst you cannot get it at the common electronic store. You have to pay it through bank order at a bank which do not have many branches and far away from my home. After bank in, you have to fax the copy of the payslip and then they will send it to me by courier. What happen to HP when it come to customer service? Is it the same in US or only in Malaysia?
This was an interesting thread having been in the electronic (computers, telecom, and automotive) connector business as an engineer for 22 years before I moved into the dental equipment market almost 10 years ago. There are several PCB or connector fabrication issues that can cause failure over time correctable, at least temporarily, by an oven bake at 350 degrees F.
Tin Slivers: Once you go below 3% lead, tin whiskers can become a significant issue. This is largely driven by electrical potential. I have heard oc cases where tin slivers even punch through soft plastic connector insulators and shorted between terminals. This is a big problem with low voltage logic circuitry, which increases with closer circuitry spacing. Higher voltage or higher current will usually burn-out that thin errant connection. One of the early shuttles had 4 out of 5 redundant computers short-out from solder slivers floating around in zero gravity. (A nearly catastrophic result.) A high temperature bake could reflow solder to solve this problem, but I would expect to need to be up closer to 900 degrees F to do that. A lower temperature bake could create enough plastic movement to disrupt the bogus connection.
Silver dentrite growth: A humid environment, silver, and electrical protential can grow silver dendrites until they short. Again this increases with closer circuitry spacing. Driving moisture out with heat could increase the resistance enough to temporarily resolve the problem, or plastic movement could break the errant connection.
Black Plastic Insulator Pigment: Poorly dispursed black carbon pigment in injection molded plastic insulators can cause a high resistance short. This can be worsened with moisture driving the resistance down. Again, baking can temporarily drive that moisture out, or cause enough plastic movement to disrupt the carbon connection.
Cold solder joint: A solder joint with inadequate temperature or movement during solidification can have microcracks that oxidize until there is a high resistance connection or open. This can be fixed with a soldering iron, hot air reflow, or even diffusion bonding at a lower temperature could reestablish function connection.
Capacitor and resistor hygroscopic behavior: I have heard that cheaper capacitors (non-tantalum) and carbon resistors can absorb water moisture until their values create problems with the circuit. Baking can temporarily drive that moisture out and reestablish the needed values. Baking as low as 150 degrees F may temporarily correct this problem.
I would expect the last two possibilities are the most likely root cause problems that would be fixed temporarily by an oven bake of the PCB. The cold solder joint may even have a good-enough bond to be permanently fixed by this bake.
I am fascinated by all of the efforts spent to save/revive equipment that has either failed or just been plain obsoleted. I had a HP Draftmaster RX pen plotter that I used mostly trouble free for the 6 years I was in business for myself. After taking a job in industry, it mostly sat idle unless the plotter at work screwed up and I took things home to plot.
Later I went back to school and used it again for school projects, but it sat unused for about 10 years. I wanted to get it out of my office, so I tried unsuccessfully to first sell it and then to give it away. I paid $5000 for it new and even though it had paid for itself many times over I could not bring myself to just throw it away, so periodically I would put it on Craigslist for free. I finally got a taker and to show the new owners how to load pens and paper, I ran it through the canned demo program onboard the plotter. The pens I put in were mostly dry, but the plotter ran through its paces flawlessly. I was awed.
I would never want to go back to pen plotters because of the noise and length of plotting time, but I do not think any inkjet plotter I have seen can produce the clean, crisp, well defined lines that came from my Draftmaster.
You make a point that hadn't occurred to me, Oldtimer, and that's the notion the miniaturization could aggravate the problem with tin whiskers. The whiskers don't matter unless they create a short. The likelihood of creating a short will increase with miniaturization.
Yes, I would say that the problem involves several issues.
The " lead free " solder is actually a compromise solution to get the RoHS certification. I've perviously tested several early types of lead-free solders before RoHS made lead an issue....I wont go into the politics of why I don't follow RoHS guidelines when doing rework, I just know and have personal experience with improper bonding and contact issues with lead free solder. It appears that the stuff I discovered 20 years ago still applies today.
