Years ago, GE started providing circuit board with some refrigerators. And they had a lot of bad ones. Some just had a burnt or cold solder joint. I've given a couple to a computer repair man I know, who has reworked the solder joints for me. And a couple came back to life.
Does anyone out there know of a board repair service, or do we just pitch em out and sell the customer new ones?
Cold solder joints can easily be reworked. Just reflow each joint on the board. Most boards are single sided.
Rule of thumb is discard if < $100. I'll do labor intensive repairs for friends/colleagues/myself. But, if it's going to be billable hours, I just tell them to replace.
I've done board soldering when I was a teen. The one I took out today looks realy cold. Plan is to get to a friend of mine who's a computer repair guy.
Board retails for $175. I hate to just pitch em out.
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The guy I used recently retired, but there are many of them out there. Repairs are usually half or less than new. Try Yellow Pages or Google
First thing to check is discrete component like capacitors, pico fuses on the board, any power supply related stuffs. And visual inspection; burnt sign, smell, cold solder, etc. If ASIC or microprocessor is involved, time to give up.
There used to be someone on Ebay who would fix the range timers/clocks. They'd send a rebuilt one and the customer would send in the core. It was like starters and alternators from the local parts store. No idea if some one like that is online or Ebay for circuit boards.
Understood. I have thru-hole and SMT equipment so can tackle most "problems" that I am faced with. But, it's usually not practical if you are a business placing real values on your labor costs, etc. Esp if you have to provide a warranty: how do you know that something else in the device won't toast your repairs, leaving you to "pay for" them *twice*?
I'll "re-cap" a motherboard that is known to be a likely candidate for that *before* the caps start to fail (once they do, there are no guarantees that the components on the board haven't already been exposed to stressful voltages from the increased ripple on those supplies). Likewise, most power supplies, TV's, etc.
Aside from "favors", it also lets me keep current with manufacturing trends and failure modes -- learn from OTHER PEOPLE'S mistakes!
(I also learn which vendors to avoid! :> )
Try posting on the sci.electronics.repair newsgroup. Somebody there ought t o be able to point you to some board repair folks.
I normally do pinball machine circuit board repairs on machines that are 20 to 35 years old. Also, I have repaired circuit boards in other equipment i n the past such as these:
Manitowac commercial ice machine (in a theater). It had a bad soldered-in r elay on the circuit board. Replaced it with a relay socket and plug-in rela y. Machine repaired and operated correctly.
Hamilton Beach commercial drink mixer. It had a bad speed control pot. Manu facturer wanted $50 plus shipping for it. They also said it would be a week before they shipped it out. So I went to Radio Shack and bought an almost exact replacement for $3 and installed it. Machine is still working today o n that pot.
Modern residential refrigerator (brand name escapes me). Had several blown electrolytic capacitors on the control board. Replacing them brought this r efrigerator back to life.
Hot tub (brand name also escapes me. Had 4 blown electrolytic capacitors on control board. Replacing them also brought this machine back to life.
It's worth it to at least give it a try repairing those boards yourself. Ho pefully you have a decent capacitor ESR meter to find bad electrolytic capa citors. Mine paid for itself the first week.
You can usually recognize bad caps from their brand names, bulging/broken vents, and the nature of the circuit in which they are employed. E.g., with high temperatures and high ripple currents that lead to internal heating.
Caps are cheap (more or less). I've seen folks selectively replace only the "defective" caps on a board. Where's the logic in that? Do you think the others are less likely to fail or will somehow be more convenient to replace at a later date?
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