is this normal to find inside?

[Perrin21]

I have had the top off my 3d80 to clean the switches and i came across this mess on the board. Is this normal? What has caused this?

 

[floyd]

Its normal to see glue like that on tuner boards, I wouldn't mess with it.

 

[Perrin21]

Its normal to see glue like that on tuner boards, I wouldn't mess with it.

Thanks. I wasn't sure if it was a botched repair or something.

 

[caution]

That's not glue, it's wax. Most older tuner circuits have a small amount applied to the coils in order to provide some mechanical stability, in order to maintain tuning alignment by keeping free-standing oscillator coils from separating, which would change their inductance. You'll also find wax-soaked foam inserts inside the inductors sometimes.
If you need to work on the circuit you can just melt it off.

 

[Superduper]

It's wax. Tuners are extremely sensitive and finicky animals. Therefore after assembly, each tuner goes through final adjustment and alignment. Component placement, length of leads, shape of those copper coils, all affects alignment. For that reason, after the alignment, most of the ares that can be affected are "set" in wax to hold them in place. You know how it's easy to bend caps and transistors out of the way? Well, don't do that in the tuner, lol.

 

[Perrin21]

It's wax. Tuners are extremely sensitive and finicky animals. Therefore after assembly, each tuner goes through final adjustment and alignment. Component placement, length of leads, shape of those copper coils, all affects alignment. For that reason, after the alignment, most of the ares that can be affected are "set" in wax to hold them in place. You know how it's easy to bend caps and transistors out of the way? Well, don't do that in the tuner, lol.

its probably to stop people tuning their tuner into the police bands lol.