Page 1 of Onkyo receiver broken

My Onkyo receiver stopped working. The speaker icons in the LED display were not showing, so I had no sound. After a little reading through a few forums I found that the failure was quite common. One (quick) fix suggested heat lamps or hair driers in through the vents then their amp came back to life. Nothing to lose I tried the hair dryer trick and lo and behold it worked. My question is...why did this work? After the amp had been off for a bit it cooled and did not start again without using the hair dryer. Is there a way this can be cheaply fixed to stop these hair drier antics?

Are you any good with a soldering iron? Can you be trusted opening up an electrical device that has parts which carry mains voltage?

The reason why this might have fixed things is some of the joints inside (where the solder joins components to the PCB) may have become cracked (or dry as it's called for strange reasons!). Heating them up can cause a temporary expansion that might fix them temporarily.

However, doing it with a hairdryer is bad, and anyone who suggests it should be kept well away from electrical equipment imho. Whilst its true that you can heat up and fix this sort of issue, doing it with a hair dryer will heat everything up, including some things like the electrolytic capacitors which at best you'll shorten their life, and at worst you'll just make them go bad instantly.

Heat is the enemy of pretty much all electrical devices. :( Which is why when you use it you generally try and use the bare minimum in as small an area as possible for as short as possible to get the job done.

So, how are your soldering skills? :)


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No skills whatsoever but a guy where I work has degrees in electronics and may become my hero. Most people suggest it is the HDMI board which is causing the issue so I'll get him to look at that first. Cheers Rob.

Keep him close. :)

My guess is it's the solder joints between connectors, or a capacitor which heating is somehow affecting. Probably an easy fix though, especially to someone who knows a bit about electronics!


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