EuropAce EWC 913 Wine Cooler power board fuse blow /shorted

[beetle1303]

Hi,
I am a occasional hobbyist home electronic / electrical goods repairer without formal training in electronics/electricity. I learned from here and Youtube mostly.
I was given a EuropAce wine cooler model EWC 913, with no power supply - totally dead.
I opened up everything, and zoom into the power supply board (see attached pics), the board part# is Hanny10-12b, PCB110729M1, Rev0.
There are 2 fuses, 1 is OK, 1 was burnt. I disconnected all the input and output cables, put the power board stand-alone on a table, and replaced the burnt fuse. I burnt immediately upon power-on.
After reading some discussions in this forum, I followed 1 of the suggestions:
- I wired 2x40w incandescent bulbs in series with the live wire going to the board, temporary soldered a thin wire across the blown fuse.
- When power on, both the incandescent bulbs lights up and stayed lighted up until I power off. Based on what I read, this is a clear indication of a short-circuit somewhere.
I do not know how to read / trace circuit board, so I practically did a process of eliminations by removing all the capacitors and diodes to test using a DMM, and when the tests appeared good, I soldered them back. I repeated this process with all the transistors. As for resistors I only tested then in circuit. I even removed the 2 big blue and black rectangle parts (presumably relays). But doing all this has no effects at all on the 2 bulbs - they always lighted when I power on. The last I tried was removing the transformer - then the 2 bulbs di not light up!
While doing all these removing/restoring, I only occasionally checked the incoming voltage at the 2 input terminal - it's quite consistently at around 5V. I did not take any reading beyond this.

Please kindly help with my journey to debug and find the short circuit.
Thank you very much.

[beetle1303]

While waiting for help, I went through the board once more thoroughly - and realized the only thing in the cluster of components that I didn't looked at was this IC1.
So I de-soldered and pulled it out - and voila!!! The incandescent bulbs no longer light up .
So I replaced the wired fuse with a proper spec fuse, removed the incandescent bulbs from the power source, and power on - no more blowing fuse!
I will go source the IC and do some checks on the board, hopefuly nothing else is faulty caused by this IC.

[sam_sam_sam]

When you get the new one before you put it in make sure that you do not have any other shorts


Follow this after you install the new ic chip


Also put the light bulb in place of the fuse again and make sure that the light is not full brightness otherwise you may still have problems with this device or with this switching power supply system

[R_J]

You can check the resistance on the internal fet in the ic, check the resistance between pins (5,6,7 or 8) and pins (1 or 2) I suspect it will show a short. There is a small electrolytic capacitor (C2?) next to the ic, replace it as well.

[stj]

no point checking the chip, half the top is blown off!!!

[beetle1303]

Bought a new IC1 (VIPer22A), checked to compare with the bad one - yes, pin1 and pin2 is very low resistance at 50+ohm vs 2+Mohm on the new IC.
So soldered in the new IC (I already replaced C1 & C2 previously), and put the 2 incandescent bulbs into the system.
Power up - 1 of the 2 bulbs lighted up for a split second, then off. Subsequent power off and waited for like 10-15 secs and power up again - none of the bulbs lights up anymore.
I now removed the bulbs, cycle the power a few times, the fuse is still good.
I guess IC1 and/or the 2 capacitors (C1 & C2) were the culprits.

Is there anything I should check now before putting it back onto the chiller to see if it works?

[beetle1303]

An update:
I have since put the power board back to the chiller, and it works!
I set the temperature to highest level, the compressor turns on and off in maintaining the set temperature, so far so good.
However, I think there are some other underlying issue between the front panel controller and the power board:
- when first power up, the front panel touch screen buttons all working well.
- after running a for a while, except for the light button, all others are not responding anymore.
- the display still showing current temperatures up and down accordingly.
- recycling the power will clear this issue

Could this be caused by power board component(s) damaged by the initial shorted IC?

[CapLeaker]

Take the front panel apart and clean it.

[beetle1303]

The front panel is 'embedded' inside the door frame, and seems like a challenge to open it up, so I decided to give it a pass, and returned it to the donor who were delighted that it was fixed and doesn't mind the control panel issue.

So this will be a happy ending for me and the donor.

Thank you all for your guidance and support.

[R_J]

Originally Posted by stj

no point checking the chip, half the top is blown off!!!

It looks that way in the first post but, if you look at the photo in post #2, it does'nt look like the top is blown off

[calpolycrew]

Late reply! I'm having issues with this same board or at least my wine fridge where the compressor no longer turns on. I've changed the OL and the PTC but no luck.

