Can a short-circuited heat bed be salvaged?

Question

I was working on my printer when something metallic came into contact with the pcb. I smelled smoke and quickly unplugged the printer. Anyway, this is the result and, of course, the heat bed won't heat.

Can this be salvaged or should I toss it and buy a new one?

update the heat bed was not hot at the time. I had the heat bed unscrewed from the chassis but had forgotten to unplug the printer. I am not exactly sure how it shorted but I think it shorted between the power lead connection and the thermistor.

Answer 1

What happend was short circuit of course. There is no doubt you overheated HB so copper detached from HB base plate. Because you wrote it doesn't work it means copper tracks are broken.

There is very low chance to fix it. I mean it - near to zero.

What you could do is:

1. Detach HB from arduino
2. Find a place where track is broken (which needs to uncover it from protective layer)
3. Connect it with a wire

Unfortunately even if you do it and your HB will work (electrically) your fixed HB which won't be flat anymore.

So definitely it's to be thrown away.

[edit]

I just realised you have double power HB, which means your HB has 2 heaters... which gives a bit hope.

take a look here

here is schematics which could give you an idea

You could check if your second heater works ok

If yes then you are salvaged! :)

[edit2] I really suppose the schematics of HB is more or less like this

So if H1 is broken there is a chance to use H2 connecting pins respectively

Answer 2

Yes, it should be possible to fix, although you might choose to replace anyway on the basis that the repaired bed might give you concerns about how long it will be before your repair fails.

You will need to carefully remove the protective layer to expose the heating element (assuming you can identify where it is likely to have broken). Then carefully solder across the break (maybe with a short fragment of wire).

After making the repair, you should cover the exposed track. This provides both electrical and thermal insulation. In the absence of any suitable high-temperature paintable covering, you could try using kapton tape.