Repairing a charred/burned/broken cable on an Apple Magsafe charger

I have spoken in a previous blog post about some issues with Apple hardware design here. To briefly recap, it is of my beleif that in general, Apple hardware is very well designed. However, they often overlook functionality in favour of form, sacrificing important aspects such as durability so that "it looks nice". A good example of this is the Magsafe adapter. In a bid to improve aesthetics, Apple shortened the rubber strain-relief grommet that protects the power cable from fraying at the charger end, and the connector end to the laptop. The metal strands inside the cable gradually begin breaking from normal use until eventually, with only a few strands left carrying a large amount of current, the last few strands overheat resulting in a burning smell and the the connection breaking completely. After Apple received many complaints with regard to this problem with the original Magsafe adapter, they extended the length of the rubber on the grommet to improve the durability of the cable. However, in me experience, this wasnt enough: the cable still ends up fraying, and the hardening of the rubber in the grommet over time only aggravates the issue. They also introduces a replacement program, details of which you can find here. However, this does not cover anywhere outside of the United States.

In case you find yourself in a similar situation as I was, here is a short guide on how to repair the cable on your magsafe adapter, without having to fork out the $80 for a new one. 

First off, you will need a large pliers, a high wattage soldering iron (I used a weller 75watt), solder, some cable ties of various sizes, a drill and a small drill bit, some glue and a sharp knife. 

1. Remove the plug from the Magsafe adapter. 

Removing the plug from a Magsafe adapter

2. Apple have ultrasonically welded the two plastic shells that cover the adapter. They do this by vibrating the two halves against other at such a high rate to melt the plastic at the junction and thus sticking them together. This results in the Magsafe adapter being pretty difficult to open without making some messy cuts in opening it up. So here is a quick tip on opening them up: Flip open the cable tidy arms and insert the pliers into the gap. Then slowly and firmly open the pliers pushing the two parts of the case apart in the process.

Insert a pliers in the gap for the cable tidy 

Open the pliers, splitting the case open 

Voila! An opened magsafe adapter with very little tool marking or scratching to the plastic.

Opened Magsafe adapter

3. Now, bend some of the plastic and copper shielding back around where the cable meets the circuit board to reveal two large solder points. Make a note of where the black cable and the white cable are soldered into the board. To help you, the board should be marked "GND" near the black cable. 

Solder points for Magsafe cable. White is positive, black (GND, cable shield) is negative

4. Using a high power soldering iron, desolder the two points and gently pull the cable from the board. You may find it easier to solder the points by removing the shielding from the circuit board. I left it on here. 

Weller 75w iron

Cable successfully desoldered from Magsafe adapter

5. Taking the cable, use a sharp knife to make a cut after the break in the cable. 

Cutting the good cable from the damaged cable

The damaged part ad grommet removed from the cable

6. Now, using the pliers again, pull the old black wire, and the white wire out of the grommet.  You will be left with a hole in the grommet as shown below. 

Removing the wires from the damaged part of the cable

The grommet, with the outside insulation of the cable left

7. Now, drill a hole all the way through the grommet removing the old cable and some of the grommets plastic along the way. You should make the hole large enough to pass the cable through, as shown below. 

Drilling the outside insulation of the damaged cable from the grommet

Weaving the good cable through the now cleared hole in the grommet

8. After you have passed the cable through the grommet, it is time to prepare the cable for soldering back to the board. Using the sharp knife, remove about 20mm of rubber insulation from the cable. Further remove about 3mm of insulation from the inner white wire. Then tin the ends of both cores using the soldering iron as shown below. 

Removing some outside insulation from the good cable

"Tinning" i.e. applying solder to the exposed positive and negative cable.
 A good tip here is to twist the ends before soldering. 

9. Now, carefully solder both wires back to their respective points on the Magsafe circuit board. 

The ends of the cable correctly soldered into place
on the circuit board. 

10. Place the circuit board back into one of the plastic shells of the cover. If you have done everything correctly so far, the adapter should be able to charge your laptop as this stage. If you are comfortable testing the adapter while the cover is off, do so now. Or else continue with the guide. 

Placing the circuit board back into one of the covers

11. Using a small cable tie, wrap it around the cable as tight as you can just inside the plastic cover. This is done so that the cable cannot be accidentally pulled out of the adapter during use. 

Adding a cable tie to the good cable

12. Run the plastic grommet down the cable back into position in the plastic shell.

Placing the grommet back into the shell

13. Using some glue, make a small bead all around the perimeter of the shell. Use the glue sparingly, but cover all the edges where both halves meet. 

Adding glue to the edge of the shell

14. Press the second half of the plastic shell back onto the Magsafe adapter. Wriggle the two halves to get them into place properly, and then firmly press the two halves back together. 

Squeese the two halves together to make sure that the glue spreads. 

15. Using some large cable ties, wrap them around the Magsafe adapter and tighten them using a pliers. You will need the two halves to be very tight together as the glue dries, or else the two cable tidy arms can fall out.

Adding cable ties around the adapter to make sure that they glue together properly.

16. When the glue has dried, remove the cable ties. You should be left with a working adapter that hardly looks like it was opened at all!

The finished, now working, adapter. 

Unfortunately I accidently ripped some of the rubber off the grommet as I was drilling through it, so go easy on that drilling! I have also repaired a few adapters where the cable has broken and burnt on the connector end. This is a slightly more difficult repair, but I can make a guide if requested.  

