Green start button and power on timer info

[DTR Tech]

A little theory for anyone that may be interested regarding the CTL boards.

The CTL board  in both the Film Processor and the Frontier control the “soft” power on for those machines. The way they do this is through an Opto-couple. An Opto-couple is essentially just a switch that is optically isolated on either side. Inside this there is an LED and usually some sort of photo sensitive transistor. That said when the LED is supplied power and turns on. It turns on the transistor which in turn turns on the rest of the machine. This LED gets its initial power from the battery and is triggered via the real time clock or power button. Even if the battery is able to supply enough current (which is usually very small) to the Real Time Clock circuit  that some of the boards have for keeping time. It may not have enough current to turn on the LED which requires substantially more current (Approximately 9ma).

This type of battery has some strange characteristics. For one it is rechargeable nothing really weird there. The weird thing is that this battery can maintain a 3 volt output even when it has no current to supply. This means that if you test the battery with your DMM you will see 3volts. The current is another story. If you were to take the short circuit current of this (a bad) battery it would measure sub miliamps. Where as on a good battery this measurement will be 150ma +/- 20ma about.

When a bad battery is removed from the board you will also notice that on the back side it is leaking some. The magic white compound has left the battery. There is no easy way to get this magic white compound back into the battery for it to function properly again.

This is the same battery that is used in the 330/340 Frontier machines. The symptom is usually that the green power on button doesn't work and one has to use the jumper to turn the machine on.

These batteries can be obtained from a battery supplier at http://batterystore.com  part number: ML2430-HJ1 for only $5.50 a piece. Substantially less compared to ordering the whole board to fix this problem. Doing this also means that you do not have to reload the machine because its the same board.

WARNINGS!!!

-Please do not attempt to make current measurements unless you know what you are doing.

-Also do not attempt to solder unless you have prior experience with it as we would rather not destroy these boards.

-Make sure that if you do take a current measurement to place your leads back into the voltage input as to not blow up your meter and circuit you are measuring.

For Measuring the battery current:

- MAKE SURE YOU HAVE THE MACHINE OFF.

- Place the leads into current measurement inputs.

- Set the ma current range to 200ma.

- Find a Ground test point on the ctl board and put a lead on that.

- Do this quickly as to not kill a possible good battery touch the other lead to the top of the battery    just long enough for you to see how much current the battery is putting out.

Again if this is around 100ma that battery should be fine. If it is substantially lower, then the battery will need to be replaced.

Soldering the battery:

There are only two leads so this is very easy to do on site with a butane iron and some extra solder. Just be sure that the positive and negative terminals are in the proper spot before you solder the battery back on.

The bad battery can be removed one side at a time with screwdriver under it to pry one side at a time(the side that is heated by the iron),  until it pops out.