After my airconditioner failed the other day, and being reluctant to pay a technician to come and fix it, I've been taking a look at its electronics board.
It's clear that its power supply circuit has failed. From the board itself I've inferred this partial circuit:
I am pretty sure there are no other components connected to the transistor labelled Q1, and it is this transistor that has failed. The failure mode is a short (a few ohms, polarity insensitive) from base to emitter. The collector is open circuit. The transistor is thus unable to sink enough current to prevent the switching transistor from turning on, and as a result the 8.2 Ohm fusible resistor has also failed.
It seems moderately likely that by replacing these two components I can get the board working again.
The circuit nevertheless puzzles me. The function of Q1 appears to be to bias the switching transistor. But this seems to rely somewhat on the characteristics of the two transistors, which I would have thought was asking for trouble. In particular, it looks to me as if Q1 could simply prevent the switching transistor from ever conducting, and nothing would happen.
Is this an accepted technique? Or have I misunderstood the purpose of Q1?
BTW, this is from the external unit of a nine year old Daikin split system.
Sylvia.