c/electronics-repairers

19

drew_grant52•4d ago

Blew $60 on a giant pack of thermal pads that were totally wrong size

Last month I ordered this big assortment of thermal pads on Amazon thinking I was being smart and saving money. Turned out they were all 1mm thick when I needed 2mm for the GPU memory chips on this Dell laptop I was fixing. By the time I realized my mistake I'd already cut a few of them up and couldn't return the pack. So I had to order a second set from a different seller and pay for rush shipping which was like $18 extra. Now I got this stack of useless 1mm pads sitting in my drawer. Anyone else ever buy components in bulk only to find out they're the wrong spec?

26

evaperez•6d ago

Chose a $30 hot air station over a $200 one and paid for it

Had to pick between that cheapo 858D and a Hakko last month, went with the budget one and now the fan rattles like crazy on medium speed. Anyone else have luck with those mid-range units around $80?

18

victor_lane60•6d ago

That customer who brought in a 1980s VCR last Tuesday

Guy walks in with this old Panasonic VCR, says he needs it working by Friday for a family reunion tape. I told him parts alone would be $80 minimum and he just nodded, no haggling. He sat on my workbench stool for 45 minutes watching me clean the heads, didn't say a word. Has anyone else had customers who just watch you work like that, makes you feel like you're on display?

4

benbrown•6d ago

Hit 500 recapped power supplies this week and it got me thinking

Honestly, I just passed 500 power supplies recapped over the last 6 years in my little shop in Portland. Tbh I never kept count until a customer asked how many I've done, so I flipped through my logbook. Ngl it surprised me because most of those were just tired old computer PSUs and some vintage stereo gear from the 80s. The weird part is how many of them had the same bad caps from that bad batch in the early 2000s. I guess what I'm saying is the job has shifted from fixing broken stuff to just swapping out leaky caps before they fail. Has anyone else noticed how much more preventive work we do now compared to ten years ago?

6

scott.grace•7d ago

Question about using a heat gun vs a soldering iron for stubborn joints on old boards

I was working on a 1990s stereo amp last week and hit a spot where the solder just would not melt no matter what I did with my iron at 400C. After 20 minutes of frustration I grabbed my heat gun on a low setting and hit the joint from the back of the board, and it flowed right out. But I'm worried I might have damaged nearby caps or the board itself. Does anyone else use a heat gun for tough desoldering jobs, or is that a shortcut that will come back to bite me?

26

lucas_price83•8d ago

Picked up a Tektronix scope at an estate sale last month

The guy had been a repair tech for 40 years and left his whole bench setup untouched since 2012. His handwritten notes inside the service manual got me trying signal tracing instead of blindly swapping caps, and now I'm kicking myself for never learning it sooner. Anybody else pick up weird habits from old gear or notes left behind?

13

morgan_lewis18•11d ago

Had a 2005 Samsung monitor die on me during a recap job yesterday

I was resoldering loose connections on this old SyncMaster 930BF when the flyback transformer just gave up. No crackling, no smoke, just dead. I spent like 45 minutes trying to find a replacement at my local shop in Columbus but nobody stocks those anymore. Any tips on where to source older CRT parts without paying eBay scalper prices?

13

karenlee•12d ago

Tried to fix a 20 year old TV and made it worse

Last Sunday. Had a customer bring in an old CRT. Said it had vertical lines. I thought easy fix. Opened it up and accidentally touched the wrong cap with my probe. Big spark. Now it won't even turn on. Felt like an idiot. Customer was upset. Had to refund. Has anyone else made a simple job turn into a disaster like that?

12

evaperez•12d ago

Overheard a guy say he never uses an ESD strap. That scared me.

I was at a parts counter yesterday and heard a customer bragging about never using an ESD strap on motherboard repairs. He said he's never had a problem in 10 years. Has anyone else seen a board fail weeks after a repair from a static hit they didn't notice?

4

lilyfisher•13d ago

A customer in Phoenix called me out for not testing capacitors under load

Guy watched me swap a cap without checking ripple current and said I was just guessing. Switched to component testing under load after that and hasn't missed a fix since. Anyone else have a customer teach you something you should've already known?

6

grant_ross27•13d ago

Fixed a 20 year old receiver yesterday just by cleaning the volume knob with Deoxit

A guy at the counter said his buddy threw out a similar one because he thought the amp was shot, and I bet a lot of people junk perfectly good gear over a $10 can of contact cleaner, has anyone else found a simple fix on something you thought was toast?

5

emma_hart•14d ago

Flux pen vs syringe: one is clearly better for microsoldering

I used flux pens for about a year on HDMI port repairs... thought they were fine until a buddy let me borrow his syringe with tacky flux. The pen just doesn't push enough flux into those tight pin areas, you know? I tried the syringe on a PS4 HDMI last week and the joints flowed way cleaner on my first attempt. Anyone else find the syringe worth the extra cleanup hassle?

9

thomas_scott•14d ago

Vent: Lost 3 hours hunting a cold solder joint that was actually a cracked trace

Pulled a board from a 2017 Samsung TV last Wednesday and spent all afternoon checking every connection with my meter. Turned out the trace under the main IC was hairline cracked, visible only under a 10x loupe. Anyone else waste time chasing phantom joints when the real problem is board flex?

