Anthropolis
Canna Jedi in training.
Hello again friends! This guide will detail how to repair/replace a damaged power plug on an LED panel, and can be applicable to other devices too.
The other day I was preparing to upgrade my LED panel fans and noticed something very scary! One prong of the power plug receptacle had corroded, causing the electricity to have to arc, which creates lots of heat. This heat had melted part of the power cord, and this is the type of thing that causes FIRES!
I'm begging you, please go inspect your power cord ends and plug receptacles immediately! If they in any way don't look right, look corroded, warped, melted, whatever, then you must replace them immediately and STOP using whatever LED panel or whatever device it's connected to until it is repaired.
This my friends is exactly how fires start. I have no clue how it got this way, I keep things almost spotless. Apparently that didn't matter lol. It corroded inside the plug regardless. All my other plugs and devices look just fine, so this could just be a fluke. Flukes like this could cost you big, like loss of grow room or house, or jail or both lol. So I'm begging you to go check your stuff.
Anyway, on with the guide
Supplies needed:
Tools Needed:
Difficulty: very easy
Here's what the corroded plug looks like, yikes! You can see some of the melted plastic down in there too.
Here is the now damaged power cord. {THROW IT AWAY if you find yours like this please}
Pretty scary right? It got like that really quickly, and would be much worse looking if I hadn't noticed it as quickly as I did. Luckilly I'm always fiddling with stuff lol, st it gives me a chance to notice things.
Here's the brand new plug we'll be putting in:
You've seen these plugs a hundred times, usually on PC power supplies and other things like that. It's called an IEC plug. You want the female IEC plug receptacle. This plug was only like $2 or $3 and the replacement IEC power cord was only a couple dollars too. A cheap fix for something that could cost thousands of dollars in potential damage. These can be had on Amazon, Ebay, and probably locally if you look around.
So, open up the LED panel, now you'll probably need to snip some zip ties and unplug the actual light panel inside. You want to separate the light panel half of the unit and set it somewhere, so that it's easier to work on the power half.
There's the plug! There's three wires: a hot line wire, a neutral line wire, and the center ground wire which just grounds to the case. In my case it grounded by way of a fan screw... okay, not how I would've designed it but okay lol.
Unscrew and unplug the fans if you want to, this isn't mandatory but it gives you more room and I was upgrading the fans anyway while I'm doing this.
Now for the fun part lol. Take a razor and cut away at any heatshrinking around the bases of the three wire. Cut all heatshrinking off, this will reveal the wire and the plug prongs. I was expecting to find the wires soldered on, and expected to spend a half hour fighting off the old solder... I was surprised and a bit irritated to find the wires were just twisted on the prongs through the holes, no solder wtf!!!
This is pretty bad form in the electrical world, but hey, it is a cheap Chinese panel, and I can't expect them to care if it catches on fire lol.
Okay sooo untwist the wires to remove them lol. Hopefully yours has solder, in which case you'll have to fight with it for awhile, or say F it and cut the wire just above the solder. If cut, prepare a fresh tip by stripping a good bit of the sheathing.
Unbolt the old plug and remove it. In my case they were little 5.5 mm nuts on there.
Drop in the pretty new plug The replacement one had a bit more mass, so it had to be pushed hard onto the bolts. Even the cheap replacement plug is already nicer than the factory one lol.
Now, VERY IMPORTANT, before going any further, cut three pieces of new heat shrink tubing and place them up onto the wires and push the back out of the way. Use enough tubing to safely cover the prongs and some extra wire.
Put the wire through the prong holes, and twist them up to themselves as tightly as possible. Notice the new heat shrink tubing in the picture.
Now take the soldering iron and place a good dollop of solder all over the twisted wire and paint it in and onto the prong. This is important to added safety and security of the wires.
Continue with all three wires. Hopefully you took a picture or some notes on which wire goes where. Note that sometimes, for some whacky reason, the Chinese like to use the opposite wire color coding as the rest of the world...
Push your new heat shrink tubing down over the prongs and hit them with some heat to tighten them around the wire and prongs. You can use the edge of a soldering iron, a lighter, or a heat gun if you have one handy.
That's pretty much it! Reassemble everything back the way it was, being careful not to pinch any wires you may have had to unclip or cut the zip ties on.
Test it out and pray you didn't mess anything up lol!