Repairing an iPad 2 that wont charge

On general, I have found any Apple hardware that I have used as pretty robust little things. I am notorious for not taking care of my stuff: my iPhone is kept in the same pocket as my car keys and is coverless, my iPad is thrown in my schoolbag with my charger and bottles of drinks, and my macbook, being my pride and joy, has taken more knocks than Rihanna. In general, I dont believe that I should have to modify these devices with protective covers, or adjust my ways by changing how I transport them. To me, that would be a consequence of bad design of the product. This is one of the reasons I enjoy Apple devices as they are normally pretty robust to the way I use them.

However, every now and again one of them breaks or malfunctions due to the way that I use them. In this case, my iPad. I do a lot of programming on my iPad. In fact, it is the only way that my iPad gets used: It is continuously plugged into my laptop for developing apps with Xcode. As such, the battery is nearly always kept at 100% charge and is never power cycled. This leads to a problem, which (in my opinion) is caused by the following:

Back in the NiCd days of batteries, which were used in everything rom laptops telephone and power tools, batteries had to be charged fully, then drained fully before the next charging to give the batteries a long life. If you did not do this, they suffered from what was called a "memory effect" where crystals would grow on the anode and result in a diminished capacity of the batteries.

The li-ion batteries of today do away with this memory effect. No longer can these crystals grow to shorten the lifespan from intermittent charging. The batteries can be pretty much charged when and for as long as you like without a significant shortening of their lifespan. Another battery technology that was introduced around the same time was battery management circuitry. These little chips sit in the battery packs and record how much charge goes into the battery during charging, and how much charge goes out of the battery while it is in use. This is useful, as when the chip detects that the battery is taking in no more current while it is in charge, it knows that the battery has reached "100%" charge. Similarly  when the battery cannot produce any more current during use and the voltage drops, it has reached "0%" charge. By keeping a running tally of how much current has left the battery since the last charge, the battery can report to the device how much charge is left in the battery. As such, this technology enables the device to inform you pretty accurately of what percentage charge is left on your device.

The battery management circuitry can also do some other neat tricks such as faster charging times. By knowing that the battery is near 0% charge, it knows that it can take a large amount of current in a short time to take it close to the 90% level, and then reduce the current to "trickle charge" it closer to the %100 mark. This lowers the charging time of the battery while keeping the battery safe from overheating.

However, this technology is not without its flaws. It can re-introduce a similar problem to the Ni-Cd "memory effect". When the battery management's running tally of the battery charge becomes out of sync with the actual charge that the battery, it can lead to some strange results. It can refuse to charge the battery, thinking that the battery is at full capacity already, when the battery is not. This can happen when it cannot measure the complete discharge or charge current that the battery can take. This can be caused by the device being left on charge for long periods of time, keeping the battery is at 100% indefinitely.

This is what happened to my iPad. On one or two occasions it would indicate a certain charge level, say for example "4%". No type of charger would bring it past "4%". All I could do was unplug it and watch the level drop as I used it. No matter if the level was at 3% or 2% or 1%, plugging in the charger would say "Charging", but the percentage level would not increase.

To repair this, I assumed that I would have to let the battery drain itself completely. COMPLETELY. Not at the "you have 10% battery left" level, and not at the "red battery warning symbol" level (see first image). This iPad had to be drained so much that it would be unresponsive when I clicked on the home button or the power on/off button.  This had to be done so that the battery management circuit would know for sure that there was 0% charge left in the battery by the large drop in voltage.

So I had three options. One was to leave the iPad in a drawer for a few days until it drained itself. However, this was not possible as I neeed it for work the next morning. The other option was to open the iPad and drain the battery directly using a suitable load. However, ipads are very difficult to open without damaging the glass display. The final option was to keep pressing the power button so that the screen would light up and display the red battery symbol, and keep doing this until the ipad hadn't enough power to do it anymore.

Specs of motor from microwave oven

Motor from microwave oven

Now, I could either keep pressing the on/off button myself and go mad from the boredom (this could take hours), or I could come up with an automatic way. Choosing the latter, I needed a motor that rotated at a slow enough rate to press the power button at 5 -10 second intervals.

I broke apart an old microwave oven and salvaged the 220v motor that rotates the glass plate around inside. Taking the necessary safety precautions, I soldered a lead and a plug to the motor and insulated the contacts it using some polymorph plastic. Using copious amounts of insulating tape, I mounted the motor just above the power switch in such a way that the teeth of the small gear on the motor would press and depress the power button as it rotated around. Once I had it taped in the correct position, I left the ipad and the motor running overnight. You can see a video of the iPad and motor in action here. Note that I also taped down the home key with some insulating tape and a small coin, hopping that this would also aid the discharging process.

The microwave oven motor in
place above the power on/off switch

When I picked up the iPad in the morning, the iPad was as dead as a dodo. No amount of clicking the home key or the power on/off key would wake it. I plugged the ipad into the official charger and sure enough, about 30min later, the charging symbol came up on the screen. Then the iPad woke, and the charging battery percentage began to climb! I was delighted. To make sure that everything was working as it should, i put the iPad through a few charge cycles before using it again as normal.

Just to note, Apple warn you on their website to discharge your iPad and charge it fully at least once a month. I will be taking heed of this warning in future.

The motor successfully turning the iPad on and off continuously.