My frustration as a technician..

[arcenson]

Let me share with you something I stumbled on yesterday..

A friend of mine own a TASCAM DR-2d portable digital audio recorder.
This unit could run out of 2 x AA batteries OR a 5vdc TASCAM original supply.
He had the bad idea to use a 'generic' adjustable
wall wart power supply that was supposely at 4.5vdc hmmmm...
Bad idea.. these suplies mostly comes unregulated.
Too many volts ? bad polarity ? I'll never know.
The result, the blown unit doesn't power up anymore.
Ok. That's the start of the story.
So I opened the unit to find that all the electronics
were on 2 PCB's face to face, completely packed with
VERY TINY surface mount parts on both sides of each boards.
First I suspected a shorted protecting diode right
next to the supply connector so I started looking around
the surrounding parts.. oh man.. microscope job.. then I
decided it would be a good idea to order the service manual
to get the job done faster.
TASCAM answered me the service manual was OUT OF PRINT
but I could order it and get it by mail after a 2-3 weeks delay.
They were not very clear about the cost and the way to pay
for it. Finaly after around 6 emails TASCAM/TEAC California office gently emailed
me a PDF version of the manual for free.
So I was very anxious to check out the schematic and figure out
where the problem could be in the circuitry.
My reading was very short.. The service manual only contained
- a brief list of error messages trouble shooting
(worthless because the unit was dead)
- parts Exploded view
- parts list
- small color prints of pcb's
(both layers on top of each other so not readable)
That's it !

NO SCHEMATICS.

So the only thing that was left to me was to
ask TASCAM the cost of each of the 2 main boards
I cool swap for new ones to get the unit working.
Here is the reply I received:
Main board#1 $250.00US
Main board#2 $140.00US
Plus shipping.
FYI a brand new unit in its box sells today for around $189.00US !!!
So here is my frustration explained:
For short, in the 70's in Canada (were I live) there was 2 types of electronics courses:
- 1 year short course aimed for small home and cars appliances repairs
- 3 years complete course (analog, digital, logic, software, development, etc..)
this course was VERY CLOSE to the engineer's university course
That's the one I chose to pickup.
In the past 40 years (beside the elect. development I did)
I always put my hands on repairable electronics.
The stuff were made using tubes, transistors, IC's, etc..
The degree I got out of my course brought me knowledge
to analyse and fix blown circuits. I earned experience out
of all my findings.
Now I'm facing a world of BUY, USE THEN THROW AWAY (AFTER AROUND 5-6 YEARS OF USE).
We came up to a point where a qualified tech is almost
worthless. I talked to a repair store near Quebec City maybe they
would have the TASCAM service manual on hand and the repairs man
said to me:
We almost stopped using service manuals on new stuff..
The techs know what problem comes often on the electronic
stuff we sell and they mostly replace complete boards
without bothering what the blown part(s) were !!!!!
Conclusion:
Now, new stuff can be repaired (when not disposed)
by 'REPLACE BOARDs' techs with small knowledge of electronics.
In the next future, only:
-repair shops that fix old repairable stuff (radios, music amps, keyboards, etc..)
-R&D & electronic design houses
will be the only place left for us techs who
like to express our WIDE knowledge in our daily jobs.

Just my 3 cents !!
J-Pierre
Quebec City, Canada

 

[PatM]

This is nothing new.
When I was in the US Army, back in 1955, I was talking with a Sergeant who had married a woman who had been a radio repair person for the German army in WWII.
He asked her about a piece of equipment he was working on, showing her a schematic.
Turns out she knew nothing about electronics.
In the early 40's, the German army had plug in modules in some of their equipment.
All she did was plug in new modules until a bad circuit was found.
That was 70 years ago !!

 

[MrAl]

Hi,

It's been like this for years in the US too. If you did take something to get fixed it would cost more than the new unit total cost. That's because labor cost went up so much nobody can afford to work on anything without charging a huge fee just for the service work, not including parts. That's because housing (real estate) went up so much in the past years here. The cost of a home with small property went from 10,000 USD to 200,000 USD, an increase of 20 times, while minimum wage went up maybe 3 times. So people that want to buy houses and pay taxes (also went up) must get paid a lot for what they do, regardless what it is. This in turn caused hospital costs to rise at least in proportion, which meant a stay at the hospital is astronomical now. That caused insurance to go up, and even caused several hospitals to have to actually close up completely. We had one hospital close up a couple years back that was there for more than 70 years (or about that). They could not afford to operate anymore with the increased wages and charity care cases that could not be paid for by the minimum wage workers in the area that needed the resources of the hospital.

