Air Cleaner Electronics Question

[Ted Calver]

My JDS Air Cleaner has less than 50 hours on it, but hasn't worked properly in a couple of years.


The remote will turn it on, but it only works on high speed (low and medium just hum) and the remote won't shut it off. I'm tired of climbing a ladder to shut it off. The JDS company is no longer in business. Looking around, several other folks are having the same problem and the most often suggested cure is to buy a plug with a remote controller and just use that for on and off. This cleaner model has three motor speeds and several timer options, and when it ran I liked having those options. A couple of YouTuber's suggested replacing capacitors, which apparently can dry out over time. Even though I'm in way over my head on anything fed by electricity, I decided to take it apart and see if it could be fixed.

There is one 8µF CAP on the motor, and my meter has a capacitance setting which read at a bit over 8µ, so it seems OK.
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The only others I could find were on the circuit board...and there were several.
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This one looked like the culprit in the YouTube videos:
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Even though it didn't show any outward signs of being bad, the ESR Meter showed it to be out of limits, so I'm hoping replacing it will fix the problem.

Now comes the question. It has markings that show 1000µF 10V SEK 105°C 08/05. I know what the first two are, and I think the 08/05 is the dimensions in mm. I'm not sure what the SEK means, or if it's even important. There are bunches of 1000µF 10V 105°C caps out there, but I can't find any with the SEK marking. Does anyone know if I can replace this with a generic cap of the same value that matches all the other markings, or do I need to find one with the SEK marking? Secondly, can anyone recommend the best place to buy these things that doesn't involve mail from China?

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[Don Baer]

did you check the CAP out of the circuit? If not then do that first. Next do you have the manual. Did it come with a schematic. If so can you scan and post it. with a schematic diagram and knowing the symptoms we might be able to give you some direction. Without that were shooting in the dark. I'll do a google search and see if I can find one.

 

[Don Baer]

never mind the manual, I found it online and it is useless. I'll do some more digging in the morning.

 

[Ted Calver]

did you check the CAP out of the circuit? If not then do that first. Next do you have the manual. Did it come with a schematic. If so can you scan and post it. with a schematic diagram and knowing the symptoms we might be able to give you some direction. Without that were shooting in the dark. I'll do a google search and see if I can find one.

I checked it in and out of circuit with a meter that supposedly lets you check things in circuit. Also have the schematic from inside the door, which doesn't get into any details.

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If I understand this meter table for 1000µF 10V correctly, a reading over .12 means the cap is bad.
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[Darren Wright]

That little cap does look to have a little bulge in the end. Should be a standard electrolyte capacitor, any of the same values should work.

 

[Ted Calver]

Thanks guys. Darren, I guess that coke bottle shape is not the way its supposed to look. Most of the bad CAP pictures showed the end with the X relief cut as the end likely to bulge. If this fix works, I'll tackle that Oneida DC remote that has been replaced twice. Maybe there's an old CAP in their too.

 

[Darren Wright]

90 % of the electronics I've fixed have been due to a bad capacitor. The rest usually show what burned up, usually to a bad capacitor.

 

[Ted Calver]

Eureka! The mail lady brought a package of new capacitors today and I soldered in the replacement, reassembled everything and it cranked right up and ran like a charm. Wrestling it from/to the ceiling was the hardest part of the whole thing. Cost me $40 for a new ESR meter that I will probably use again, and five bucks for CAPS. Not a bad price to have it working again, and I learned something in the process.