Mh-25 charger failure

<p>The MH-25 charger for my d800e doesn't light up / charge today, despite switching power cables, wall sockets, and batteries. I can't imagine why. Its 16 months in use, with pretty light use. I don't shoot lots, and use a bunch of different cameras when I do. The local camera store gave me the same price for repair 'v' replacement. My question is do these things fail routinely? I'm quite surprised its so fragile.</p>

<p>I have three MH-25 chargers, dating back to late 2010 when I bought my D7000, the first Nikon DSLR that uses the EN-EL15 batteries. All of mine are still working fine. Most likely, you just happen to run into one that fails.</p>

<p>Given your experience, and the lack of respondents sharing my experience, I guess you're right Shun. I guess I've got a dud. Thanks for your response</p>

<p>I also have several different Nikon chargers for the EN-EL3 and EN-EL3e; none of them has ever had any problems.</p>

<p>But at least you have a clear-cut charger failure. Tim Holte had a Nikon charger that wasn't quite charging his batteries correctly, but the problem was not at all obvious and for a month or so, he thought that he has some sort of battery (or camera) problem: http://www.photo.net/nikon-camera-forum/00UyDy</p>

<p>Hmmn, your experience is sort of the experience I anticipated with my charger. It seemed robust and predictable. As I say, its had gentle treatment. I've now bought a replacement, but for the mount I'm hanging onto the failed unit, in the stubborn belief it will restart as unceremoniously as it stopped. And its true - better to have a clear cut failure than an undetectable but persistent 'issue' as per the link you posted. Thanks.</p>

Reviving a zombie thread here, I just got back from a trip, in which my MH-25 charger failed. Fortunately, my wife uses the same batteries, and we had two chargers. A previous MH-24 failure never got solved, but in this case when I got home, I opened mine up and found a very obvious circuit board failure, which I was able to fix. I suspect that this is a weak spot, and might account for other failures, so here is a picture of the culprit. I took this picture after scraping the board preparatory to resoldering. Note that this is a failure of the board traces themselves, not of the solder joints - perhaps a consequence of years of vibration. I might consider potting the legs of the component on the other side. There is one screw that must be removed, and then you need to run a knife blade along the seam of the charger to get it to pop open. Its easy after that, but make sure you put the power connector back right side up or it won't swivel correctly.

 

By the way, if you're looking for a replacement and want to stick with Nikon, the MH-25a is appreciably faster than the original MH-25.

That's quite a crack! Looks as if the component topside of the board was subject to considerable 'waggling'.

 

Don't just bridge the gaps with solder. They'll quickly open up again. Wrap some 0.25 mm^2 wire around the component legs and double it up on the tracks before applying solder to the repair.

Yes, the component on the other side is a fairly large rectangular SCR or the like, on legs long enough to allow it to jiggle. It's taken about 5 years of heavy travel and use for it to fail. So far I just soldered it and put it together to make sure it would work, but intend to open it up again and do some proper reinforcement.

Recently I bought this $10 charger from Amazon. It charges my EN-EL15, EN-EL15a, and EN-EL15b all just fine, and it can charge two batteries at once.

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07QS96BJT/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Recently I bought this $10 charger from Amazon. It charges my EN-EL15, EN-EL15a, and EN-EL15b all just fine, and it can charge two batteries at once.

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07QS96BJT/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

+1.

I bought a 'Ravpower' charger together with two Ravpower (Sony-fit) batteries for less than one official Sony battery would have cost me.

 

The charger's been in regular use for over a year now with no issues, as well as the batteries. So far so good!

Just to be clear, my $10 Ravpower EN-EL15 charger is kind of cheaply made, and the price is certainly cheap also, but it works ok after a couple of months. When I travel, I tend to bring two chargers. I'll still take an MH-25(a) but the second charger can now be the compact one.

 

During my trip to Antarctica a year ago, I had one MH-25 in my hand carry and the other in my checked luggage. Between my wife and me, all of our checked luggage was lost on that trip due to airline issues (but eventually we got it all back when we got home). We had to buy a lot of emergency replacement clothing in Chile and I had just one charger for my D850, D500, and Z6, but I managed.

When my MH-24 went dead I got a cheap but useable Watson charger from B&H, with an extra adapter for En-EL15's, and that still works. On some trips I've taken that along as a third one just in case, but left it home last time. Anyway, now with the bad one fixed I will have three working. I gooped glue on the wobbly bits of the MH25 so it should hold up better now. Shoo goo seems to be sufficiently non-conductive.

I gooped glue on the wobbly bits of the MH25 so it should hold up better now. Shoo goo seems to be sufficiently non-conductive.

Hot glue from a glue-gun is probably the best 'solution' - pardon the pun.

I've seen this used a lot in commercial circuitry to secure components that might otherwise wobble about or bend dangerously close to other components. Short of complete resin potting, it's more than adequate for the purpose - and easily removed if repair is required.

Yes, I thought of hot glue, but saw in one reference that because some hot glues dry a bit stiff, some areas where thermal stress is high might re-crack or lift out of the board, and in this case the board is already visibly weakened. The component in question (an SCR I think) has a heat sink, and I suspect it does get hot. So, too lazy to go out to the (unheated on a below-zero evening) shop and hunt, where i think I may have some relatively flexible drying hot glue, I used Shoe Goo which dries to a stiff gel.