I'd imagine that wire you found that seemed to go nowhere would have been part of an alarm system looking for a break in the loop. A hotel would have used something like this to know if someone stole the tv back in the day.
next time you do a recap, could you mention the soldering iron, and hot air temps in F and C, also the air speed used. Maybe the size of the iron tip, and air diameter. These are small details no one ever seems to mention with these recap videos.
Many thanks, happy holidays!! You are one of the better vintage computer video persons to add things like this. You very often do it 'off offhandedly' while you work. Please keep doing this! I find most of these low level comments the most helpful. Again many thanks!!!! KL@@Epictronics1
You've quickly become my new favourite vintage repair RUclipsr - your camera work, attention to detail, and descriptions on HOW you make these repairs are at the perfect pace for me to enjoy and remain engaged. I'm learning a lot from you! Thank you! You've earned a rare "bell" from me, one of a select few across all my interests.
So ive worked on a dozen CC analog boards and here are the two most common problems with them: 1) the solder joints are absolutely atrocious and you need to basically go over that entire board. Dont try and eyeball it, just resolder it. trust me... and 2) the harness cable that goes from the front of the board to the middle which is the one you have to unplug to remove the shield... goes bad and can cause sync issues as well as color shifting. also the HDD has rubber bumpers in there that turn to goo. the spin up/down is caused by the actuator being stuck to the bumper. Unfortunately with that model Quantum, the bumper is UNDER the platter and cannot be gotten to unless you remove the platter and head stack. Which, isnt possible on multiplatter drives without a special removal tool.
Thanks, that's very useful. I'll reflow all the solder joints, and check/replace? the cable. I've been looking for a reason to remove and replace the platters on a hard drive, i'll give it a try since this HDD is dead anyway. Cheers
+1 I think Adrian's Digital Basement dealt with a similar issue on a non Color Classic where the solder joints for the neckboard connector all broke. If that doesn't work, considering the picture got super bright with retrace lines, I'd check the grid bias (brightness) circuit as well. The closer it is to ground, the brighter the picture is
I must be the third person to say the random wire is a for a theft alarm. But I'll go further and point out that is is a _very_ primitive alarm. It's easy enough for a thief to nick the wires and twist them together which would bypass this alarm. Most alarm loops have a resistor at the end so shorts as well as opens can be detected.
Those Quantum ProDrives commonly have this behavior, which is caused by rubber bumpers inside the hard drive turning into goo. The bumpers are there to dampen the head mechanism when hitting either end of the disk, so the head mechanism tends to get stuck, which the hard drive tries to unstick while spinning up and down, eventually giving up.
[I am a US based repair shop] I do a ton of Mac recapping. My process is remove caps, clean pads, ultrasonic, add caps. I sometimes ultrasonic the analog board on classics. I’ve done so many I’ve lost track.
I’d start with the caps, the cc is a smps like the classic. Also, they are notorious for bad solder joints. Especially the pots and what not near the flyback area.
Yep, that's what I do for other circuits too, and if you (the viewer) are reading this and you are thinking of any funny business and try to just twist without pressing down or twist while lifting up, good luck repairing the boards. You're guaranteed to destroy at least 1 pad pair.
I do the same since low melt solder is not readily available from where I'm from and I have never damaged any traces using the push down twist method. Before learning about that method, I sadly destroyed many traces trying to unsolder the caps.
I have a theory about the random cable. Maybe it was for security. It could been connected to an alarm so if the cable was cut it would go open circuit and trigger an alarm.
My Color [sic] Classic II had some really bad corrosion, way worse than my SE/30, but I replaced the caps in both with ceramics and that worked just fine. The battery holder wasn't a problem, since I removed it to replace it with a cr2032 holder. The floppy drives in both machines were also not reading disks, but they both came back to life after a good cleaning and re-lubrication. Even the eject gears were still working, but I bought replacements anyway since I figure it's only a matter of time.
