I have a Bosch battery operated lawn mower and the battery charger has died. A new one will cost over $100.
A search online showed that it can be because of a failed resistor. I tried to do it myself but it is beyond my soldering skills.
Does anyone know of anyone in Melbourne (preferably around Frankston) who could do this sort of repair?
This is a link to the site where I found the info about the repair
Battery Charger Repair - Bosch Lawn Mower - Melbourne
GreyMelb on 14/07/2017 - 08:20
Last edited 14/07/2017 - 09:57 by 1 other user
Last edited 14/07/2017 - 09:57 by 1 other user
Comments
Hey mate have you hooked up a Multimeter to see if its getting any power? Some of those resistors may only be there to control the charge current of the battery?
Did you try and see if the resistors are working do they look damaged?The problem is it could be some thing easy like this. If its not an easy and you get some one to check it may end up costing you more?
Controller module could be broken. I would think a capacitor would go before a resistor.
First establish that the charger is getting any power at all and where that power ends?
Just careful and discharge the capacitors first they probably have a bleeder resistor for that but just in case.
One more question does it use an AC-DC adapter? It looks like it runs of mains?
Thanks for the responses.
Yes it charges off the mains. I clipped out the resistor shown in the link, but I got a big spark when I was messing around trying to get the new one in. I'm a bit clueless on this stuff so thought it would be best to get someone who knows what they are doing to look at it before I kill myself!
Cheers - I'll keep checking it out.
Assuming you were working on it with it unplugged, that big spark would have been from the capacitor(the big black thing). You can discharge them and make them safe by shorting their two leads together on the solder side of the circuit board with a screwdriver or similar with an insulated handle(unplug it from the mains obviously!) or just leaving it unplugged for a few days. You'll get a loud bang sometimes when you discharge them but as long as you aren't touching the metal part of the screwdriver you should be fine. Wear gloves if you like to be super safe.
I'm happy to help you have another go if you want to post some photos of what you've done so far.
Yea discharge the capacitors i would think they would be auto discharging weird. Do what Steve said bridge the poles together with a screw driver by placing it in between the capacitor.
You should only need to bridge one to drain them all.
You will probably need to get a lot into the old solder joints seeing as the connection looks like a decent size.
What's the output voltage? Check out whether the aldi smart battery chargers (for the power tools, not regular aa,aaa, etc batteries) would be compatible and then hack that with the connector for the mower.
Thanks for all the suggestions. I'll have another look but for someone completely unfamiliar with anything electrical this is a bit baffling.
Look for a backyarder if you can - most store front repair businesses will have to charge you close to the cost of a new charger to do this.