Success yayyy!!! Now you won't burn your house down yayyy! Lol! Be safe my friends, that's all for now, peace and love. -Anthro-
The other day I was preparing to upgrade my LED panel fans and noticed something very scary! One prong of the power plug receptacle had corroded, causing the electricity to have to arc, which creates lots of heat. This heat had melted part of the power cord, and this is the type of thing that causes FIRES!
I'm begging you, please go inspect your power cord ends and plug receptacles immediately! If they in any way don't look right, look corroded, warped, melted, whatever, then you must replace them immediately and STOP using whatever LED panel or whatever device it's connected to until it is repaired.
This my friends is exactly how fires start. I have no clue how it got this way, I keep things almost spotless. Apparently that didn't matter lol. It corroded inside the plug regardless. All my other plugs and devices look just fine, so this could just be a fluke. Flukes like this could cost you big, like loss of grow room or house, or jail or both lol. So I'm begging you to go check your stuff.
Anyway, on with the guide
Supplies needed:
- replacement IEC female plug
- replacement IEC power cord
- a few inches of shrink wrap
Tools Needed:
- screwdrivers
- razor blade / xacto knife
- soldering iron and solder
Difficulty: very easy
Here's what the corroded plug looks like, yikes! You can see some of the melted plastic down in there too.
Here is the now damaged power cord. {THROW IT AWAY if you find yours like this please}
Pretty scary right? It got like that really quickly, and would be much worse looking if I hadn't noticed it as quickly as I did. Luckilly I'm always fiddling with stuff lol, st it gives me a chance to notice things.
Here's the brand new plug we'll be putting in:
You've seen these plugs a hundred times, usually on PC power supplies and other things like that. It's called an IEC plug. You want the female IEC plug receptacle. This plug was only like $2 or $3 and the replacement IEC power cord was only a couple dollars too. A cheap fix for something that could cost thousands of dollars in potential damage. These can be had on Amazon, Ebay, and probably locally if you look around.
So, open up the LED panel, now you'll probably need to snip some zip ties and unplug the actual light panel inside. You want to separate the light panel half of the unit and set it somewhere, so that it's easier to work on the power half.
There's the plug! There's three wires: a hot line wire, a neutral line wire, and the center ground wire which just grounds to the case. In my case it grounded by way of a fan screw... okay, not how I would've designed it but okay lol.
Unscrew and unplug the fans if you want to, this isn't mandatory but it gives you more room and I was upgrading the fans anyway while I'm doing this.
Now for the fun part lol. Take a razor and cut away at any heatshrinking around the bases of the three wire. Cut all heatshrinking off, this will reveal the wire and the plug prongs. I was expecting to find the wires soldered on, and expected to spend a half hour fighting off the old solder... I was surprised and a bit irritated to find the wires were just twisted on the prongs through the holes, no solder wtf!!!
This is pretty bad form in the electrical world, but hey, it is a cheap Chinese panel, and I can't expect them to care if it catches on fire lol.
Okay sooo untwist the wires to remove them lol. Hopefully yours has solder, in which case you'll have to fight with it for awhile, or say F it and cut the wire just above the solder. If cut, prepare a fresh tip by stripping a good bit of the sheathing.
Unbolt the old plug and remove it. In my case they were little 5.5 mm nuts on there.
Drop in the pretty new plug
The replacement one had a bit more mass, so it had to be pushed hard onto the bolts. Even the cheap replacement plug is already nicer than the factory one lol.
Now, VERY IMPORTANT, before going any further, cut three pieces of new heat shrink tubing and place them up onto the wires and push the back out of the way. Use enough tubing to safely cover the prongs and some extra wire.
Put the wire through the prong holes, and twist them up to themselves as tightly as possible. Notice the new heat shrink tubing in the picture.
Now take the soldering iron and place a good dollop of solder all over the twisted wire and paint it in and onto the prong. This is important to added safety and security of the wires.
Continue with all three wires. Hopefully you took a picture or some notes on which wire goes where. Note that sometimes, for some whacky reason, the Chinese like to use the opposite wire color coding as the rest of the world...
Push your new heat shrink tubing down over the prongs and hit them with some heat to tighten them around the wire and prongs. You can use the edge of a soldering iron, a lighter, or a heat gun if you have one handy.
That's pretty much it! Reassemble everything back the way it was, being careful not to pinch any wires you may have had to unclip or cut the zip ties on.
Test it out and pray you didn't mess anything up lol!
Success yayyy!!! Now you won't burn your house down yayyy! Lol! Be safe my friends, that's all for now, peace and love. -Anthro-
