Eppendorf 5415D Error 17 repair

The Eppendorf 5415D is a nice little desktop centrifuge, however, there aren't many online resources describing its failure modes. The instruction manual only says that error 17 is electronics related so you were out of luck until you found this site! So, here is how to fix Err 17.

The Eppendorf 5415 D

On to the repair!

What I found when messing with the centrifuge was that it would power on normally when it had been plugged in for a few moments and the power was cycled. This often indicates bad capacitors which are exactly the problem in the case of error 17. 

The offending capacitors are in the middle of the board

First, remove the drum and the casing. Then, you need to remove the pcb from the bottom plate. Don't remove the four screws holding the motor control module just yet, you'll be removing then when you've desoldered the jumper pins in the following image. 

Annoying jumper pins

The best way to desolder these I found is to remove the majority of the solder using a sucker. Then, use a small hook to lift the pins while heating the pad.

After that, you simply replace the capacitors near the 7805 voltage regulator. Their values are 220µF/25V and 22µF/25V. I didn't have the exact values on hand so I used 470µF/25V and 22µF/50V which worked fine. 

Good luck!