I always go with top tier brand caps like Nichicon, Rubycon, or Panasonic and preferably low ESR, high temp, long life ones at that for electrolytic caps. They're unlikely to leak even when they do fail after 30+ years since they're well made. Not to mention they have small tolerances which means the caps are usually very close to advertised ratings. I'd never go with a brand I've never heard of. It's still cheaper than switching to ceramics often times.
that tripping kinda bother me it does remind me of moss chip and there one attached to heatsink on end of video i recomment using voltage meter check voltage and see which one is tripping out 27:00 i like that ideas and i done that few time on few other motherbored because dont want pcb melted and causing short and love that you pull them away from pcb awesome jobs epictronics love it
Nice Macs! I like the one with the Trinitron monitor! Difficult to judge from here but it looked like the HV stopped for a moment. Do you hear anything like static noise? It might be a bad flyback, I hope not of course. When it comes to thermal cameras, they normally struggle with reflective surfaces. Those glass diodes might be difficult to read. And thanks for not yanking the caps off the board. I've tried the "plier" method yesterday on a board I was working on and I ended up with a ripped pad! Fair enough it was a large capacitor but that's enough for me to say "no thanks" :) Thanks for the video!
Thanks Tony! I'll keep that in mind when I check the temperature of reflective parts. The CC came to me from what I think was the original owner. Aside from some minor yellowing, the Mac seemed pretty much unused. That leads me to believe the flyback is ok! There is no static noice :) The Mac worked perfectly fine for about five hours after I made the video. After a cold boot the next day it's bad again. Next step is to reflow the analog board I think.
How much current is going through the diodes? You know the voltage drop is .72V, so you can calculate how many watts are being dissipated. Check that the diodes are rated for the current.
Looks like you replaced those power diodes with generic signal diodes (like a 1N4148). Those are not a great choice for power supply applications. It's pretty common to find baked diodes in older power supplies. Especially before high power schottky diodes were a thing. If that thing has a few amps flowing through it at .7V drop then that's a lot of heat being dissipated. Totally agree about low melt solder for desoldering. It's a secret weapon. Also not a good idea to mount caps on long leads. The long leads act like an inductor and reduce the caps ability to respond to transients.
You really ought to check the analog boards on the two monochrome classics for leaking caps. Yes they are nichicon, but specifically the brown colored ones (low ESR, PL(M) series) are notorious for leaking. Not all nichicons are beyond reproach! Every device with those PL(M) I find I recap them, they really are awful
I should have mentioned it in the video. I checked every cap very thoroughly on all three analog boards. It has been mentioned that the CC is notorious for having bad solder joints. I will reflow the board first. If that doesn't help, I'll do a full recap. Thanks
I've been told they get leaky, but all three analog board still look fine. I don't know if Apple used different brands of caps or if it's just a question of time before they start to leak
@@Epictronics1 I usually start to desolder and smell the fumes for a seconds. If I smell fishy smells, then that capacitor was leaking. Sometimes it is hard to see as the corrosive liquid pools at the bottom of the capacitor
I'm really glad that you aren't twisting off caps like other RUclipsrs or sanding the legs on DIP chips! I really hope some day your get a Coleco Adam computer, I. would love to watch you work on one!
Unlike you, those of us in 3rd world countries cannot find that kind of easy melt solder and out of thousands of caps that I have twisted off while pushing down on the caps, never once did I get any damage on the pcb. Before the twist off method, I have destroyed several traces using soldering iron to remove the caps.
@@Dark_eVader I don't have any low melt solder myself i recapped my Turbo Express with just regular solder and some flux. I know some people who cut the cap in half horizontally with clippers to some success.
@@tigheklory So you only recapped one motherboard? I have a retro repair shop since 2012 and have recapped literally hundreds of motherboards without any problems using the push twist trick. As a matter of fact, Adrian Black recently did a video doing the same thing to several caps and like me, he also had damaged traces trying to unsolder before. Many older PCBs have fragile traces that easily break off the board when heated which is why it's safer to push down and twist those caps instead.
@@Dark_eVader no not just one many. I mostly fix CRT monitors, Pinball machines and arcade games which use hole through caps. Why are you upset about me preferring that people don't rip caps off PCBs?
@@tigheklory I'm not upset but hole through caps are different from surface mounted aluminum caps and do need to be de-soldered preferably. Trying to rip off hole through caps will surely damage the pcb.
Do you have a list of caps you usually stock and where you order them from? Also, you're not supposed to make the screen extend the full size of the monitor. Check the video from JDW on adjusting the Color Classic's CRT.
Yes, I just messed around with the pots to see if they made a difference. I make the size of the picture smaller than the tube when I'm done. I use Mouser for parts at the moment. A list of caps can be found at recapamac.com
Have you had any good luck with frost spray? I find it pretty useful to quickly find misbehavig components such as bad caps and cold solder joints. Sometimes even bad chips!
