Normally we don’t provide Pcb board repairs. We received a call from our return customer from Polo Alto CA. They have Thermador Double oven with an upper unit not producing the heat. But this time I decided to provide board rebuild myself.
I removed the unit out of the cabinet using a special dolly. I removed the top cover which is covering all internal electronics and immediately find the damage on the PCB relay board. One of the contacts and possible the relay itself were damaged. In these types of cases, we use third-party service of PCB board rebuild. But there are a few very inconvenient factors to that:
- It takes 2-3 weeks on average to ship part on a rebuild and get it back.
- In a few cases, shipping companies almost lost our packages. And because parts are old and unique we cannot get a replacement and have to buy a new appliance for the customer.
I make a decision to invest time and afford to learn do board level repairs myself. And here I am with my first repair of Thermador relay board.
Here are the steps to rebuild this board:
The first step was to get all equipment necessary for this repair, soldering iron, solder, wax, pad, pliers, fume extractor and solder extractor. This step is the easiest one.
The second step was to choose the correct spec relay to replace the old one. It might sound easy but was not. As I figured out Thermador ordered parts for their appliances and used nonstandard labeling of part number for relays. So I called multiple shops and ask them if they can search for the replacement, but none of them could help. So I decided to find a replacement based on specs by measuring the resistance of old relay and comparing to new ones from the same manufacturer. After all my
The third step was pretty easy. Just a few hours of practicing with soldering iron before replacing the relay itself. Replacement went smooth and fast.
The final step was installing of rebuild PCB board at the appliance.
Another happy customer!
