Underwater Strobe Schematics (Sea & Sea YS-27DX)

I'm hoping someone can help here.

I have a dead Sea & Sea YS-27DX strobe. The strobe flooded and subsequently let out all the smoke making the circuit work!. I appreciate that the damage may in fact be catastrophic but I'll have a go at fixing it anyway!

The problem is I don't have any schematics. Sea & Sea won't respond to my requests for schematics (no surprise there then). So I'm wondering if anyone has a schematic for this unit?

Thanks,

Ian

Reply to
Chairman WAPSAC
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You might be able to fix it by (forgive me!) shotgunning the likely components.

I assume the unit has been thoroughly flushed with distilled water and dried, and that you have cleaned/checked all the switches. The transformer should be to see if it's open or shorted.

The caps and the semiconductors would be a good place to start.

Reply to
William Sommerwerck

Manual:

Fooded with what? Salt or fresh water? Have you cracked the case yet? How are you testing it? Have you tested the fiber optic trigger cable?

Have you tried using a different camera flash to trigger it?

If salt water, and it was sitting for more than a few days, my guess(tm) is the damage is more likely corrosion than component failure. Look for green coppper sulfate crud around the PC board, components, and transformer windings. It might pay to wash the entire mess in clean water (several times) to remove any ionic contaminants. It doesn't take much salt crust on the PCB to short out the hi-voltage inverter that runs the strobe.

Nope. Water incursion doesn't not produce any smoke.

Assuming the worst case is often a safe position, but not in this case. My very limited experience with marine electronics (9.5 years at Intech Inc designing marine radios) indicates catastrophic damage is usually accompanied by massive corrosion. More commonly, corrosion damage rots out the PCB, which prevents power of reaching components, resulting in a dead circuit. It's very rare for corrosioin to bridge the few places where a circuit resistive leak would blow something up. Again, look for corrosion or contamination.

Real techs don't need no stinking schematics.

Perhaps if you had your request for a schematic written in Japanese?

No schematic, but plenty of similar devices here:

Also, if there are any US patents on the device, they can be found at:

Good luck.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
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Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

subsequently let out all the smoke making the circuit work!. I appreciate that the damage may in fact be catastrophic but I'll have a go at fixing it anyway!

requests for schematics (no surprise there then). So I'm wondering if anyone has a schematic for this unit?

Don't know about flooding aspect. But inspect the bakelite of the socket between the pins of the lamp, can break down from heat and volts and generate smoke.

Reply to
N_Cook

OK thanks for the replies so far. Main reason for wanting schematics is tha= t the board has a number of surface mount components and I can't see values= on them.

Flooding was with salt water I believe.

Will be taking the strobe into work to place in ultrasonic bath but general= condition inside is good with only a couple of areas where ingress is evid= ent.

Have tried the transformer and switches and have buzzed out the battery lin= es. All looks fine so far. The LED which lights to indicate that the caps a= re charged and the unit is ready does not operate when batteries are instal= led and the unit is switched on. I've tested the LED and it's working fine = and I've also used a camera flash and torch to try and trigger it which has= no effect so I'm pretty sure the problem lies in the circuitry prior to th= e caps rather than in the triggering.

Cheers

Reply to
Chairman WAPSAC

Handy tip... Do you hear the oscillator whining? Modern flashes are on the quiet side, but you should be able to hear the transformer (or even the transistors!) "singing" when you bend over.

If the charge circuitry is working, you should a couple hundred volts across the caps.

Reply to
William Sommerwerck

Yeah...have listened.....nothing.....checked the voltage across the caps...= .nothing.....maybe current limiting resistor in the circuit that's blown bu= t the circuit isn't easy to trace and no idea what the components on the bo= ard are supposed to be as many of them don't appear to have markings other = than whats on the board such as C3 D7 U2 etc. One suspect chip is a monosta= ble multivibrator which should be easy to find but the SCRs are impossible = to identify as are most the diodes, resistors and caps. Only double sided b= oard so not the nightmare of multilayer but still it's two small boards and= it's fiddly tracing it through.

Reply to
Chairman WAPSAC

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