Failure analysis on the HoMedics Lullaby Soundspa

We have one of these little do-dads for our kid: HoMedics SS-3000 Soundspa Lullaby.  It’s a nifty little product, makes different simulated white noise sounds and projects these images from a spinning disk apparatus.  Like I said, nifty.

But also fragile, and prone to breakage.  The company, HoMedics, replaced our first one because its little motor that turns the disk just quite one day.  Well, the replacement now has the same symptom.

So enough was enough!  Time to tear this thing apart.

It’s a complicated little gizmo.  I had some difficulty separating the front from the back housing, but if you shove a flat head screwdriver into the side, it will pop out.

After get the motor assembly all torn apart, with some simple tests, I determined that the motor magically worked again.  In my estimation, the point of failure here is misalignment of the projector disks with the engaging gear drive.

You see, HoMedics is relying on the forgiving tolerances of the plastic gears in the motor drive system, such that when you engage the projector disk into the disk bay, there will be proper alignment.  I believe this isn’t a safe bet.  When you feel resistance flipping the switch, that means the gears aren’t in alignment.  Don’t proceed!  This will dislodge the worm gear and your motor won’t turn anymore.

Or at least that’s my educated guess.

 

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