My sister brought me one of those ultrasonic small tabletop herbal vaporizers in the hope that I could fix it (they're not vaporizers, btw... they're really atomizers) because the cleaning lady dropped it from a height of less than 4 inches while it was turned on, and the thing stopped working and she wasn't able to even turn it on again afterwards.
Anyway... she squarely places the blame on the young girl.. but I told her that was bonkers and to bring me the thing so I could take a closer look at it.
So what I did was disassemble it and take a closer look at its circuit. And everything seemed fine. No burnt nor broken traces nor obviously blown components. I also cleaned its piezo element carefully. But when I checked its power supply (which is a 24C@0.5A wall wart) with my multimeter, the thing was dead.
That was the "aha" moment for me... I told her to please stop blaming the girl and to simply buy another wall wart of the same output voltage (although I recommended one that could deliver at least 1 amp ... the more the merrier) and assured her that the thing would immediately start working again.
... that's when something clicked in my head: the device was dropped form a short distance... but piezo elements work both ways ... that is, they are transducers... they can either receive power and convert it into mechanical vibrations, but they can also be subject to mechanical vibrations and in turn convert them into power...
Is it possible that such a mild shock made the piezo emit an electric surge that then flowed back into the main circuit and then went further down into the power supply itself? ... If that's what happened, then both the wall wart and the controller circuit could be fried ... I find that very hard to believe, but it's not entirely impossible ... is it?
Unfortunately, I do not have a power supply capable of delivering 24V to test the device... so she's just going to have to spend $12.00 bucks on a new one and hope that's the only thing that's wrong with it.
Anyway... she squarely places the blame on the young girl.. but I told her that was bonkers and to bring me the thing so I could take a closer look at it.
So what I did was disassemble it and take a closer look at its circuit. And everything seemed fine. No burnt nor broken traces nor obviously blown components. I also cleaned its piezo element carefully. But when I checked its power supply (which is a 24C@0.5A wall wart) with my multimeter, the thing was dead.
That was the "aha" moment for me... I told her to please stop blaming the girl and to simply buy another wall wart of the same output voltage (although I recommended one that could deliver at least 1 amp ... the more the merrier) and assured her that the thing would immediately start working again.
... that's when something clicked in my head: the device was dropped form a short distance... but piezo elements work both ways ... that is, they are transducers... they can either receive power and convert it into mechanical vibrations, but they can also be subject to mechanical vibrations and in turn convert them into power...
Is it possible that such a mild shock made the piezo emit an electric surge that then flowed back into the main circuit and then went further down into the power supply itself? ... If that's what happened, then both the wall wart and the controller circuit could be fried ... I find that very hard to believe, but it's not entirely impossible ... is it?
Unfortunately, I do not have a power supply capable of delivering 24V to test the device... so she's just going to have to spend $12.00 bucks on a new one and hope that's the only thing that's wrong with it.