question

@Terry R

Two words - legal liability. from several facets.

Because safety. Often you are dealing with high current DC stuff and it is only a little bit incredibly dangerous, as DC has no chill. To be honest the stupid that is around these days, not a good idea for most to self repair. That being said of you are confident in your ability feel free to do so.

In the case of mppts if you followed procedure, what would destroy them?..... other than lightening? That's right the customer/installer. If it went to landfill (most of the time it is it was someone not being careful, and should now be trusted to repair as well?), own some of the blame.

With the warranty offered by Victron, it is usually not necessary to 'make a plan' as an end user. I have seen and been in a repair department no they do not landfill willy nilly with the product that you return. And some of it is by lightening - definitely no self repair there). Component repair is possible for the skilled individual and some service centers have the people who can.

Because Warranty. If you repaired the item who then carries the warranty ?- does that mean you still are entitled to the origional five year warranty? On what is possibly a bad/poorly made repair in any case? Just because a person owns a solder station does not mean they know what they are doing.

The other issue is the copy cat people out there stealing the product.... I have seen so many (clones of Victron right down to the packaging colors and all) bit unfair for a company who have researched, developed and produced an amazing product. (By the way copied right down to the elastomeric compound).

That being said their new product as Shaneyake mentioned has moved away from that.

Dear all, this note is just to say that your advice is duly noted, we're well aware of this, and keen to improve.

A few words with my view on it: designing a robust and reliable product is a challenge, next, one that is not only that but also competitive, already increases the bar.

And then the many other design goals each increase the bar further: suitability for mass production, easy to install physically, intuitive in use, water-proof or at least water resistant, vibration resistant, attractive enclosure design, safe failure modes, as much Watts conversion power per dollar as possible, and so forth and so forth: each of those further complexifies the design process and increases the bar.

As does the design goal being discussed: making a product that is field repairable or at the very least field inspectable. And indeed its one that is sometimes skipped / or accepted to be excluded: as can be seen in the SmartShunt electronics.

For the MPPT 75/15 mentioned above, the reason to pot it with resin is primarily cooling: the glue or potting material helps transport the heat from the place where its generated to a larger surface. As does the sand. Allowing to get the max number of Watts out of the converter.

The SmartShunt is often mounted in places where water can be an issue, and as such we want it resistant to that as much as possible. For which often potting comes out as the best solution. Certainly most robustt. Also, practically, and despite that nobody wants to fill landfills further, in reality almost no-one repairs their SmartShunt mostly since its not economically viable, requires specialty equipment - very small SMD components, and so forth. Making a SmartShunt that doesn't fail due to water ingress "could" be more effective in preventing landfill than making a repairable one while doing concessions on water resistibility. Note that I say "could"; I don't know and I'm just saying this to make clear that its not a simple two option situation.

Another example: for a larger product, to be repairable with spare parts, one would prefer that it consists of multiple individual PCBAs, each exchangable. However, that means connectors, and when it comes to causes for failure, connectors/connections, especially multi-pin connections between PCBAs, are probably the number one cause; being lonely at the top. So, from the point of view of reliability, having it all on one large PCBA certainly is attractive.

And of course most of above is all up for discussion, a large gray area, there will be solutions and ideas for all.

I'll try to reading any possible further replies on this, but do note that I don't expect to be able to keep replying and/or engaging in a long discussion. There is only so many typing hours in a day, unfortunately!

So again, thank you - well appreciated.

All the best, Matthijs Vader / Victron.