Circuit Board Repair

patlaw

Mike
Corporate Member
A lot of tools have electronic circuit boards in them. Sometimes defective boards are replaceable, sometimes they're not. I love troubleshooting circuit boards. If you have one that's not working and the tool still works, let me know. Maybe I'll take a look at it and fix it. (No charge for labor).

However, there's a catch. Since I do it for fun, the following limitations apply:
  1. Through-hole components only (no surface mount components)
  2. The board must not have caught on fire although a scorched component or two is fine.
  3. You can't be in a hurry.
  4. There is no guarantee that I will fix or not destroy the board. (I'm not a hack. I've been doing this for 50 years.)
Sent me a direct message if you have any interest. I've already done this for a couple of NCWW members. In both cases, the repaired board is now a spare that may never be needed, but you never know.

I'm in Cary near SAS.
 

pcooper

Phillip Cooper
Corporate Member
I remember as a kid having an electronics store (Not Radio Shack) in town that had everything for nearly every board made. If you were good with diag and a soldering iron, you could fix most board failures. They don't want us doing that now, and that store has gone by the wayside and is now selling cell phones and stereos. I'm glad there's someone out there that still tries to do this... it's a lost art in my book, too much stuff is thrown away.
 

tvrgeek

Scott
Corporate Member
U-D-Man! Picked up a little USB microscope to help me. Don't seem to have any time any more. As I have several weeks waiting for my new DC, maybe I can finish off a few projects. Hard to get schematics these days and some ( the better) cordless tools the board is potted. Something like DVR boards, likely the outputs so one might be able to guess their way through them.
 

patlaw

Mike
Corporate Member
Schematics are rarely available. That's a big reason why things are a crap shoot. Basic familiarity with the circuit helps, but sometimes things are beyond practical repair. I also don't get into removing potting compound from circuit boards. Conformal coating is usually not a problem. Failed proprietary modules are a problem. I probably have at least half the parts I could ever need. Even then, if the parts are still available, they can be ordered from major suppliers in a few days' time.
 

Newboy

George
User
An example of one more job that has gone away. Every manufacturing company used to have bench techs. Like keypunch operators.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
 

tvrgeek

Scott
Corporate Member
Parts, yea. Went to re-cap an amplifier I built a few years ago. Main caps were available, if I bought 10,000. I will probably build a multi-cap bank for it, but in the mean time, bought a new Parasound.

I was one of those bench techs in my past life. Still need them for failure analysis and for engineering. We found we should never repair field failures as the probability of an additional failure is much higher. Primarily due to ESD handling damage. We did analysis of every failure, then scrapped the board. The most reliable board is one never touched by human hands. Another analysis I did determined if the failure was not to design/misapplication, over 95% were connected to the board edge. The remaining would be the very rare component failure, age degradation, cosmic ray damage etc.

There are still a lot of data entry jobs. Usually off-shore. OCR is good, but not perfect.
 

Phil S

Phil Soper
Staff member
Corporate Member
Mike, that is very nice. That skill is becoming a bit rare but sure is a time and money saver.
If you get into the new SMT (surface mount technology) and need some help, I can give you a one on one lesson.
 

patlaw

Mike
Corporate Member
Mike, that is very nice. That skill is becoming a bit rare but sure is a time and money saver.
If you get into the new SMT (surface mount technology) and need some help, I can give you a one on one lesson.
Thanks, as always, Phil. I fully understand SMD and have worked with it at a manufacturing level, but I don't have the reflow equipment nor the eyesight or patience to fool with them. It's just not fun!
 

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