Thread: Broken prop help

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I am in need of a Halloween electronic genius. I purchased two of these skulls.

http://www.shindigz.com/party/Animat...cary-Skull.cfm

One works and one does not. They are sold out so replacing it is not an option. It lights up fine. Sometimes the mouth moves and sometimes it doesn't. No sound whatsoever. I would like to repair this if I can. I can even ship it to a genius if you can repair it and send it back. Before I crack this puppy open I want to see if anyone has had any positive experiences with these props.

No experience with that specific item, but I would start by swapping out the batteries with the ones in the unit that works. If that does not work, I would start reflowing and probably adding solder to the solder joints for the speaker and the mouth motor/servo. Also inspect the board for any cold solder joints and reflow those as well.

I just had an old-style Talking Boris stop moving the mouth, so I've got to open him up.
You might just open your skull and see if something looks broken or out of place. Or even a small broken belt?

Okay. See if this makes sense, because I have zero experience working with this type of stuff. I cracked open his skull. Well, actually I removed four little screws. Anyways, one of the yellow wires running to the speaker was broken. So I am thinking that if I reattach it everything will work good as new. You may ask how I came to that conclusion. Elementary my dear. When I manually held the broken yellow wire in it's proper place and tested the skull, it worked perfectly fine. So, does everyone or anyone agree with me that the servo that operates the jaw, works off the sound coming from the speaker? Does that make sense?

they may be powered from the same place...as in the wire goes from the power supply to the lights and then branches off to the sound board and servo...but yes, if you reattach the wire and it works just fine....then I bet you dollars to donuts that that was your problem. Just make sure that when you reattach it you run the wire in a manner that it won't get severed again when old boris is spittin his yarn.

dK