DISCLAIMER: Do not take apart any power supply unless you have at least a few years of experience with electronics and electrical safety. If you do take one apart, it is solely at your own risk.
So I've had this LDNIO A8101 50W 8 port charging station for about two years and it has served me quite well until last weekend. So I took it apart cause the USB ports were kinda loose from so much use, and I decided to ever so slightly squish them to tighten them. Checked how they hold plugs, and it was much tighter. Ok I thought, so I put the thing back together. Plugged in the power cord and all of a sudden a new issue popped out of nowhere... It would only power the first device plugged in after AC power was applied, and if I unplugged the device and plugged it into another port, nothing. Later during further testing I noticed only the first port would have power, and only until the device was unplugged, at which point that port would go dead too. I let the capacitors discharge and then took this thing apart again. Now between watching tons of power supply related videos on YouTube, having had experience diagnosing my old laptop's motherboard that had a semi-dead multi-phase VRM system for the CPU that caused performance issues, and of course being an electrical engineering student, it didn't take me long to find the problem. Through the method of elimination after a bit of poking around with a multimeter, I found out the most likely cause of my issue was probably a failed output protection chip. Honestly not too surprising given there were signs of heat damage on parts of the board.
So yeah, basically the chip that handles the over current protection and other safety features killed an entire charging station. Gonna have to order a new one once I get back to the US.
So I've had this LDNIO A8101 50W 8 port charging station for about two years and it has served me quite well until last weekend. So I took it apart cause the USB ports were kinda loose from so much use, and I decided to ever so slightly squish them to tighten them. Checked how they hold plugs, and it was much tighter. Ok I thought, so I put the thing back together. Plugged in the power cord and all of a sudden a new issue popped out of nowhere... It would only power the first device plugged in after AC power was applied, and if I unplugged the device and plugged it into another port, nothing. Later during further testing I noticed only the first port would have power, and only until the device was unplugged, at which point that port would go dead too. I let the capacitors discharge and then took this thing apart again. Now between watching tons of power supply related videos on YouTube, having had experience diagnosing my old laptop's motherboard that had a semi-dead multi-phase VRM system for the CPU that caused performance issues, and of course being an electrical engineering student, it didn't take me long to find the problem. Through the method of elimination after a bit of poking around with a multimeter, I found out the most likely cause of my issue was probably a failed output protection chip. Honestly not too surprising given there were signs of heat damage on parts of the board.
So yeah, basically the chip that handles the over current protection and other safety features killed an entire charging station. Gonna have to order a new one once I get back to the US.
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