Thursday 5 September 2019

How to replace the switch on a KPC controller

I'm always dropping handhelds - this time was terminal. Luckily a spare unit was to hand. The switch for the feedback on/off had shattered cutting all the power so logically it was an easy fix. It sat on the back of the bench for quite a while, but with the first show of the season looming I thought it best to take a deep breath and get on with it.
The switch is one of the standard small DPDT sliders which I keep in stock for 9mm point control.

 I quickly spotted a problem in that unless I deconstructed the entire unit there wasn't a lot of spare wire to play with. Five poles of the switch are used, so as this was a new game I drew a sketch of the back of the switch to remind me of the wire positions.
The wires were unsoldered from the smashed switch and cleaned up as best that I could - not easy with less than 25mm to play with. A new switch had the poles tinned and I set about very carefully re-soldering the wires with the whole unit clamped gently in the bench vice. When all were attached I plugged the unit into the back of a Gaugemaster cased controller and it worked first time.

 All there was to do was to use the long bolts to fix the switch to the inside of the case and re-fit the back. Ten weeks procrastinating and ten minutes to do.


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