c/electronics-repairers

Fixed a 1970s turntable from a thrift store last night, first time I got one working again

Tbh I grabbed this old Pioneer PL-12D for 20 bucks at a Goodwill in Portland about 3 months ago. It had a seized motor and a cracked belt, and I finally sat down with it after work yesterday. Cleaned the motor with some Deoxit, replaced the belt with a generic one I had in a drawer, and it spun up smooth on the first try. My neighbor heard it playing Fleetwood Mac through the wall and knocked to ask if I was a wizard or something. Anyone else rescue old gear from thrift shops like this?

I finally fixed a water-damaged phone with rice and a heat gun

Last Tuesday I pulled an iPhone 8 out of a puddle at a job site in Austin, tried the rice bag trick overnight, then hit it with a heat gun on low for 10 minutes. Booted right up and the customer was shocked - has anyone else had luck with that combo for wet boards?

Went to a repair cafe in Austin and walked away confused

I stopped by this volunteer repair event last Saturday thinking I'd just watch, but this guy fixed a 15 year old toaster with a paperclip and some glue. The whole thing took him 5 minutes and he didn't even charge the owner. Are repair cafes the future of keeping stuff out of landfills or just a feel good thing that won't scale?

Why does nobody talk about cracked solder joints on stove control boards

Spent 6 hours chasing a phantom error on a GE range. Kept throwing E6 F2 codes. Replaced the temp sensor, checked wiring, even swapped the main harness. Finally pulled the board and found a hairline crack near a relay pin. 10 minutes with a soldering iron fixed it. Whole job cost me $2 in solder. Has anyone else wasted a day on bad board joints?

Just changed my mind about using flux on old boards after a talk with a buddy

My friend Jose, who runs a repair shop in Austin, told me he never skips flux even on crusty 90s gear. He showed me a trace he fixed in 30 seconds with a tiny dab, and I tried it on a dead VCR tuner last weekend - worked way better than my usual dry soldering. Anyone else have a repair habit they flipped on?

Shoutout to the guy who convinced me to ditch compressed air for ultrasonic cleaning

I used to blast every board with compressed air to clean off flux and dust, thinking it was fast and good enough. Then a repair shop owner in Portland told me I was just pushing contaminants deeper into sockets and under ICs. Bought a generic 2L ultrasonic cleaner for $80 last month and ran a few boards through it and the difference is night and day. Anyone else made the switch and noticed fewer intermittent issues afterward?

I think hot air rework is overrated for most board repairs

After trying both hot air and a cheap soldering iron on a bad capacitor in a 10-year-old TV from a neighbor in Cleveland, I went back to the iron and fixed it in 5 minutes. Has anyone else found hot air more trouble than it's worth for simple jobs?

Tried hot air rework on a stubborn ground plane and it actually saved the board

Had this old power supply board from a 90s monitor that just would not let go of a solder joint on the ground plane. Hit it with my cheap 858D for like 5 minutes and nothing. Then I remembered a tip from a dude on here about preheating the board on a griddle. Set my kitchen griddle to 150F, let the board sit for 10 minutes, then hit it with the hot air. Joint flowed in 20 seconds tops. Anyone else use a griddle or am I crazy?

Hot take: my cheap soldering iron was burning pads off vs my T12 station

I fought with a $15 RadioShack iron for two years. Kept lifting traces on old game console repairs. Last month I grabbed a T12 station for around $60. The difference was night and day. The tips heat up in 5 seconds and stay stable. No more cooking pads while waiting for heat. Anyone else see a big jump moving to a better station?

Five years of ordering the same wrong capacitor pack

I've been fixing flat-screen TVs for about 6 years now and always used 450V caps because I thought higher voltage meant safer. Then a dude from a shop in Detroit came into a repair meetup last month and asked why I was putting oven components in a monitor. Turns out the ESR rating mattered way more than the voltage for what I was doing. Anyone else been using the wrong caps for way too long without knowing?

Finally gave in on using a hot air station for soldering

I've been doing board repairs for like 8 years now and always used a soldering iron for everything, even QFN chips. Last week I had a job on a Dell laptop board from 2019 where the GPU needed reballing. I spent 3 hours with flux and braid trying to clean up pads and pulled 3 of them off by accident. A buddy at a shop in Austin told me to borrow his Quick 861DW for a day. I used it on a dead Xbox board first and popped off a RAM chip in under 30 seconds without any pad damage. That moment when I realized I wasted years fighting with irons on big components hit me hard. Has anyone else held out on a tool forever and then felt stupid after finally trying it?

Vent: Dropped $150 on a fancy soldering station and it melted on me within a month

I bought this digital soldering station from a brand I'd seen other repair guys use on YouTube. Thought I was getting a deal at $150 compared to the $300 ones. First three weeks it worked fine, then the iron handle started getting real hot to the touch. Last Tuesday I'm working on a motherboard and the tip just starts smoking. Looked inside and the ceramic heater had cracked and shifted. Cheap plastic around the heating element just melted. Now I'm back to my old Weller WLC100 that I got for $40 from a pawn shop. That thing has lasted me 5 years. Anyone else get burned by one of these budget digital stations?

Took me three hot air stations to admit Hakko FR-300 is the only desoldering gun that doesn't clog every 5 minutes.

My second cheap Chinese station died mid-board last Tuesday and I finally bit the bullet on the Hakko, now I'm mad I wasted $400 on garbage trying to save $150, anyone else have a tool they should have bought first?

Vent: Customer handed me a 10-year-old TV with a bullet hole in it

Had a guy roll into my shop last Tuesday with a 55 inch Vizio that had a perfectly round hole clean through the panel. Said his kid got ahold of his pellet gun and he wanted to know if I could patch it. I told him no, you can't patch a hole in a LCD panel, the whole thing needs replaced and it's not worth it on a set that old. He got mad and said I just wanted to sell him a new TV. I spent 10 minutes explaining how the layers work and that even if I could fill the hole the damaged pixels would just spread. He left grumbling about how repair shops are all scammers. This is the third time this year someone has brought in a TV with physical damage and expected a cheap fix. Has anyone else dealt with people who just don't get that some damage is terminal?

Walked into a customer's living room and saw a pile of 6 dead power strips under their TV stand

They had daisy-chained three of them together over the last year to plug in more gaming consoles, and the last one finally fried when the fridge next to the surge protector kicked on. The before and after was insane - before was a tangled mess of extension cords everywhere, after was just one beefy UPS from a clean outlet. Has anyone else seen a setup that just made you cringe as soon as you walked in?

Warning: I switched from hot air rework to a $99 preheater plate

Been using hot air stations for board work for about 8 years now. But over in Phoenix last month, a guy at the shop showed me his cheap little preheater plate and I laughed at it at first. Well, I borrowed it for a stubborn laptop board and man, that bottom heat made the difference - popped the chip right off without lifting any pads. Anyone else made the switch and not looked back?

Hot take: I used to swear by heat guns for stubborn solder joints, but a bad experience changed my mind

Had a talk with a retired TV repair guy that wrecked my assumptions

I was at a flea market in Akron last Sunday buying a busted old oscilloscope, and this random guy in his 70s starts talking to me. He said he used to fix CRTs back in the day, and I kinda shrugged him off at first because I thought modern stuff is way more complex. But then he dropped something that hit me hard: he said 'You kids today just swap boards without understanding why the board failed in the first place.' And honestly, he's right. I spent 3 hours last week trying to fix a power supply by replacing the rectifier, when the real issue was a cracked solder joint from thermal stress. He told me to start checking physical connections before touching any chips, and I've caught two easy fixes since then that I would have just thrown parts at. Has anyone else had an old timer completely flip how you approach a repair?

Old-school desoldering wick beats a solder sucker every time for me

I mean, I used to swear by my spring-loaded solder sucker for years. But about 6 months ago I picked up a $4 roll of desoldering wick from RadioShack before they closed, and it changed how I clean up pads. The sucker always left little bits of solder behind on tight spots, but the wick just pulls everything clean in one go. Has anyone else found one tool that just works way better than the other for no real reason?

Saw a guy on YouTube say never use flux and it got me thinking about how many people spread bad info

I fixed a 12-year-old receiver yesterday without any extra flux, just rosin-core solder, and it fired right up after a cold joint repair - has anyone else noticed how many so-called pros skip the basics and still get away with it?

The day I fixed a TV that had a french fry stuck in the HDMI port

Customer brought in a 55 inch that wouldn't show picture, I spent 45 minutes testing boards and cables before I flipped it over and pulled a single cold curly fry out of the port, has anyone else found food in the weirdest places on a repair?

Thought that cheap solder was fine until my boss' project failed QA

I used to buy those $5 rolls of solder off Amazon cause hey, it melts right? Well last month we had a batch of 30 custom boards come back from a client with cold joints everywhere. Turned out my cheap solder had way too much flux residue and inconsistent melting point. My boss made me redo every single joint with the good stuff from Digikey and now I get why people spend the extra $8.

Cracked open a 20 year old CRT TV yesterday and saw the cleanest solder joints I've ever seen...

Hot air rework station vs. soldering iron for SMD caps: which do you lean on more?

For years I used a standard soldering iron and tweezers for every SMD capacitor swap. It worked fine on boards with good spacing, but that method turned into a headache when I tried to do a battery controller board from a 2018 MacBook last month. The tiny resistors next to the caps kept getting lifted or bridged, so I finally broke down and tried my hot air station set at 350°C with low airflow. It took me three tries to get the technique down, but once I got the preheating right, the caps just floated off clean in under 10 seconds. Now I'm wondering if I should switch fully to hot air for all SMD cap work, or keep the iron for bigger components. Anyone else find themselves picking one method over the other for specific jobs?

Picked a TS100 over a Hakko FX-888D for my bench last week

I was in the middle of replacing capacitors on an old stereo receiver and needed something portable since my bench is a mess. Grabbed the TS100 because of the size and USB-C power, but I'm already missing the Hakko's stable tip temp on through-hole joints. Has anyone else gone with a mini iron and regretted it on bigger boards?