@@Epictronics1 Turning an air can upside down and spraying the cold liquid on misbehaving transistors is a great way to identify bad parts. I learned that trick from Shango066.
I love your videos but when you say Im going to leave electrolytic caps to keep the "look" I'm like WTF. Its a board inside a mac that no one will open unless its broken.... like when your next batch of electrolytic caps fail again and maybe rot the board. Why in the absolute **** wouldnt you use the caps that will last close to forever???? Love Jill
Well, most caps don't leak. That being said, I totally understand why someone would take the safe route with tantalums. This also raises two interesting questions. Why do (mostly) Macs have leaky caps from this time period? And, why did Apple mix tantalums and electrolytics with the same value on the same board? PS. tantalums are popping like crazy in my IBMs :)
The production quality of those Macs is incredibly bad. Fan is held with 2 screws, just clips and molten plastic, brittle plastic, leaky caps and batteries, bad design (e.g. filter caps always on?!?) - how low can you go. Terrible construction and quality. Just like today's Apple products: Look my phone is made out of glass, Gorilla Glass 3000. I put a plastic protector on it so I dont feel the glass anyway, but it is still smashed and broken. Some engineers should have other jobs. If you compare that with the price, you must feel screwed in every way. It does nothing special, but at least we have a motorized disk eject system that falls apart and is slower than just pressing a mechanical eject, but we still put a hole in the case for the emergancy eject paper clip. Terrible design with the hole, does not look sleek or modern, terrible useability, slow and falling apart. Every part of this system screams stay away. Good work as usual but only the new caps say "470" ad the old "47" 🤔 Probably it is right but a bit strange, 470 would be bigger, but the print is strange. Only thing I dont like is that you moved the diodes WAY too far from the board and there is a risk that they touch each other. Usual practise is 1 cm off the board and that should be fine, and for the cap, you have to think that the heat rises up, so it probably was not in the way of the heat stream but only a bit radiation heat. You could have used shrink tube or something to make sure it dos not short in any way, smaller legs are also more stable and you could have used better diodes so they don't run too hot, and better components often have better snd stronger leads so they disapeat the heat over the board, they are more stable especially when mounted far from the board, and it would be much better. Just my opinion. I also sometimes bend it away or raise them a bit from the board, but never that extreme. I have the same cleaning disk, I never mark it how often it was used and I dont throw it away just because it was used too often.
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I'd imagine that wire you found that seemed to go nowhere would have been part of an alarm system looking for a break in the loop. A hotel would have used something like this to know if someone stole the tv back in the day.
Oh, that makes perfect sense! That must be it!
next time you do a recap, could you mention the soldering iron, and hot air temps in F and C, also the air speed used. Maybe the size of the iron tip, and air diameter. These are small details no one ever seems to mention with these recap videos.
Of course. I'll make sure to include that in the next recap
Many thanks, happy holidays!!
You are one of the better vintage computer video persons to add things like this. You very often do it 'off offhandedly' while you work. Please keep doing this! I find most of these low level comments the most helpful.
Again many thanks!!!!
KL@@Epictronics1
You've quickly become my new favourite vintage repair RUclipsr - your camera work, attention to detail, and descriptions on HOW you make these repairs are at the perfect pace for me to enjoy and remain engaged. I'm learning a lot from you! Thank you! You've earned a rare "bell" from me, one of a select few across all my interests.
Thanks! I appreciate it :)
So ive worked on a dozen CC analog boards and here are the two most common problems with them: 1) the solder joints are absolutely atrocious and you need to basically go over that entire board. Dont try and eyeball it, just resolder it. trust me... and 2) the harness cable that goes from the front of the board to the middle which is the one you have to unplug to remove the shield... goes bad and can cause sync issues as well as color shifting.
also the HDD has rubber bumpers in there that turn to goo. the spin up/down is caused by the actuator being stuck to the bumper. Unfortunately with that model Quantum, the bumper is UNDER the platter and cannot be gotten to unless you remove the platter and head stack. Which, isnt possible on multiplatter drives without a special removal tool.
Thanks, that's very useful. I'll reflow all the solder joints, and check/replace? the cable. I've been looking for a reason to remove and replace the platters on a hard drive, i'll give it a try since this HDD is dead anyway. Cheers
+1 I think Adrian's Digital Basement dealt with a similar issue on a non Color Classic where the solder joints for the neckboard connector all broke.
