Leaking alkaline batteries, the bane of our portable, battery powered existence. All too many times I have found myself repairing electronic devices damage by leaking batteries, or just junking the gear when the damage is too severe.
This time the device in question was just a bit too valuable to dispose of despite fairly extensive damage.
A Celestron Nexstar 8SE telescope.
The Celestron designers, in their infinite wisdom, decide to locate the battery compartment above the main cicuit boards. This on a device that will often spend time in storage between uses and leakage is likely. The result was predictable.
This particular telescope was handed off to me as an inoperable case. Nearly worthless except to part out unless you have the skills to fix it.
The corrosive battery electrolyte dropped onto the circuit boards below, corroding traces and worse, getting into the connectors. The result was a the green growth seen in the photos here, green from the copper dissolved away from the circuit board traces and wires where it belongs.
The saving part of this incident is that the circuit boards are available at reasonable cost. If you consider about $120 reasonable for the set of boards. The connectors are also standard parts, available from the usual electronics suppliers.
Thus an evening of work restores this telescope to running order… The boards are easy, just a few screws to bolt them into place. The connectors are another matter, a couple hours of painstaking crimping contacts to wires in order to replace each of the connectors.
Share this:
Surprised that they do not specify lithium batteries as standard.
They perform well even at low temperatures and don’t leak.