iPad air 2 Full Short

[Shrimply Pibbles]

Previous history - He went to turn iPad air 2 on and had no life, tried to charge and still no life. Then brought to us. No drops or liquid.

Tests - 1 - Hooked up to DC where is pulled power BEFORE being prompted.
- 2 - Line tested board and VCC Main has full short at 0.00 in diode mode
-3 Visual inspection of that line (and board) and everything looks normal.
- 4 - Injected voltage
- 3.7 at various VCC Main spots VCC Main on board increasing current slowly using Cheek and Alcohol to narrow down the heat spot
- I reached 1.5A @ 0.8V (DC set to 3.7 only drawing 0.8v) and no heat any ware I mean no heat, bazaar as normally there is clear heat at this ratio, The wire was warm so I checked multimeter to see if the DC was faulty, the DC, Probe and alligator clip where all working as they should. I then changed to my DC Tweezer and these were the same and just to rule tools out I tried the short clamp I built. All of these were the same no heat from injecting current in several places over the board.

-5 Checked PMIC for any cracks with alcohol, (no cracks or heat)
-6 Left board in the clamp for 5min to see if it slowly heated, no heat (tried this in several places)
-7 Frooze board to narrow heat spot down (normally I use this last once I have narrowed an area down)
-8 Sat back and questioned life its self

What Next? I slowly increased the current in steps trying all the above methods at each step

-2.5a @ 1.0v pull (set at 3.7v) No heat only around probe
-3.0a @ 1.3v pull (set at 3.7v) No heat only around probe

Next, I Increased the voltage to 4.8v and lowered current to 0.5a and started again increasing A by 0.5a at a time checking for heat

-0.5a @ 0.1v pull (set at 4.8v) No heat only around probe
-1.0a @ 0.4v pull (set at 4.8v) No heat only around probe
-1.5a @ 0.5v pull (set at 4.8v) No heat only around probe
-2.0a @ 0.8v pull (set at 4.8v) No heat only around probe
-2.5a @ 1.0v pull (set at 4.8v) No heat only around probe
-3.0a @ 1.2v pull (set at 4.8v) No heat only around probe
-3.5a @ 1.5v pull (set at 4.8v) No heat only around probe

Ok, this is where I stop as normally 3.5a @ 1v should generate some sort of heat spot to narrow down the offender using alcohol or freeze to hone in but no heat not even over a 5min spell?

So any ideas?I tried to make this as thorough as possible but i usually leave things out so any questions fire away, as always thanks in advanced

[Shrimply Pibbles]

I know this is going to be something with a path to ground and using ZXW there is not many places VCC Main go, but to have NO detectible heat at these ratios i don't know where to look.

[Shrimply Pibbles]

UPDATE - Solved

Ok, I returned to this with fresh eyes and started as if it was a new job, and the same happened again lol no heat. So I left for 20 min @ 3A / 1.5v and after intensely checking for minor changes I finally noticed a small heat spot (can't believe it took that long). The vast majority of the board was still cold at this stage.
So I waited for it to all reach the same temperature and started again with freeze spray (reapplying as it was naturally disappearing after minutes) and after about 22min one side of a cap next to pmic melted.
I would never advise reapplying freeze but in this case, it was the last result as there was almost no heat even at these high draws.
Definitely a strange Short.

[Jessa_the_Professa]

That is weird, and it is also weird that I am sure that I responded to this post before but don't see the answer. Usually vccmain shorts in air2 are a cap down by wifi. If not, then i've seen caps by pmic before. I look for visual damage and then just start picking off one by one until short is gone.