I need some advice. Heres the story. A year ago I had an STK convergence amp fail and I soldered on a new one. Several months later I lost blue convergence again so I ordered another amp. I removed the entire card that holds the 2 stk amps from the tv but I couldnt remember if it was blue or red I needed to replace so I plugged the card back in to test real quick. Well, strange thing now its working fine. When I plugged the ground cable in I got a audible electric discharge (yes the tv was unplugged).
So what could that have been? A loose connection maybe? When I replaced the stk amp originally I never put any heat sink goop on there. Would it be wise to do that before using the tv?
Is it possible for an amp to fail and come back to life?
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A loose connection sounds possible from your description. I would check the connections to the card and also for bad solder joints on the entire card.
In my opinion, thermal heat sink compound is a MUST. Its job is to create a way to conduct the heat away from the STK as efficiently as possible. Without the compound, hot spots will develop at the STK-to-heatsink interface and overstress the STK and cause a premature failure.
Integrated circuits like an STK generally fail hard and do not recover. However, intermittent failures can and do occur. Some are temperature related. For instance, the device may work ok cold when power is first applied, then after it warms up it will fail.
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yes you need to use heat sink compound. and use plenty of it. it has the ability to remove heat away from the electronic components to the heat sink. that could be why the stk failed. and yes sometimes components will work, and then quit. it sounds like yours overheated. i would replace all stk's and use a liberal amount of compound. also it could have had a bad connection of some sort.
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Well I thought it was working but after the tv warmed up the Red convergence went wacky again. So I replaced the STK and put thermal coumpound on both of them. It seems ok now. Ill post back if something goes wrong.
Thanks.
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