If that doesn't work, considering the picture got super bright with retrace lines, I'd check the grid bias (brightness) circuit as well. The closer it is to ground, the brighter the picture is
@@lauram5905 I'll check, thanks
cable may have been a home-made security cable to keep the mac from being taken off a desk
Yeah, that is quite possible. A budget Kensington lock
soldered together it may have been slightly more sophisticated. @@Epictronics1
I must be the third person to say the random wire is a for a theft alarm. But I'll go further and point out that is is a _very_ primitive alarm. It's easy enough for a thief to nick the wires and twist them together which would bypass this alarm. Most alarm loops have a resistor at the end so shorts as well as opens can be detected.
Who doesn’t love a good recapping - at least when that funny flux goes everywheres or caps turn into little stink bombs!
(Stink bomb at 21:12)
Those Quantum ProDrives commonly have this behavior, which is caused by rubber bumpers inside the hard drive turning into goo. The bumpers are there to dampen the head mechanism when hitting either end of the disk, so the head mechanism tends to get stuck, which the hard drive tries to unstick while spinning up and down, eventually giving up.
Thanks, I'll try to replace the bumper
[I am a US based repair shop] I do a ton of Mac recapping. My process is remove caps, clean pads, ultrasonic, add caps. I sometimes ultrasonic the analog board on classics. I’ve done so many I’ve lost track.
What are your thoughts on this CC? bad caps on the analog board?
@@Epictronics1 haven’t made it far enough, let me jump ahead.
I’d start with the caps, the cc is a smps like the classic. Also, they are notorious for bad solder joints. Especially the pots and what not near the flyback area.
@@AmigaofRochester Ok, great, thanks
My first ever home computer was a 33Mhz Macintosh Performa 630CD and still holds a dear place in my heart.
You can use Command+Option+X+O on the Classic to Boot from internal ROM (Doesn't work on the "II" or Colour though)
I just gave that a try yesterday. Very cool feature, thanks
I use the push down and twist method for those caps. very fast and have never hurt the pcb.
Yep, that's what I do for other circuits too, and if you (the viewer) are reading this and you are thinking of any funny business and try to just twist without pressing down or twist while lifting up, good luck repairing the boards. You're guaranteed to destroy at least 1 pad pair.
Yep
I do the same since low melt solder is not readily available from where I'm from and I have never damaged any traces using the push down twist method. Before learning about that method, I sadly destroyed many traces trying to unsolder the caps.
I have a theory about the random cable. Maybe it was for security. It could been connected to an alarm so if the cable was cut it would go open circuit and trigger an alarm.
My Color [sic] Classic II had some really bad corrosion, way worse than my SE/30, but I replaced the caps in both with ceramics and that worked just fine. The battery holder wasn't a problem, since I removed it to replace it with a cr2032 holder. The floppy drives in both machines were also not reading disks, but they both came back to life after a good cleaning and re-lubrication. Even the eject gears were still working, but I bought replacements anyway since I figure it's only a matter of time.
Very cool with a CC II. They don't seem to have made many of those. Glad you were able to fix it
thank you for a lot of advices about soldering
I always go with top tier brand caps like Nichicon, Rubycon, or Panasonic and preferably low ESR, high temp, long life ones at that for electrolytic caps. They're unlikely to leak even when they do fail after 30+ years since they're well made. Not to mention they have small tolerances which means the caps are usually very close to advertised ratings. I'd never go with a brand I've never heard of. It's still cheaper than switching to ceramics often times.
The red caps are Wurth brand. Well known and reputable German parts maker. Good quality caps.
Yes, I pretty much only use Nichicon, Panasonic, and Wurth
@@humidbeing Great availability too
@@Epictronics1 Yep! Like you, I also like the way the red looks on green/black PCBs :)
Wurth are decent, IMO, as well.
Very nice collection of machines! I've been fooled by adjustment pots more than once :)
Thanks. I'm glad I found those leaky caps before they caused some real damage!
that tripping kinda bother me it does remind me of moss chip and there one attached to heatsink on end of video
i recomment using voltage meter check voltage and see which one is tripping out
27:00 i like that ideas and i done that few time on few other motherbored because dont want pcb melted and causing short and love that you pull them away from pcb awesome jobs epictronics love it
Nice Macs! I like the one with the Trinitron monitor! Difficult to judge from here but it looked like the HV stopped for a moment. Do you hear anything like static noise? It might be a bad flyback, I hope not of course.
