These calipers have been a pain since I bought them. They work well enough, when they're working, but that doesn't happen very often.
Either they won't turn on, or they turn on for a minute and turn off and won't come back on. The display grays out. I'll pull the battery and refit it. Sometimes that works for one measurement, sometimes can't get it going at all. I've tried bending out the copper connectors and wedging the battery in tight with a bit of toothpick, but no, it's still sporadic if it works at all.
I almost tossed them, but decided to operate instead.
Here's the guts. Copper neg. pad in center, positive contact at the side, plastic cover that tightens down and holds the battery in place.
I put some artic silver epoxy on the inside of the plastic cover so I could glue down a piece of copper braid.
Next I soldered a small spring to the braid. I used solder paste so I wouldn't melt the plastic with high heat. The 26AWG wire is actually bypassing to the top of the spring. The other end is soldered onto the positive contact.
Look at that! It's now working perfectly with no hassles at all. And to think I almost tossed it.
Nice fix. Sorry to take this off subject, but I just noticed you both (Ouchyfoot/bugsy) both have mini-subs or something like that as your avatars. What’s the deal with that?
Haha! I didn’t even notice. My eyes aren’t that good and all I can see of bugsy’s is a green shape. I’m a child of the sixties, so the Beatles were my awakening at a young age. I have a yellow submarine lunch pail too.
Often it is enough to Add a small piece of cardboard Inside the battery compartment to Add a bit more pressure. On slide in batteries I usually use some small strips of painters tape to prevent falling of.
I’ve found that with anything battery operated, half of the failures come from bad battery contacts, failed switches, and cold/broken solder connections in that order. Glad you got it fixed. Now to try to find my old black HF digi caliper which never worked and see if I can revive it as easily. It’s around here somewhere (meaning I might find it next year!)
I had both manual (SS) and electronic calipers - the manual steel variant is still working. the digital one died a long time ago and wasn’t that accurate to begin with.
