Potentiometer Repair

RE: Potentiometer Repair

mcb1 — Fri, 27 Oct 2017 05:40:07 GMT

[mention:4f1ca8255f8742cd8649c704f7ea3bc3:e9ed411860ed4f2ba0265705b8793d05]

Nice guide, but not sure about pulling the pots apart ...

Contact cleaner certainly does clean the contacts, but it leaves a very dry surface, and provides no lubrication of the wiper across the surface.

There are other products designed to clean and lubricate, which in most cases provide the necessary reduction.

WD40 is certainly not one of these products.

You are quite right that corrosion from lack of use is not magically wisked away by a spray.

It's interesting that the pot you're demonstrating is different from the others, and I wonder if it's suffering from the quality issues that have crept up on us due to rising costs.

Cheers

Mark

RE: Potentiometer Repair

DAB — Wed, 25 Oct 2017 19:35:50 GMT

Reminds me of the time when we used to burnish relay contacts to make them work better.

DAB

RE: Potentiometer Repair

jw0752 — Tue, 24 Oct 2017 23:51:07 GMT

Hi R. Scott,

Last night I worked on an Alesis Sumo 300 with crackly controls. These were Bourns PTV142B controls see this data sheet:

http://www.bourns.com/data/global/pdfs/PTV142B_obsolete.pdf

While I have cleaned controls similarly to how you describe, in the past, I have never used an eraser on the carbon composite surface of the control. In the case of the Alesis I did not have the courage to crack these Bourns dual controls. I sprayed and cleaned as well as possible.

Thanks for your detailed approach to working on the potentiometers. I have always enjoyed fixing switches, controls, and any component that are not designed to be repaired.

John