- you can click on ~all pics for higher resolution pics
- 5 pics are animated GIF's and work best in Chrome, Internet Explorer, not Firefox; reload in new browser window
- for easy back reference you can find this post under http://tinyurl.com/mc3k-new
This post with pics from various dates and sources should be instructive and informative to both present owners including early adopters and prospective buyers and shoppers. The June-production version —the first time that production units were shipped to dealers with 1.11 firmware— marks the final product revision version for a long time to come, so lemme take the opportunity to document the changes since
before early market release Nov-2015. In particular i'll be comparing
(18) changes from my engineering sample from that time to today's final mass production version.
Symbols on buttons. I continue to prefer my textured buttons with recessed symbols/numbers and luckily i have 1 or 2 sets from prototypes for my own enjoyment and sky ppl prefer them too, which is why the latest sky hobby charger models come with black textured buttons!, but a major distributor now decided for the white labeled buttons for good, in accordance with our cpf poll last year. It's settled then, we're moving on. Textured or labeled? It was mostly a matter of preference anyway, not an essential question.
Sliders/rails/metal contacts. On all prototypes and my Nov-unit these three elements did not look super nice, similar to brass and copper flashlights some surface areas looked kinda tarnished (oxidization?). All production units should have the new
(1) shiny silvery coating on the three elements which makes them also easier to clean. There is also
(2) no more grease/lube applied on the rails; it was to reduce friction between slider feet and rail but added electrical resistance to the connection and also was not necessary. Check with an AAA flashlight from above if you can see scratch marks/traces on the rails inflicted by the slider feet tips; well, there shouldn't be any. Modders could go ahead and round off the slider feet tips if they feel like it, or apply expensive electrically conductive lubricants like DeoxIT Gold instead. That's it, no further changes [sic].
BattTemp slot sensors. Since late spring sky
applies (3) thermal paste on the tip of the sensors, then clicks the
metal stripes into place such that the two elements are connected through a secured thermal path. Not an easy thing to do without creating a mess, try it haha!
before, without sensors:
with sensors and thermal paste yuck:
after. not too messy hehe:
LCD screen. At some point the charger got a
(4) different LCD screen make. One can tell from the PCB color from behind, before it was
yellow, now it is green:
The "tint" of the screen differs and maybe things look better now, the contrast or sharpness, but only maybe. That difference in viewing experience is ever so slight that i don't care. I've tried to capture the difference in photo, the left one is the Nov-sample, the right one the Jun-unit. On the pics you can also see the color difference between the two sets of sliders, shiny silvery coating to the right and erh tarnish to the left:
still image:
animated gif, 6 frames:
Upper plastic case. The most important and essential change, and unfortunately not until the June-production, which is why i am posting now! Since you already had a glimpse at the upper case viewed from below, let's check its changes in detail. First of all, sky finally
(5) changed the supplier of the ABS plastic material after firing the original supplier and testing several others, so we got much
(6) better plastic material quality. Sky also revised and extended the plastic material testing procedures. This i cannot show in pic, i mean how. Secondly, the CAD engineer designed a
(7) reinforced pin structure which looks, feels and proves far robuster than the original structural design. Nobody should be ever able again to complain about failing plastic material (breaking pins, crumbling holes):
bulk comparison:
let's get closer:
close enough:
In the above pics the screw plastic posts, the diameter of the posts, are
(8) chunkier screw plastic posts than in the
v1.3 hardware (v1.3 PCB has only Ø5.5mm PCB holes, the v1.5 PCB got Ø6.5mm PCB holes!); so with the new plastic material quality crumbling or material failure of the screw plastic posts won't happen anymore! On a related note, imho they should have gone after
metal threaded inserts in the first place. But name me any sub-100$ consumer charger with threaded inserts. Rare as squirrels in winter! Anyway the new upper plastic case is so essential and important that i
pointed at it 2 weeks ago with a link to Gearbest who sells the upper plastic case as spare part for a limited period. Okay. Moving on.
