No, my pins are tin plated I think. Recently I replaced some power pins with gold plated ones per Elecraft's recommendation after getting an ERR 12V message and losing power to the 100 W amplifier.
When my K3 was less than a year old (June 2009) I had a lot of indications going crazy and Elecraft replaced the front board under warranty. No problems since then. I suspected the problem was tin whiskers but couldn't be sure. And now back to the encoder replacements. 73 Nick, WA5BDU On Wed, Aug 4, 2021 at 4:40 PM David Hachadorian <k6ll.d...@gmail.com> wrote: > Do you have gold pins on the connectors between the front panel and the > body of the radio? I had tinned pins until about a year ago, when I > replaced them with gold. The old pins were increasingly causing all kinds > of strange glitches. > > I also looked at replacing the small encoders, and ultimately chickened > out. After I replaced the front panel pins, the glitches that I thought > were caused by the encoders all went away. > > Dave Hachadorian, K6LL > Big Bear Lake, CA > > On 8/4/2021 9:59 AM, Nick Kennedy wrote: > > I'm in the process of replacing the four encoders to the left of the main > VFO knob and wonder if anyone has any advice or pep talks to offer. > > The encoders in my summer 2008 vintage K3 degraded to the point where they > often count backwards, making adjustment of CW speed or power out difficult. > > I've purchased four replacements from Elecraft and have been working up my > courage and taking deep breaths. Getting to the board is a fairly > complicated first phase. I had an Elecraft document on installation of an > audio LPF on the DSP board and found it to be very useful in this process. > Of course the original assembly manual is also useful. > > Now I've got the K3 apart to the point of allowing access. The upper two > encoders have terminals located beneath an LED mounting board and are > almost impossible to access from the top. I may stop after replacing the > lower two, assuming I'm successful with them. > > My usual method involves solder wick plus flux. Sometimes I find ChipQuik > to be very helpful in allowing me to remove a part without getting rid of > all the solder. In this case though, using ChipQuik would require heating > seven joints simultaneously which I haven't been able to do. > > There's also an issue with mounting the encoder at the correct height so > the shaft switch can be operated. So I'll try to match the height of the > new shaft end to that of the existing encoders. > > I found one website which is somewhat helpful discussing this task: > https://www.n5na.net/s9y/index.php?/archives/26-Replacing-Elecraft-K3-Push-Button-Encoders.html > > I'm keeping a lot of notes. Anyone planning to attempt this job is welcome > to them. > > 73 > > Nick, WA5BDU > ______________________________________________________________ > Elecraft mailing list > Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft > Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm > Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net <Elecraft@mailman.qth.net> > > This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net > Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html > Message delivered to k6ll.d...@gmail.com > > > -- > Dave Hachadorian, K6LL > Big Bear Lake, AZ > > ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
