Thread: Jet Air Filter & Geckos - SE Qld

Hope this is not too long a story but it may come in handy to someone.......Last month my Jet AFS 1000B Air Filter which is hanging from the workshop ceiling stopped working so I got it down last week to have a look. Fuse was not tripped...so I removed the control panel off the front, unplugged it and removed the fan & motor....not too much to these machines.

I had read that the capacitors can fail suddenly so located the run capacitor on the motor and it looked OK so I took the motor & control board to an electrician across the road. He removed the Circuit Board from the front panel and we saw what we thought was the insides of the Start Capacitor all over the end of the capacitor and onto the PCB so the sparky said "There's the prob...the Caps f&$#*d." I removed the capacitor and thought I just had to find a replacement for a couple of $ at Jaycar Electronics. Nope...Jaycar didn't have any so back to the sparky to see if he knew where I could source one. While there , he tested the capacitor.....he charged it with 600volts and crossed the terminals (all safely as he knew what he was doing)..BANG..gave off a good spark. "Nope" he says "It's not the Cap".

It then dawned on me...what we mistook as the Capacitor innards was actually GECKO POO , one of the little bastards had easily got in though the outflow grill and shat over the circuit board and shorted it out. I cleaned off the board and tested the printed circuit for continuity and that was fine BUT there were a couple of components that didn't want to give me a reading. As I am not an electronics buff, I decided to try and source another board. Thinking I may have to have it shipped from the US but I thought I might be hoping for too much when I rang Gregory's Machinery as they had Jet machines and were only 10 mins from me.

Low and behold...they had 5 spare boards in stock ($75 each)..I drove over and picked one up on Friday morning, installed it this morning..AND AWAY SHE PURRED...BRILLIANT.

So while I had the machine on the workbench I decided to try and Gecko proof the circuit board. See Pics below.....

I made a 3 sided box which was the same height as the inside of the Air Filter. ..Drilled 3 large holes as I was not sure if the PCB generated any large amounts of heat then stapled fly screen over the holes to stop the Geckos. small hole on front edge of the side just big enough to put the wires through to the motor, then fixed the box with a couple of screws in the side and a couple of longer ones through the front which goes into the end grain of the timber (I used 9mm ply).

Hope this does the trick and if you have any Geckos in your shed, you may want to do some preventative pest proofing before your board gets shorted by any Geckos crapping inside your machines.