Bottom plastic case. The bottom case was a hot topic on the forums early on. Originally the ventilation fans were blowing downwards, thus holding the rising internal hot air back inside the charger ouch. The fan had to blow upwards, no discussion! It took time for sky to revise the assembly for the old bottom case which was still in inventory and to approve and produce the
revised bottom case. What follows is a series of 19 pics from Old and New World, some of which redundant, so let's try to wade through them rather quickly:
After opening the charger, when you can read the fan label, then the fan blows in the correct direction, namely upwards, towards the sky. My Nov-sample had the fan blowing upwards and i was curious to check how the fan was installed in place. Looks lopsided to me. The left bracket clips correctly but something's off with the right side:
The right bracket does not clip correctly, i see:
Maybe it is because there is something stuck underneath it, see the corner to the left:
No, it wasn't that. But let's clean the spot, remove the glue residue, and have a good look at the old place which was designed for a downward blowing fan:
An upward blowing fan needs to have 0.7-1.3mm clearance at the back, otherwise the fan rotor eventually scratches along the bottom case and produces extra noise. In the old bottom case we can create clearance by either padding the socket or the fan, you choose:
With the padding the fan would sit higher than the brackets could clip. That's the reason why the fan was installed lopsided. My solution back then was to shave material off the fan edges with a file. However filing is not clean enough a working for our purpose:
Taking material off the edge, chamfering/beveling, has to be done cleaner than these fringed chamfers:
So i tried chamfering again with this fan sample:
Veery easy job with a utility knife, box cutter:
A nice close-up of the fan with the filed fringed chamfers, not so good:
And here the resulting installation of the fan with the knife-cut chamfers, pretty good:
The following pictures highlight the changes as seen with the new bottom case. No need for padding or similar because the new base has
(9) integrated spacers at the four corners of 0.7mm height:
The brackets are
(10) supported at the base which reduces the risk of breaking brackets when modders replace the fan:
The brackets are
(11) longer, so that they clip perfectly. No more lopsided installations:
Looking good:
June-production, beautiful:
Of course, this is too made out of the
new plastic material quality like the new upper plastic case:
And finally the case has an
(12) recessed area for the label sticker:
Hmm, not bad. Me likey:
PCB / Electronics. The electronics did not change since January production. After market release the only electronics change on the PCB was the
(13) addition of FCC/CE/RoHS certification. The PCB versions and dates are as follows:
- 2015-07-07 : v1.3 (reviewed by HKJ, also my Nov-sample! screw holes Ø5mm)
- 2015-07-07 : v1.4 (electronics unchanged; only change is the diameter of the screw holes, now Ø6.5mm for beefier screw posts)
- 2016-01-13 : v1.5 (final version with approved FCC/CE/RoHS certification; SETUP was showing "1.4" in 1.03 firmware, although the PCB is indeed v1.5, you can check; in 1.11 firmware, SETUP shows "1.4+" for both 1.3, 1.4, and 1.5 PCB versions, ask me why lol)
FYI please also read my post #3613 where i wrote more about the versioning topic!!
The
SysTemp cooler sensor is fixed with thermal
(14) industrial glue to the cooler. On my custom June-production unit, my cooler has vertical fins for my personal enjoyment and post-testing lol:
The charger is and always has been
Four-Terminal Sensing-ready, electronics expert can tell:
Am not sure if you can see it, the PCB screw holes do have
(15) bigger diameter than in
v1.3 hardware, so there won't be any failing at the screw plastic posts anymore because the plastic posts themselves got chunkier too as mentioned earlier:
Original electronic design works great, so no changes here:
Last and also least there is more about versions of dis and dad. The physical charger has a PCB version (which is what the
SETUP shows as "
HW Version:" on the LCD screen), a firmware version (
(16) v1.11 since June-production, or also downloadable as updater.exe), a Bluetooth module firmware version (oh well
), and a bootloader version installed on the
ROM. My Nov-sample has v1.1 bootloader version, which you can see during the v1.11 firmware upgrading process (
animated gif, no looping):
I don't know when
(17) v1.4 bootloader version was introduced in the production, sometime earlier this year I guess. It's what my Jun-unit came with (
animated gif, no looping):
sky reserves the right to upgrade the bootloader version and the Bluetooth module firmware version without further notice. I am saying this because sky does not provide any details, specifics, or changes concerning these two. We only know, since we can see, that a bootloader version newer than v1.1 is responsible for the
blinking SNB's during the firmware upgrading process. Instruction manual was updated to
(18) v1.10 English manual t/a the new v1.11 firmware devices (full translations into French, geman, Japanese, Chinese exist, from your localized dealer). And the mobile Bluetooth was updated to
v3.0 Android app version.
Next firmware updates will mostly cover random minor bug fixes which have been reported by end users to the awareness of the maker, and further back and forth support of DEX. sky does fixing of reproducible bugs fast, that's how the firmware version number climbed up from v1.03 and on and on. Hope you guys don't get tired of using the charger and reporting bugs and strong ideas.
In a couple of weeks we'll see an updated DEX version (DataExplorer) with extended mc3k support, i am very looking forward to the new release since i know yes which new functionality will be added. hehe
:devil:
