c/electronics-repairers

PSA: That old soldering iron tip I fought with for 3 hours last Tuesday

I was about to toss my Hakko iron because the tip would not tin anymore no matter how much I cleaned it. Overheard a guy at the local electronics surplus store on 5th street mention he uses tip tinner paste from Chip Quik. Spent $8 on a little tub of it, dipped the tip in for 5 seconds, and now it works like new. Has anyone else had luck reviving tips this way?

Shoutout to the guy who showed me a thermal camera for board hunting

Used to spend 20 minutes probing caps and guessing what was heating up before I borrowed a $200 FLIR from a buddy last September and found a bad MOSFET in under 30 seconds - has anyone else had a cheap thermal camera pay for itself on one job?

Just realized most hdmi cables dont need to be expensive

I was reading through a thread on r/electronics and someone linked to a 2023 test from a site called HDMI.org that showed a $6 cable from Monoprice passed the same signal tests as a $80 Monster cable for 4k at 60hz. The only real difference was shielding for really long runs over 25 feet. Sort of mad I've been upselling people on premium cables for years when I could have just told them to grab the cheap one off Amazon. Has anyone else looked into the actual specs on those premium certified vs basic cables?

TIL those $60 desoldering guns with the built-in pump actually work better than my $180 station after 8 years of fighting with it

Swapped to one last week just to see what the hype was about and it cleared a 40-pin connector in under 3 minutes, something I used to spend 20 minutes on with my old rig, so has anyone else had a tool they ignored for years that ended up being a game changer?

Old timer at the repair shop near Kansas City opened my eyes about flux

I swung by Apex Electronics in Lenexa last Saturday to grab some caps and ended up talking to this guy who's been doing repairs since the 70s. He saw me using liquid flux on a motherboard and laughed, then handed me some tacky flux paste and said try this. Has anyone else switched and noticed how much less cleaning you need to do after soldering?

Remember when we used to desolder with braid and a iron?

I started doing board repair back in 2008 and it was all braid and a Weller station. Took forever to clean up thru-hole joints on old console boards. Now I got one of those cheap hot air rework stations from Amazon for like 60 bucks. It changed everything for me, especially on those tight multi-layer boards. Anyone else make the switch later than they should have?

Took 6 hours to find a cold solder joint on a power supply board, should I have just replaced the whole thing?

I was fixing a 2017 HP desktop power supply that kept tripping the circuit breaker. After checking caps, resistors, and swapping out a diode pack, it turned out to be a tiny cold solder on the main transformer pin that I spotted by accident under a magnifier. I spent almost a full day on it, but the fix cost me maybe 5 bucks worth of solder and flux. Part of me thinks I should have just tossed it and bought a $40 replacement, but then I wouldn't have learned to look closer at transformer joints. What do you guys think, is chasing down these weird faults worth the time or do you just swap and move on?

Warning: cheap solder vs name brand almost cost me a motherboard repair

Picked a $8 roll of no-name solder from Amazon over the $20 Kester stuff and it wouldn't flow right on a laptop board in Detroit last week. Has anyone else had a cheap roll ruin a delicate job like that?

Had a week where every repair I touched just went wrong from the start

Last Tuesday I tried fixing an old stereo receiver for a customer and accidentally bridged two solder points on the board, which killed the power supply completely. Then on Thursday I spent three hours on a microwave that turned out to have a bad door switch I missed on my first check. Has anyone else had a stretch where it feels like you can't catch a break with even simple jobs?

I used to clean flux with isopropyl alcohol and a toothbrush, now I use a ultrasonic cleaner

For years I was scrubbing boards by hand with a brush and 91% IPA. After I rebuilt a vintage receiver from 1978 and spent 4 hours cleaning the residue off a single board, I bought a cheap ultrasonic cleaner for $60 off Craigslist. Now I drop the board in with some distilled water and a drop of dish soap, run it for 10 minutes, and it comes out spotless. No more scrubbing or worrying about brushing off tiny SMD parts. Has anyone else switched and found the cleaner pays for itself in saved time?

Warning: static discharge took out my whole bench last Thursday

Was working on a power supply board in my garage shop near Detroit. Touched a cap that I thought was drained and it zapped through my wrist strap to the scope. Fried the front end of my Rigol, cost me $220 for repair. Been using a dedicated grounding mat ever since. Anyone else had a bench tool get killed by a stray charge?

Last Tuesday was my best repair day in months, fixed 4 dead power supplies in a row before noon

Two were just blown caps on a HP desktop and a Dell monitor, but the other two had bad solder joints on the transformer pins that I almost missed, has anyone else noticed more failures around the transformer area lately?

Shoutout to the guy who called my soldering iron technique 'a fire hazard waiting to happen'

He saw me using a 40 watt iron on a big ground plane and said I was just heating the board without getting enough heat into the joint. I switched to a 60 watt station with a chisel tip and my connections are way better now. Anyone else get a piece of advice that felt harsh but ended up fixing a bad habit?

Hot take: I was wrong about using canned air on old power supplies

For years, I just blasted the dust out with canned air, you know, like everyone does. Then a repair in a 2008 Dell Optiplex last month showed me the static risk. I saw a tiny spark near a capacitor after I sprayed. Now I use a small brush and a low power vacuum first, then air from a distance. Has anyone else moved away from just blasting stuff close up?

Had a real 'oh no' moment with a vintage radio in my garage yesterday

I was working on this old Zenith Trans-Oceanic, trying to get the shortwave bands back. I had the chassis out and was checking the IF cans, and my probe slipped. I heard a tiny pop and saw a wisp of smoke from a little paper capacitor near the oscillator coil. My heart just sank, thinking I'd fried a part that's a pain to find. I shut it all down, took a breath, and grabbed my multimeter. I traced the circuit and found the cap had shorted, but thankfully it was just a standard 0.01uF 600V coupling cap. I had a modern replacement in my parts bin. After about 20 minutes of careful soldering to not mess up the old board, I powered it back up. The static came through the speaker, and when I tuned it, I actually picked up a faint weather band. Has anyone else had a close call like that with old, fragile parts and managed to save it?

Finally fixed that persistent flicker on a 2017 iMac screen

Was in my garage shop yesterday, ready to give up after reflowing the backlight driver twice. On a whim, I swapped the LED strip from a donor board and the screen came up perfect. Anyone have a better source for those specific LG strips besides the usual suppliers?

A customer in Tacoma argued that board-level repair is a waste of time now

He brought in a 5 year old laptop with a failed GPU, insisting I just swap the whole motherboard for $400. I said I could reflow the chip for under $100, but he claimed modern electronics are too integrated to fix. This was at my shop on 6th Avenue. Do you still find board repair worthwhile, or is he right?

Cleaning out my old shop space last week and found a box of 3.5 inch floppy drives from 2003.

PSA: I keep seeing people use the wrong flux on BGA rework

Honestly, I've watched three different repair videos from big channels this month where they used regular rosin flux for a BGA reball, and it's a huge mistake. That stuff leaves a residue that can cause shorts under the chip if you don't clean it perfectly, especially on modern boards with tiny gaps. I only use no-clean flux like Amtech NC-559 for any BGA work now. Has anyone else found a specific brand that works better for them on dense boards?

Just realized how much a proper desoldering gun beats the pump style for console work

I was fixing a PS4 with a bad HDMI port, and after an hour of fighting with my old plunger style pump, I borrowed a Hakko FR-301 from a friend. The difference was night and day. The FR-301 cleared all 19 pins on that port in under five minutes with zero leftover solder or lifted pads. Has anyone else switched tools and had a job go from a fight to a breeze?

Just realized I've been using way too much flux on surface mount work

I was fixing a Nintendo Switch board last week (you know, the common charging port issue) and my bench was getting sticky. My coworker Mark walked by and said, 'Whoa, you're making a syrup factory over there.' I looked it up and realized I was using about 4 times the amount I actually needed. I switched to just a tiny dot for each pad and my reflow results are way cleaner now. Has anyone else found a good rule of thumb for how much is actually enough?

This week I fixed a 1980s arcade cabinet that had been sitting in a bar's basement for 15 years.

The owner said 'if you can't fix it, it's scrap,' and finding the exact 5-amp fuse for the CRT neck board in a local surplus shop made the whole thing hum back to life, so what's the most satisfying 'back from the dead' repair you've pulled off recently?

Just saw a report that 70% of modern appliance board failures are from power supply sections

I was reading a trade journal from the NARTE group and their data showed most issues stem from cheap caps and voltage regulators, not the main processors. It made me stop and check my usual diagnostic order on a Samsung fridge board this morning. Do you guys always start at the power input now, even if the symptoms point elsewhere?

Showerthought: That $80 hot air station I bought off Amazon was a total game changer

I was fixing a busted HDMI port on a laptop board last week. My old soldering iron just couldn't get enough heat into the pads without cooking the whole thing. The hot air station let me set it to 350 degrees and 70% airflow, and the port came right off clean. It took me three tries to get the new one aligned right, but the rework was way easier. I would have had to junk the board without it. Anyone have a favorite brand for replacement tips? The ones it came with are already wearing out.

Shoutout to the cheap thermal camera I got for $200

I always thought those cheap thermal cameras were junk, just a toy. But last week, a customer brought in a laptop that kept shutting down. The usual checks showed nothing. I pulled out the little Seek Thermal unit I bought on a whim, and in under a minute, I spotted a tiny capacitor on the board that was way hotter than anything else. It was a short I would have spent hours tracing. Replaced it, and the laptop runs cool now. That one job paid for the camera. I used to rely only on my multimeter and eyes, but seeing the heat made it so clear. Has anyone else found a specific tool that changed their diagnostic process like that?