Opening the case
The first step to attempt the repair is to open the case. It is not an easy task because both covers are glued together. Carefully I applied force to the glued join with a piece of flat metal and with patience I was able to separate both cases. Of course, I made some damage to the plastic cases: They are glued together to be not opened. Once opened, you will notice the PCB is fixed to the front cover by 5 plastic snippets: Two at top and three at bottom. You must to cut them with a cutter to get off the PCB.When I opened the case, this is what I found:
The meter is based around an AT89C4051 microcontroller running at 3.5795 MHz.. There is a switching power supply to get the supply for the microntroller and an oscillator for the HV (around 400 volts) used by the tube. And, as you can see now, there is no doubt: The tube used is a CБM20-1:
The problem
Point C is on a small piece of cooper foil.
B is connected to the rectifier diode, and C is connected to "ground", on the cooper foil.
Point D, is supposed to be also ground, and it's connected to the cooper foil through the track E. It's supposed that E and C are connected by means of the pressure of the transformer over the cooper foil: They are just "in touch".
Over the time, the transformer fixation softens and therefore the contact between C and E
starts to be a bad joint, making noise in the HV line, and therefore, producing extra counts.
The solution is easy: Take a small piece of wire
and make a jumper between A and D points.
No more counts with movement or vibrations!
Hi Miguel,
ReplyDeletethank you for this article. It helped me to know that opening the Radex is difficult. I succeeded in opening it.
Now I would like to connect my Arduino Uno to the Geiger Counter, but I'm to sure where I should plug my analog or digital input on the Geiger board to get the signal? the "ticks" or the "beeps" or the actual digital reading. Could you help me?
Many thanks,
G
Radex's microcontroller is a AT89C4051-24 from Atmel, so any GPIO pin can be the pulse pin. With an oscilloscope should be easy to find. It can be any pin except pin 1 (reset), 4-5 (xtal), 10 (gnd) and 20 (vcc)
DeleteMy Radex 1503+ seems to have its clock very slow. When I press the On/Off button, it starts to print QUARTA and then from the left to the right, starts to clear the LOGO. Then it emit a long lasting beeeeep. And then it switches off.
ReplyDeleteWhat can be the problem ?
The Radex 1503 (not the plus version) is powered by an Atmel AT89C4051 clocked at 3.5795 MHz. Probably yours is the same or very similar. Check the crystal oscillator and check if the CPU is clocked at the right frequency. Good luck!
DeleteThank you very much for writing the decomposition method.My Radex had a leaky battery and a stuck button. (from Japan)
ReplyDeleteTHANKS!!
ReplyDelete"The solution is easy: Take a small piece of wire and make a jumper between A and D points.
No more counts with movement or vibrations!"
That worked just as it reads above!! Jumper wire and no more crazy digitz.. or zero digits. Works like new!
Nice to see it worked for you also. Greetings
Delete