Since buying and restoring a
hospital-used ResMed AirSense 10 to replace my recalled Philips DreamStation I've been on the hunt for some beat-up
units that I could scavenge for spare parts. I just got this one in today. It was sold
as damaged and non-functional, for parts only and boy the seller was not kidding. Apparently, broken filter doors are a pretty
common problem with the AirSense 10. The bigger problem is that this one
was found in an abandoned storage unit. I got it for 75 bucks and, well, I'm hoping
I can get 75 bucks worth of parts out of it whether it be a motherboard or some of
the hard plastic bits, I don't know. I'm going to do my best to break it down,
clean it up, and see what I can recover, and I thought y'all might like to join me. So, as I mentioned in the intro, my goal with this
project was not to end up with a functioning CPAP. My goal was simply to disassemble this machine down to its
component parts, see what I could salvage, clean it up as best I could, and put it in the closet in case I
ever needed any of the parts within it they would at least be clean and ready to go. As I started to disassemble it, though, I started to discover more and more
just how filthy this machine was. You can get a sense by looking there
under the filter, where the filter was. This thing was caked with dust -- baked on dust
-- and it also smelled heavily of cigarette smoke. So after using some CPAP wipes to clean
off the exterior, I switched to alcohol for the electronics. Alcohol is a pretty safe cleaning
solution for electronics. It evaporates pretty quickly. It doesn't
have the contaminants that water has, that can cause corrosion and things like that. So, for the most part, on the electronics I'm
using a mix of alcohol and compressed air. Even the modem in this thing was caked in dust. But the bigger problem, of course, was all of the dust and, I think,
cigarette smoke here on the filter door. It took Q-Tip swabs. It took toothbrushes.
It took multiple rounds of compressed air. It was really a lot, getting all of
that caked-on gunk off of the machine. I eventually did it. Again, you'll see, after the alcohol dries
a little bit, I'm finding more and more bits of dust and stuff that's caked on so you'll see me cleaning the same spot a few
times here and there. That's what was necessary. So I really didn't know what
to expect coming into the motor housing but the first clue was
that blue nipple. Whatever it is. I mean, it was just nasty, so as I
approached taking the motor housing apart, I really didn't know what to expect. Opening it up, though, it was way worse
than I ever could have anticipated. You can see here why CPAP manufacturers
use foam in the air pathway. I guess that that poor foam collected as much dust
as it could, but it couldn't collect all of it. Now, when I did my refurbishing on my original
AirSense 10 -- the one I bought that was used at a hospital and purchased at a
medical auction -- I did not clean the foam because I wasn't 100-percent certain that I could. But this foam was a lost cause without
cleaning, so I put it in the little bowl that I was going to be using for washing
my soft bits with liquid dish detergent and I figured, if I ruined it, oh well. The bigger problem was what to do
with the turbine. It was filthy. I tried Q-Tips. I tried tissue soaked in alcohol. Any of you kids who grew up
without money will recognize this. I made a paintbrush out of a toothpick
and tried that. That didn't work. The only thing that worked was just
flooding this thing with alcohol. Again, that was a bit of a risk, but without going
this route, the motor was a lost cause anyway so I did several rounds of just flooding the
thing with alcohol, shaking it out as best I could. You won't be able to see this,
because I had to do it off camera… in the end, what I had to do was soak it
in alcohol and then use the Q-Tip swabs, as I did in the first case, to just
wipe out all of the gunk and dust. I eventually got the turbine really clean, amazingly. This piece, the air output, was harder
to get off than it should have been. I think it was just caked-on dust and grime and
gunk made it really, really tough to get out. I eventually did and cleaned the interior of the humidifier chamber as best I could with CPAP wipes. Oy, it was a mess though. Surprisingly, the foam stood up really well to soapy water. I soaked it a couple of times, blew it out with air a couple of times, wrung it out a couple of times,
and in the end it turned out okay. After soaking all of the hard plastic bits in a solution of about
one part vinegar to two parts hot water and running everything through
the Hurricane Dryer several times, including the motor, which I had doused in alcohol, it was time to start putting this thing back together. Again, this was mostly for storage. I wasn't expecting to get a functional unit out of this thing. I did find a wire that wasn't connected very well and corroded a little at the end -- the black
wire that you can see there. So I repaired that. Other than that, I think I'm going to just shut up and let you watch the reassembly process
again from a different angle than before. Oops! I lied. One of the things that you'll notice I forgot to do is replace that little blue nipple on the end of the motor housing. I had to go back and do that later, and that did have some consequences
for the operation of the unit. You'll see that in a moment. And yes, I said operation of the unit. Spoiler warning:
I managed to get this thing working, surprisingly. The humidifier on this piece was just a complete lost cause. It was full of scaling. There's nothing that can be done about that. So, in the meantime, I'm going to stick my humidifier in there. And now, for whatever reason, I'm going to apply power. Let's see if this thing will power up.
If it will? Oooh! Hey, that's promising! Yeah, I'm gonna run it for a bit, try to blow out some of those alcohol fumes. Once I've done that I'll see if it works. First things first, I'm really curious to see how many hours this thing has on it. Ooof! 18,570! So, this thing was nearing the end of its useful
lifespan to begin with. But you know what? I'm gonna run it for a bit, let it
burn off all of that alcohol smell. It's putting out good air! If I plug the port… Well, it is making a bit of a whistling
noise, so I don't know if that's usable. I don't know, we'll see. I'm gonna let
it run for an hour and we'll try it out. Okay, I've been running this thing for a while. I ordered a new filter door for it. In the
meantime, I'm just taping a filter in place. I'm gonna put an inline
bacterial filter on this thing, not because I'm worried about foam
bits or anything, just because, well… I want to be extra sure. Put a hose on. Mask up... and see how it works. Well, it works! Doesn't smell bad. Yeah, I mean look, would I use this as
my main machine? God, of course not! But, you know, to have it around as a backup, for
spare parts, if I need them… that's pretty cool. And if my machine broke or was
lost or stolen while I'm traveling, well, this would work in a pinch.
Yeah, it's um… it's functional. It's got a lot of hours on it. It's
not too loud. It's still… there's a lot of damage to the plastic that was
caused by water and sediment on there. This is clean, by the way. I
mean, I know it looks filthy, but this is just… the plastic
has been discolored and damaged. You can see the difference here between the
top where the sticker was and where it wasn't. I've cleaned both really well,
but it's just kind of a mess. Yeah, I mean, for what it is…
I paid 75 bucks for this thing. Is it a decent backup? Well, no, not really. Is it an acceptable backup? Sure, why not? Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed this. I hope you at least enjoyed getting a
closer look at some of the internals and me taking your part and putting
back together another machine. I'll see you next week.