I wanted to reply to the touch screen issue. Generally when the fridge starts up the controls are free to use, however after 5 minutes or so the temperature controls are locked automatically. There should be icons on the front control panel that show a lock, generally you have to hold down on or two of the buttons for 5 seconds and you'll hear a beep and you'll now be able to adjust the temperature.

I wish you were closer as I am in the US and would of been happy to send you my board for inspection as I cant think of anything else it could be. If power is applied to the compressor it kicks on and starts cooling. However if the board is hooked back on, when I turn on the fridge, theres a single clicking noise and the compressor fan comes and panel and the fans inside the fridge however the compressor does not turn on.

An interesting observation is that I noticed is that when the circuit board moves in its cases from side to side, the light in the room where its at flickers for a second as if power is being pulled to start the compressor but the compressor never comes on.

I can take pictures if maybe you'd like to take a quick look? I think one of the caps might have a tiny bulge but I don't know exactly what to look for.

i hope this message finds you well.

[stj]

check the soldering, and suspect the relay - i assume the blue relay is for driving the compressor

infact your ealier pcb foto's show a LOT of cracked solder joints.
if you see a ring on a joint like a shadow or a scratch - it's cracked.

[sam_sam_sam]

These type of boards are notorious for this type failure where the pins go to the board to crack and separate them self from the board

If it has separated from the board you can take wire and rap it around the terminal pin and and use enough wire to get enough board trace to make the terminal blade solid to the board just make sure you use enough solder to make a good solid connection

I have had to do this type of repairs many times before in the past to keep using old circuit boards useable because replacement boards are not always available or cost to much money to replace

Where I work we have some saws that have hydraulic solenoid valve coil pins that go to a circuit board and these pins are notorious for this type of crap pins breaking loose from the board unfortunately this model have been discontinued and no longer found and to replace them can become expensive to do because you have to get the complete valve assembly a couple of hundreds of dollars each and there probably 10 valves on each saw

So of course I had to find a way to fix these circuit boards these repairs last a couple of years and from time to time I have to repair some of the same ones again until they become unrepairable but we just part out a saw that was sent to us from one of our other location and it has the same exact valves so I got lucky

Yes are location is considered a discard location we have part out equipment before sometime it good and sometimes it not

Yes a jack of all trades and master of none of them

[calpolycrew]

Thanks for responding. I've attached some pictures of my particular board in hopes of maybe you guys spotting something. Thanks for your follow up posts and hopefully we can get this sorted.

Sorry for hijacking this thread but its the same board.

[sam_sam_sam]

Yes you definitely have what looks like bad soldering joints around the terminal pins

Here is what I would recommend that you remove all of the solder from each pin with soldering wick and resolder all the joints that have missing solder and any that have ring around the part pins or terminal pins or dull looking soldering joint and go from there

But do this first thing before trying to powering the device up again

[ismiligy]

I had the same issue with the fuse. After replacing it with a 5amp slow burn the IC burnt. So I bought a new board.

Out of stock everywhere...
https://ambientstores.com/whynter-bwr-33sd-main-pcb

I bought this one instead after comparing it conector by conector and it worked.
https://ambientstores.com/whynter-bw...nd-yellow-wire

It has been over a week and the wine cooler (BWR-33SD) is running fine.

[ykchu]

I have Vinotemp VT-32TS-FE wine fridge. It has the same power supply board Hanny10-12C, PCB110729M1, Rev0. It had the exact same issue of blowing the fuse. I followed this thread and replacing the VIPer22A IC and all caps, and it fixed the issue. Thanks to all!

[scimsabre]

Hi, and thanks to all who contributed to this thread I was able to repair the circuit board for a wine chiller belonging to a family member. When initially searching for information about the board Badcaps was the only site providing useful information. Cheers

[SergeAuckland]

Just found this forum and registered, and hoping members here can help me.

A family friend just gave me their Wine Cooler to repair, and this thread has already greatly helped in identifying the VIPer 22A on the power board as faulty, so I have a replacement on order.

However, the hanny10-12C power board had already been removed, so don't now have a record of where each of the wires go. I'm assuming that the red and black plugs go in their respective coloured sockets, but there are two two-pin white plugs, which could go into two different sockets, and then the Brown, Red and Blue cables on spade connectors.

I would be very grateful if anyone has a photo or a description of what wire goes where.

With thanks

S.

[stj]

ask the owner,
if they where smart then they took a picture or 2 before they removed it.