3

grant_ross27•15d ago

Blew a capacitor on a 20-year-old stereo receiver

Was troubleshooting a Kenwood amp in my garage last night after it started humming real bad. Pulled the board and sure enough, the cap near the power supply had bulged at the top. Swapped it with a Nichicon from my parts drawer and it fired right up. Anyone else keep a stock of old caps for vintage gear?

7

victor_butler50•15d ago

Saw the difference in solder joints after I switched to a proper temp-controlled iron

Been fixing stuff for about 8 years. For the first 5 I used a $15 iron from a hardware store and just guessed on heat. Joints looked okay but I got a lot of callbacks on audio gear I repaired. Finally bought a Hakko FX-888D three years ago. First time I pulled a joint off a guitar amp board I could see the wetting was completely different. No cold joints, no cracking after a week. That single tool cut my rework rate from maybe one in five jobs down to maybe one in twenty. Anybody else have a tool that quietly changed their game like that?

34

rivera.keith•16d ago

Wasted 80 bucks on a cheap soldering iron kit

Picked up one of those no-name soldering stations from Amazon for like $80. Figured it was fine for basic board work. First real job was reflowing some joints on a monitor power supply. Tip wouldn't hold temp at all. Kept dropping to 250F no matter what I set it to. Ended up with cold joints all over the place. Had to redo the whole thing with a borrowed Hakko. That cheap iron went straight in the trash. Anyone else learn this lesson the hard way?

16

lily89•17d ago

Dropped $180 on a fancy desoldering gun last month, still grabbing my old solder wick every time.

The thing just clogs on multilayer boards no matter how careful I am, and cleaning it takes longer than just wicking the joint myself, so has anyone else found a desoldering iron that actually works on PCBs with ground planes?

13

derekcarr•17d ago

Old guy at a pawn shop taught me how to read capacitor values in 2 minutes flat

Was at this run-down pawn shop in Tulsa about 3 years ago, looking at their broken electronics bin. This older dude, must have been 70, saw me squinting at a bloated capacitor and just laughed. He pulled out a little notebook from his shirt pocket, had this whole system written out for decoding values. Showed me the trick about that third digit being the multiplier, not the actual number. Then he pointed at another board and said "see how that one's bulging but the top is still clean? That's your tell right there." I still think about that lesson whenever I pop open a power supply. Anybody else have a random encounter like that where some stranger just dropped knowledge on you?

2

keith116•17d ago

Overheard a customer say my multimeter was ancient, made me think about old tools

I was fixing a 1980s Pioneer receiver from a guy in Portland last Tuesday, and he joked that my Fluke 77 from 1991 looked like a brick. It got me thinking how the old analog meters and basic digitals still get the job done without all the fancy auto-ranging that newer models have. Anyone else stick with an old workhorse meter for certain jobs over the newer stuff?

13

adam_thomas•19d ago

Just realized my solder station tip was way too oxidized

Been fighting cold joints on a motherboard repair for 3 days, then a guy at the local electronics shop in Tacoma told me to wipe my tip with brass wool every single time I set the iron down. Tried it on the next joint and it flowed perfect - has anyone else found a good routine for keeping tips clean without replacing them every month?

2

jessefoster•24d ago

My buddy at the shop in Phoenix said I was overthinking a simple power supply fix.

He watched me spend an hour checking every single trace on a 2018 Dell laptop board when he just pointed at a visibly bulging capacitor near the input. He said, 'Your eyes are a better tool than your meter sometimes, start with the obvious.' Now I'm second-guessing my whole diagnostic routine. Do you guys have a mental checklist you run through before you even grab the multimeter?

19

karenlee•26d ago

Rant: The 'just replace the whole board' culture is killing my shop

Last week, a guy brought in a 2018 Samsung TV with a bad backlight. The local big-box store quoted him $600 for a new main board, which is more than the thing's worth. I spent an hour tracing it to a single blown $2 MOSFET on the power supply. I swapped it, and it's fine. But I'm losing jobs because people think I'm 'too slow' for not just ordering the whole assembly. Anyone else's customers getting this impatient?

6

thomas83•26d ago

Remember when you had to choose between a full schematic or just the block diagram?

About 15 years back, a client brought in a dead VCR from 1992. I had to decide between ordering the full, 40-page service manual for $35 or just getting the free block diagram online. I paid for the full manual. It showed a specific resistor, R422, that always failed on that model, something the block diagram never would have. Had it fixed in under an hour. Do you still keep paper manuals for old gear, or is everything online now?

15

shane_perry29•29d ago

A cheap power supply from a Phoenix shop nearly fried a client's whole board last month.

I traced a weird voltage spike back to a no-name unit I bought in a pinch, and now I won't touch anything without a proper UL mark, so what's your go-to brand for bench supplies under $200?

30

margarethill•29d ago

Warning: I thought the 'freeze spray for microsoldering' trick was just a joke

A client brought in a water-damaged laptop from a flood in Miami last month, and the BGA chip looked totally gone. I tried the freeze spray before heating it, just as a last resort, and it actually helped the solder reflow without bridging. Has anyone else had a specific component where this weird trick saved the day?