Repair question: Does anyone know how to separate the camera sensor from the lens on an air 2s camera?

[yendor65]

I am happy to give good news on this little project. I was able to separate the CCD/Sensor board from the lens module with the bad autofocus motor. I borrowed a friend's heat gun and I slowly heated the assembly up while I held it in a vice, applying upward pressure along one edge of the CCD/Sensor board.

View attachment 159915

It took 4 or 5 attempts, but eventually a thin line appeared and grew as I applied pressure, and not long after, the two pieces popped apart. It was indeed glue that was holding the two together:

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The old lens module is on the right, and the new lens module is on the left. You can see the glue residue around the top edge of the old lens module. The CCD/Sensor board is in the middle, with the sensor visible.

I had some old DSLR cleaning swipes and fluid handy, so I cleaned off the sensor (it received a little bit of dirt from the prying off process).

Next it was time to affix the CCD/Sensor onto the new (left hand) lens module. I dry-fitted the CCD/Sensor onto the new lens module, and it was surprisingly easy to fit completely flush onto the lens and with exactly the same orientation and positioning (it turns out there are some little guide edges and what-not molded into the plastic of both the CCD/Sensor board and the lens module. I then applied some beads of super glue to the new lens module and glued the CCD/Sensor board to the new lens module. Here's a shot of the CCD/Sensor board attached to the new lens module:

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Then I attached the ribbon cable from the new lens module onto the connector on the CCD/Sensor board, re-installed the camera assembly back into the gimbal, and..... Success! Autofocus works perfectly again. Below is a picture from the drone (looking down onto the new replacement Air 2S service unit that I purchased). Note the nice focus onto the microfibre green cloth texture:

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So, if anyone else is out there and encounters this sort of situation where the lens itself is broken (cracked or otherwised damaged, like for me with the autofocus motor), know that it is possible to replace just that part.

Here's where I ordered it from: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004584521351.html

Also for future reference if that link goes away... I have a spare module that I ordered (I mean, it was so cheap). I see that the site says this part is discounted 90%, so that really good price may go away at some point.

Excellent, glad you kept at it I’m currently fighting an air 2 fix.

 

[a5000lbtrashpanda]

Adding some additional repair information to this since this thread comes up on Google when searching for this noise.

I used a temperature controlled hot air gun to remove the sensor. At 120*C, it is a good safe temperature. At 200*C, perhaps less, the plastic can be malformed.

When I had it disassembled, I used a razer blade to scrape clean the sensor section, however by doing this, I might have accidently removed any alignment pins that existed. When I went to fit the sensor on the new lens assembly, it could slide around to a few different positions. From your before pictures, I aligned the corner by the autofocus motor and that edge. The sensor is also slightly closer now due to the reduce thickness of the adhesive I used to reassemble. I used T7000 as the adhesive. Laid a bead around the sensor and placed it. Once it was set, I ran an additional bead around the outside edge to ensure it was sealed. So far, so good.

I played around with the old lens assembly and believe that a better fix would be to swap out the autofocus motor. You can go around the whole assemble heating up the glue and remove the full cable attached to the motor. The two places you have to be really careful is removing the motor, the connection at the rear of the motor is fragile and can be pulled out easily and near impossible to put back in due to the windings right there. Second place is near the chip secured with the screw under the epoxy blob - the metal plate beside it isn't very secure and houses a spring for the lens sliding assembly - when you pop the epoxy chip, you might accidently pop that plate and spring.

To answer the question about the chip ID, my Air 2s didn't care - no errors, no warnings.

 

[Andrew L]

Hi - haven't been on the forum for a while, sorry for the lack of responses. Happily, there were no mismatch errors because all of the software (and therefore the version info) of the gimbal is running on the electronics board attached to the sensor - which I did not replace. I only replaced the electro-mechanical bits (lens + autofocus motors). As far as the drone is concerned, it is talking to the original camera.