I bought seven encoders on eBay to the people at Doing yourself Spares.
I found a technician but he is telling me now that the new encoders have a different serial number compared to the ones inside the Octatrack. I’m waiting for him to email me back these serial numbers
But still I wanted to ask you guys here if anybody have experienced this before with this Parts provider. As you can see in the eBay link, that is what I got, it just that -of course- I couldn’t check this myself before
These are the encoders I bought
Hopefully what you have matches the Bourns number.
Some follow up:
The “different” serial number the technician refers it’s just a capital letter every knob has. I contacted the provider and they’ve told me it’s just manufacturing process.
I’ll get back on Monday when I get my machine back.
Okay, I feel my guy is effing up too much.
I saw him today to realize that some of the pots would work. He showed me the board and to me it seems a very shabby work.
We tried the Test Mode and everything in OK but the knobs don’t work as intented.
He also says the new encoders are a bit taller than the old ones.
I will share a video I made of the back of the board
https://youtube.com/shorts/9HJd0wlUTDw?si=T3CCH8Sa9wjc6H85
https://youtube.com/shorts/Pp3r5TmtotU?si=Gk1H1XSL68_4H639
Any feedback is appreciated
Some of the PCB soldering doesn’t look too good. What is the specific behavior where the knobs don’t work as intended, no response at all or is it an erratic response (skipping values? etc) describe what is happening. Do all knobs respond in test mode and is there any error detected?
The working knobs are very smooth like new, no jumping on values or anything, as it was before (that’s why i was looking forward for knob change).
The other just won’t show any rotation response but sometimes would react to the “click” instead, but again, inconsistent.
Switch is the 2 pins side by side, encoder operation is the 3 pins (ususally center is ground), the 2 large legs ground/support the chassis.
The ones which don’t work, one pin may have lost the soldering pad and are not connected to the PCB circuit, or there is a cold solder joint, so it’s not electrically connected. If even the ground pin is not properly making connection there will be no response. If you look closely at one which does not work, you may be able to see which pin is failing.
usually like this (generalization):
I can also see some of the chassis ground (legs) look like they are either not at all connected, or poorly connected. They seem to have dropped the soldering pads on those but I’m not sure if that’s enough to kill the encoder entirely with the elektron design, it’s not good though.
This one for example, the support legs look like they aren’t connected:
I think this is the far right side, lower row. Does this encoder work normally or is this one with a problem?
Actually if I’m not mistaken, that’s C encoder and it wasn’t working. Thank you for this great feedback. I have already shared this with him, I just hope he takes responsibility for what he has done
Ok, best luck.
