Zaccaria Money Money Restoration

[level42]

May I ask how you measure them ? With a DVM ?

[PaulSwan]

I have a multimeter that has a simple and very basic capacitance measurement feature on it.

[level42]

Well, to be honest, that is totally useless to check the condition of caps. First of all these are very inacurate when it comes to measuring the capacitance, but most of all that is (usually) not the problem with caps. The problem is that they start developing a "serial resistance", also known as Equivalent Series Resistance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivalent_series_resistance

You can't measure that with a regular DVM.

Here is a good explanation about it:
http://www.radiodevices.info/esr/esr4_en.pdf

This is the manual of the actual ESR tester that I've got. It's 75 bucks INCL. world wide shipping.

I was in the "cap-kit everything" boat too, until I got this little gem.....and I started to realize that I had been wasting time and money.....esp. time.

Most caps are still good, yes even after 30 years. The smaller the cap, the more likely it is to fail. With this tester you know for sure...and especially because you have such a LOAD of hardware to do.....

[PaulSwan]

The kits are <$10ea and it takes less than an hour to do a chassis. My monitor skills are not good enough to be able to find and shoot the individual cap that's failed, especially if it's a failure mode that's not easy to validate without removing it anyway, in less than an hour. Thus for me personally it's more time efficient to kit and rule them all out.

I bow to your cap hunting skils

[level42]

You don't need to unsolder them, that's the biggest plus You just go over all the caps, touch them, check them to a table and presto....

[PaulSwan]

All done! It needed a bit more work that expected to get it running (with the power supply, board & monitor not actually working) but pleased with it now


http://www.zzzaccaria.com/MoneyMoneyRestoration.htm



On to the next one...


Paul.

[level42]

Very nice ! Reminds me of a piggy bank somehow.....

[Etienne MacGyver]

Nice paul !

Only too bad for the dents in the tmoulding at the marquee area.

It looks it took a serious hit there 

[Belike]

Piece of art, nice work Paul.
The marquee artwork looks extremly cool.

[PaulSwan]

Yeah, some hit there in it's past. Other than minor woodwork and cleaning I don't do cabinet restoration because I don't have any art or fine cosmetic woodworking skills and thus would probably make it worse. Cleaning is just about it for me for cabinet work.

The Brothers Reunion

Full resolution (3Mb) -> http://www.zzzaccaria.com/images/Projects/MoneyMoneyRestoration/SAM_1562.JPG



Regards,
Paul.

[level42]

Yeah, Woodworking repairs is probably my weakest spot in this hobby too....I hate if I have to do it. And games that have some imperfections here and there simply show some character....

That is one rare combo on that picture !

[Belike]

Impressive couple.