When it comes to thermal cameras, they normally struggle with reflective surfaces. Those glass diodes might be difficult to read.
And thanks for not yanking the caps off the board. I've tried the "plier" method yesterday on a board I was working on and I ended up with a ripped pad! Fair enough it was a large capacitor but that's enough for me to say "no thanks" :)
Thanks for the video!
Thanks Tony! I'll keep that in mind when I check the temperature of reflective parts. The CC came to me from what I think was the original owner. Aside from some minor yellowing, the Mac seemed pretty much unused. That leads me to believe the flyback is ok! There is no static noice :) The Mac worked perfectly fine for about five hours after I made the video. After a cold boot the next day it's bad again. Next step is to reflow the analog board I think.
Hopefully you'll get them all working good & proper!
Thanks! I left the Color Classic on for about five hours after I finished the video. It's still running flicker free
How much current is going through the diodes? You know the voltage drop is .72V, so you can calculate how many watts are being dissipated. Check that the diodes are rated for the current.
The voltage drop isn't 0.72 though because they are zener diodes. They are being used in reverse.
Looks like you replaced those power diodes with generic signal diodes (like a 1N4148). Those are not a great choice for power supply applications. It's pretty common to find baked diodes in older power supplies. Especially before high power schottky diodes were a thing. If that thing has a few amps flowing through it at .7V drop then that's a lot of heat being dissipated. Totally agree about low melt solder for desoldering. It's a secret weapon. Also not a good idea to mount caps on long leads. The long leads act like an inductor and reduce the caps ability to respond to transients.
Ok, thanks. Those are zener BZX85C18. I replaced them with the correct part.
Nice video! I don't understand how your hands can be so steady :)
Thanks! Lots of coffee ;)
@4:00 it was for security if someone cut it it would sound an alarm
very cool and vintage :)
Thank you for the great video.
Thanks!
You really ought to check the analog boards on the two monochrome classics for leaking caps. Yes they are nichicon, but specifically the brown colored ones (low ESR, PL(M) series) are notorious for leaking. Not all nichicons are beyond reproach! Every device with those PL(M) I find I recap them, they really are awful
I should have mentioned it in the video. I checked every cap very thoroughly on all three analog boards. It has been mentioned that the CC is notorious for having bad solder joints. I will reflow the board first. If that doesn't help, I'll do a full recap. Thanks
Well, that's most likely not a cap issue. But those analog boards on Classics should be both recapped ;)
I've been told they get leaky, but all three analog board still look fine. I don't know if Apple used different brands of caps or if it's just a question of time before they start to leak
@@Epictronics1 I usually start to desolder and smell the fumes for a seconds. If I smell fishy smells, then that capacitor was leaking. Sometimes it is hard to see as the corrosive liquid pools at the bottom of the capacitor
Dead HDD and hot zener diodes... Check all PSU output voltages, could be out of tolerance.
I'm really glad that you aren't twisting off caps like other RUclipsrs or sanding the legs on DIP chips! I really hope some day your get a Coleco Adam computer, I. would love to watch you work on one!
Unlike you, those of us in 3rd world countries cannot find that kind of easy melt solder and out of thousands of caps that I have twisted off while pushing down on the caps, never once did I get any damage on the pcb. Before the twist off method, I have destroyed several traces using soldering iron to remove the caps.
@@Dark_eVader I don't have any low melt solder myself i recapped my Turbo Express with just regular solder and some flux. I know some people who cut the cap in half horizontally with clippers to some success.
@@tigheklory So you only recapped one motherboard? I have a retro repair shop since 2012 and have recapped literally hundreds of motherboards without any problems using the push twist trick. As a matter of fact, Adrian Black recently did a video doing the same thing to several caps and like me, he also had damaged traces trying to unsolder before. Many older PCBs have fragile traces that easily break off the board when heated which is why it's safer to push down and twist those caps instead.
@@Dark_eVader no not just one many. I mostly fix CRT monitors, Pinball machines and arcade games which use hole through caps. Why are you upset about me preferring that people don't rip caps off PCBs?
