clever phone charger, crackle crackle

[graffian]

I bought a cheap andoid phone to use as a garage MP3 player. Never mind MP3 player I can sit and read the forum while eating my dinner in front of the telly, look at pdfs on it and the list goes on. And I can fool with the recorder, so if it's been set to record shtie I can delete it. I had to buy a charger for it, obviously I bought a cheapo one. The charger worked fine for probably longer than I can ask paypal for my money back[must check]. The charger started to crackle.

I had a look and the wires from the pcb to the plug prongs are soldered, but the solder looks like a ball nipple that is free in the teminal;-) How it ever worked is beyond me.

Whatever the plating is it doesn't solder with electronics types flux, you can blob it on but no flow at all.
I cleaned all solder n crpa off it and used flux I use to solder to stainless cables. Like magic it wetted out lovely.

 

[tflnemesis]

I normally run into that sort of thing when the cables are poor quality aluminium wires, normal flux doesn't do much and you have to give it a ton of heat to get it to flow properly.

 

[Parm]

I normally run into that sort of thing when the cables are poor quality aluminium wires, normal flux doesn't do much and you have to give it a ton of heat to get it to flow properly.

I only just found out recently that Al wire is being used. Explains why I've been unsuccessful in soldering

 

[badabec]

Mine crackled like that, I placed it in the bin

 

[graffian]

Mine crackled like that, I placed it in the bin

I did that with the Motorola one that came with it. I should have opened it up and had a look inside.