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Apple really dropped the ball on the design of this charger. The wimpy wire used in the design is simply to weak to take any real stress, coiling, and yanks. Eventually the rubber sheath separates from the MagSafe connector or the Power-brick and the wire begin to fray or short, sometimes affecting charging and sometimes smoldering. If you use the tabs that fold out and allow you to wrap the cord around the brick you are probably reducing the life of you charger.
You may want to take your charger to apple straight away and see if they will replace this charger. I would cite reviews on the apple store website if they do not replace yours. If they do not replace it then start working on this instructable. Apple knows about this problem, but they have done noting to remedy it. This instructable is to provide hope for people who must forgo grocery shopping this week if they plan to buy a new charger. You can do it! Apple you should be ashamed of yourself....... show your loyal customers some mercy. You must be making a killing on these chargers.
In this Instructable I will cover opening the power brick case via brute force.
Preparing the Magsafe connector for soldering/ soldering.
Preparing the Power brick for soldering/ soldering.
Skills Required:
-Adventurous case cracking
-Exacto surgery
-Hot glue sculpting
-Soldering wires
Materials necessary:
1. Pliers
2. Screwdriver
3. Exacto Knife
(Skilled use of a dremel could save you a lot of time too!)
4. Electrical Tape
5. Soldering Iron
6. Hot glue gun
7. Love for going where you shouldn't.
You may want to take your charger to apple straight away and see if they will replace this charger. I would cite reviews on the apple store website if they do not replace yours. If they do not replace it then start working on this instructable. Apple knows about this problem, but they have done noting to remedy it. This instructable is to provide hope for people who must forgo grocery shopping this week if they plan to buy a new charger. You can do it! Apple you should be ashamed of yourself....... show your loyal customers some mercy. You must be making a killing on these chargers.
In this Instructable I will cover opening the power brick case via brute force.
Preparing the Magsafe connector for soldering/ soldering.
Preparing the Power brick for soldering/ soldering.
Skills Required:
-Adventurous case cracking
-Exacto surgery
-Hot glue sculpting
-Soldering wires
Materials necessary:
1. Pliers
2. Screwdriver
3. Exacto Knife
(Skilled use of a dremel could save you a lot of time too!)
4. Electrical Tape
5. Soldering Iron
6. Hot glue gun
7. Love for going where you shouldn't.
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Signing UpStep 1Quick Work - Disassembly of Magsafe Connection
The MagSafe connector was already frayed free of the wire on my charger. But I did not have near enough wire to solder back onto. The aesthetically pleasing body of the connector needs to come off.
Out come the pliers (Slide lock in my case) to crush it off. Be careful not to damage the magnetic metal contact up front. We will still need to dig into this further to expose enough wire to solder to.
Out come the pliers (Slide lock in my case) to crush it off. Be careful not to damage the magnetic metal contact up front. We will still need to dig into this further to expose enough wire to solder to.
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I then used a scalpel (exacto knife) to carefully cut the translucent blob off to expose the internal circuit board to make soldering easier. This was done with a single cut to one of the short sides and then simply peel it off.
Once I unsoldered and soldered the wires back on the plastic housing (along with the rubber boot) just clicked back into place. However, i could not get the translucent blob back on.
using hotglue to make a new casing is so helpful. I was thinking also, about moldable putty, and some fancy sculpting just for fun.
Would silicone sealant work as an electrical insulator?
Silicon sealant spread thin is too flexible to really provide any real strain relief, plus forming it is quite difficult. A layer of 1/4 inch bead thickness might work, but as I said forming it would be a pain. But if you do have some around you could possibly get some inside a large piece of heat shrink tubing, it would have to be quite large diameter to allow for 1/4" of silicon and then shrink around it....but that might work. The main issue with silicon or caulk is that unless you can buy a small packet resealing a tube only works sometimes, so it is kind of wasteful...and messy. If you are going to use heat shrink anyways, might as wel just splint that with some scrap wire or some such material and be done with it.
I like the way it looks, on the whole-- reminds me of william gibsone novels.
Thanks for the inspiration to break the corporate seal.
Cheers.
If you DO decide to open the charger case, then assuming that you want to be able to reassemble it and have it work and be safe when you're done, there are some things you DO NOT want to do when opening the case. One of them is to destroy any or the plastic case around the power plug socket. Unfortunately, that's just what the big picture above does. That's NOT the place to start to open the case. Here are some alternatives:
1) Open the two flip-up doors, around which you wrap the low voltage wire, and then stick a pair of needle-nose pliers in the opening and use them to pry the two halves apart.
2) take a FINE saw (a jeweler's saw blade, a really fine hack saw, or a dremel rotary saw) and saw a very shallow distance (no more than 1/16th of an inch or 2 mm) along the plastic seam between the two halves of the case, along the top and bottom edges of the case (as shown in the picture above). Those are the edges that are glued together.
3) Take a very sharp wood chisel (1/2 or 1 inch wide), and place it along the top seam, and hit it twice with a hammer, then move it down and repeat. Do this along the top and bottom.
So there was no way I was gonna buy another stupid macbook charger. My first one frayed like this so I bought a second...which also frayed. I'm glad I was able to fix this.
Shame shame, Apple. Why do you make crappy chargers?!
this is a well-done instructables though my only problem now is I have three chargers for a iBook with the dreaded video chip problem and now all it does is sit on my desk as my personal Web server with three power cords On the side for in case of emergency.
oh PS by the way the core problem goes back to the iBook chargers, because most of my failures were with the cabling separating and fraying to the point where it wouldn't be connecting any more while the main positive cable was still in relatively good shape. and at least one incident was with the breaking of the tip which is a 2.5 mm phone plug in a metal shield and are not that easy to come by but the good news is that I had one from a previous adapter that completely fried ( mysteriously stopped working a few days later ) for some reason involving a cat in a poll a few miles down the road and a short power outage.
But may when removing the rubber that is used to hold the extra bit of wire instead of doing soldering iron melting and exacto surgery to remove it simply use pliers or cut it slightly down the side and can remove it like the hard outer cover even easier then tthe outer cover,
worth taking the time in the end..Save 100+
good instructable but i don't think i could deal with that glommed up charger hanging off my computer.
More importantly even with a better made charger with more robust strain relief, this type of damage occurs anyway, due to cord winding (though it is exacerbated by the square form of the adaptor head.) One should never wrap ANY length of cable over and over again. This puts significant, repeated stress on one side of cable, and each coil stretches the one side longer and longer as it travels the outside diameter of the circle, causing it to eventually fail. This is especially common with audio patch cables. Instead, one should "counter wrap." First wrap one coil overhand, so the free cable lies on top of the loops, then wrap the next coil underhand, so the free end comes out from under the previous coils. This forms a "mobius stip" that causes the strained side to reverse every coil. If one insists on using the fold out winding wings on the charger, one can arrive at the same effect by making a figure 8 after every coil, thus reversing the direction.
To increase the longevity of the cable, a little hot glue at both ends acts as an additional strain relief.
A tip on breaking into the power brick. Use a knife to cut along the seam. Be careful to not go too deep or you'll cut into the components. If you're cautious, you can cut along the entire seam, gently prying the case apart along the way. This way is actually easier then just prying the case apart and you'll have two clean case sides for reassembly. I ended up just taping mine back together, but you could easily glue the case back together and you'd hardly notice that it was ever opened.