@@tigheklory I'm not upset but hole through caps are different from surface mounted aluminum caps and do need to be de-soldered preferably. Trying to rip off hole through caps will surely damage the pcb.
Do you have a list of caps you usually stock and where you order them from? Also, you're not supposed to make the screen extend the full size of the monitor. Check the video from JDW on adjusting the Color Classic's CRT.
Yes, I just messed around with the pots to see if they made a difference. I make the size of the picture smaller than the tube when I'm done. I use Mouser for parts at the moment. A list of caps can be found at recapamac.com
Sorry, was stupid of me assuming you weren't aware of the standard way of adjusting the CRT dimensions >_
@@nicktasios1862 No worries bro. If I understand you correctly, the part number you are looking for is mouser (edit) 710-865080342006
I paid for every square inch of that screen and I'll be god damned if I'm going to let anyone tell me I can't use it
@@heilong108 :)
Beautiful machines! ❤
Could you make sure in one of the Mac videos.... to make the Mac say, "Would you like to play a game?" Please?
I sure will :)
A nice game of chess.
@@simontay4851 How about Tic-tac-toe :)
Have you had any good luck with frost spray? I find it pretty useful to quickly find misbehavig components such as bad caps and cold solder joints. Sometimes even bad chips!
Not really. I should give it a try
@@Epictronics1 Turning an air can upside down and spraying the cold liquid on misbehaving transistors is a great way to identify bad parts. I learned that trick from Shango066.
@@vhfgamer Nice trick! I'm not sure about residues though? Real frost cans advertise "no residue" 🤔
@@vhfgamer dangerous idea
@@jerther_ In my experience, the liquid out of the air cans just flashes off when it warms up. No residue left behind.
I love your videos but when you say Im going to leave electrolytic caps to keep the "look" I'm like WTF. Its a board inside a mac that no one will open unless its broken.... like when your next batch of electrolytic caps fail again and maybe rot the board. Why in the absolute **** wouldnt you use the caps that will last close to forever???? Love Jill
Well, most caps don't leak. That being said, I totally understand why someone would take the safe route with tantalums. This also raises two interesting questions. Why do (mostly) Macs have leaky caps from this time period? And, why did Apple mix tantalums and electrolytics with the same value on the same board? PS. tantalums are popping like crazy in my IBMs :)
This is a flashback to when I fixed up the same machine. These machines are terrible to dismantle. I fear every time I have to open one :)
CRT fear? :)
That too. And I did not have a long enough screwdriver to open the case so I had to improvise :)@@Epictronics1
@@tommyovesen It's easy to improvise if you have a large enough hammer lol
An even better way to remove flux residue is to swipe your girlfriend's nail polish remover. It works better than IPA.
What’s with a robotic voice ?????.
sam
The production quality of those Macs is incredibly bad. Fan is held with 2 screws, just clips and molten plastic, brittle plastic, leaky caps and batteries, bad design (e.g. filter caps always on?!?) - how low can you go. Terrible construction and quality. Just like today's Apple products: Look my phone is made out of glass, Gorilla Glass 3000. I put a plastic protector on it so I dont feel the glass anyway, but it is still smashed and broken. Some engineers should have other jobs. If you compare that with the price, you must feel screwed in every way. It does nothing special, but at least we have a motorized disk eject system that falls apart and is slower than just pressing a mechanical eject, but we still put a hole in the case for the emergancy eject paper clip. Terrible design with the hole, does not look sleek or modern, terrible useability, slow and falling apart. Every part of this system screams stay away.
Good work as usual but only the new caps say "470" ad the old "47" 🤔 Probably it is right but a bit strange, 470 would be bigger, but the print is strange.
Only thing I dont like is that you moved the diodes WAY too far from the board and there is a risk that they touch each other. Usual practise is 1 cm off the board and that should be fine, and for the cap, you have to think that the heat rises up, so it probably was not in the way of the heat stream but only a bit radiation heat. You could have used shrink tube or something to make sure it dos not short in any way, smaller legs are also more stable and you could have used better diodes so they don't run too hot, and better components often have better snd stronger leads so they disapeat the heat over the board, they are more stable especially when mounted far from the board, and it would be much better. Just my opinion. I also sometimes bend it away or raise them a bit from the board, but never that extreme.
I have the same cleaning disk, I never mark it how often it was used and I dont throw it away just because it was used too often.