Long term implication of water damage?

[ChristianB]

Hey guys, I crashed my mavic pro pretty badly... it hit a tree and then fell into some water, but by some miracle, it's acting fine. It had a vision error, and it's giving me an SD card error which is caused by the SD card being water logged but I updated the firmware and I don't see any errors right now.

I'm waiting for new propellers before I try to fly it but I'm curious...should I be worried that there will be some long term damage caused by the water?

 

[ac0j]

If you dried it out completely you may be OK.
The solder that holds all the electrical components is a mixture of lead and tin. I have seen water damaged electronics work for months, then as any minute amount of moisture slowly eats the tin out of the solder, leaving a powdery, crumbly layer of lead that will absolutely fail.

 

[Dronason]

If you dried it out completely you may be OK.
The solder that holds all the electrical components is a mixture of lead and tin. I have seen water damaged electronics work for months, then as any minute amount of moisture slowly eats the tin out of the solder, leaving a powdery, crumbly layer of lead that will absolutely fail.

By the way, there is no more lead in modern electronic, but you are fully right, on the long term it don't sounds good. Any flight in high humidity could result in bad surprise even if dji usually do nice coating of their electronic boards. More than water it is all the contaminants in that water that will remain in place after the water evaporate.

 

[Stevezphoto]

More than water it is all the contaminants in that water that will remain in place after the water evaporate.

Yes, this is what happens in phones as well. They can work for a while, but the contaminants/minerals/etc wind up causing damage.

 

[ac0j]

It’s the TIN. That degrades. Tin is also in the solder points on all the components. When the tin is gone there is nothing left to hold the rest together.

 

[swooshdave]

What kind of water matters.