I looked at the process curves for device mount and proper contact to get a proper solder joint. We used to have a bigger " window " of solderability when working with tin-lead ( and even silver ) solders. That " window " is significantly closed with RoHS solder. There isn't much time to be at the higher temperatures before you heat damage the GPU in my example.
I had looked at this issue to make sure the builds at Cray were done with reliability, as much of the original systems were built by hand with MANY custom wires to get the speeds we got.
If we had been forced to use the RoHS solder specs over 20 years ago, our Crays would never have had the reliability they had.
On the ( officially a ) Metal Migration issue, repeated high heat levels make the whiskers grow. This is an atomic level problem based on movement of charged elements.
What we see today with component failures today is a result of the miniturization and crowding of internal IC components.
( This is what information you gain when you work around a team of experts in their fields and take tke courses they offer at your local Community College )
Yes, I would say that the problem involves several issues.
The " lead free " solder is actually a compromise solution to get the RoHS certification. I've perviously tested several early types of lead-free solders before RoHS made lead an issue....I wont go into the politics of why I don't follow RoHS guidelines when doing rework, I just know and have personal experience with improper bonding and contact issues with lead free solder. It appears that the stuff I discovered 20 years ago still applies today.
I looked at the process curves for device mount and proper contact to get a proper solder joint. We used to have a bigger " window " of soderability when working with tin-lead ( and even silver ) solders. That " window is significantly closed with RoHS solder. There isn't much time to be at the higher temperatures before you heat damage the GPU in my example.
I had looked at this issue to make sure the builds at Cray were done with reliability, as much of the original systems were built by hand with MANY custom wires to get the speeds we got.
If we had been forced to use the RoHS solder specs over 20 years ago, our Crays would never have had the reliability they had.
On the ( officially a ) Metal Migration issue, repeated high heat levels make the whiskers grow. This is an atomic level problem based on movement of charged elements.
What we see today with component failures today is a result of the miniturization and crowding of internal IC components.
( This is what information you gain when you work around a team of experts in their fields and take tke courses they offer at your local Community College )
Good explanation Oldtimer. This sounds less like a tin whisker problem and more like a problem that comes from using lead-free solders from a process point of view. Is that right?
I have a stack of $400 ( ebay price now ) HP dvXXXX series motherboards and computers with GPU issues. That includes the Compaq line too.
The issue is common with HP dv units, there is a lawsuit over the issue claiming improper design of the heatsinks AND defective GPUs suppied by nVidia.
The problem can be traced to overheat conditions by a gap between the GPU and the heat sink; many people try to fix it with the " penny " insertion. However, if the GPU gets hot enough, the heat cracks the BGA in several places, rendering the video nonop.
Since I have already been trained as an expert in soldering ( SMT and micro manipulator work ) I researched and purchased the proper tools. I have examined the YouTube videos on the " oven fix " and looked at the rework requirements to do a professional job without buying $1k worth of equipment.
The trick is to PREHEAT the board at 385F, then give it a hot shot with hot air at 420F AND NO MORE!!
The absolute max is around 430F. Anything higher will result in desoldering the surrounding SMT chips. I have the special tips for the hot air rework station.
What you want is the eutectic state in the BGAS to repair the cracks, not an actual liquid flow.
This is the engineering description of what the oven fix does. The pros spend $1 to $2k on a rework ststion that does the same thing on a bench top, preheat and hot air carefully controlled.
If you do this at home, buy a cheap, non contact IR thermometer to use with your paint stripper gun...
This problem is the reason I keep using tin/lead and silver solder when i do rework. I DESPISE the problems lead-free solder has created.
The " tin whisker " problem impact ALL devices, not just soldered ones. I've seen electron microscope pictures of IC fails ( some I induced ) at Cray Research.
Metal Migration was a common knowledge thing with IC vendors.
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