 

[ClydeCrashKop]

I worked at a Cadillac dealer about 5 years ago. Most of the work was warranty and paid very little. Those mechanics used educated guesses to diagnose instead of taking time to prove a part bad. They just ordered the most likely part. If that didn't fix it, they ordered something else. That is okay for warranty work but they did that with customer pay jobs too. How do you explain to a customer that a $500.00 part didn't fix it so now we will order a $300.00 part? The customers had to keep paying parts and labor until they guessed right.
Many times I heard that the cost of repairs exceeded the value of the car so the customer declined. I figured out that if you want to make money repairing things, you have to work on things that are worth fixing. (Not Cadillacs) I went back to a gravy job repairing multi-million dollar yachts.

 

[canadaelk]

This company did modular TVs in the late 50s: **broken link removed** long before Philips and Zenith.
To J-Pierre: get out of service (I did)! You'll never look back! E

 

[absf]

I was repairing musical keyboards and digital piano for Yamaha music school as a part time job. Some low end portable keyboards cost only US$300-$400. there is a main double sided PCB which was made up of cpu and all the digital staffs like DAC, tone generators, keys scanner and LCD display. Plus 2 single sided PCBs made up of all the analog stuffs like power supply and audio amps.

If the fault falls on the 2 analog boards then it is worth repairing cause I can just change the faulty parts. But if the fault is on the digital board, the parts are so small and hard to trouble shoot, I'll just change the whole board. Problem is that digital board alone would cost almost 70% of a new keyboard. So most people would give up repairing and buy a new one.

The point is you have to repair what is worth repairing. Or else you are could end up wasting your time and sometimes your money.

Just my 2 cents,

Allen

 

[davenn]

welcome to the 21st centuary, J-Pierre !!

My current employment is repairing hi end Trimble GPS equip for surveying and heavy machine control industries.

NONE of the gear is component level repairable, I just determine which board is faulty and throw in a replacement,
get the activation and option codes from Trimble support and its up and running again. Depending on the bit of gear, the
cost of the replacement boards varies from a few $100 up to $5000 / board

The joys of being a "board jockey" technician in the new age

cheers
Dave

 

[tcmtech]

Could be worse! Try designing customized equipment for your friends who can't follow basic instructions and like to cut corners.

Here is one of my experiences with designing a custom boiler system for a friend of mine a number of years ago.
https://www.electro-tech-online.com/threads/is-it-saftey-or-common-sense-first.90279/

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

You can't have it all ways - people want cheap, you can't have cheap while making something easily repairable and provide the level of backup required to make it that way.

 

[tvtech]

Could be worse! Try designing customized equipment for your friends who can't follow basic instructions and like to cut corners.

Here is one of my experiences with designing a custom boiler system for a friend of mine a number of years ago.
https://www.electro-tech-online.com/threads/is-it-saftey-or-common-sense-first.90279/

Hi Guys

A favor always comes back to bite you in the butt. At least, that is my experience.

Either do it at full price and the job is done properly.....or cut corners and do a shabby job without a warranty (not talking about you tcmtech)

I prefer full price and a job well done. So apparently do our loyal customers. We often see sets here that were repaired two or three years ago by me....broken now straight back to me for another solid reliable repair.

I like working like that.

Regards,
tvtech

 

[KeepItSimpleStupid]

Consumer electronics is not Aerospace. Some car electronics get designed "more correctly" than other devices.

I story I heard recently had to do with the manufacturer of the part criticizing a Chinese design and commented that without x parts the unit would probably fail within a year. The Chinese manufacturer said, "What's the problem?" The warranty is only 6 months.

Capacitors and surge suppression are mainly where the manufacturers are cutting corners. I remember a conversation with a scientific instrument manufacturer where there was no filtering or suppression in the unit. After a couple of $1000 repairs, I looked at the schematic and confronted the manufacturer. They said, we specify 120 V 60 Hz. So, if it's not that 100% of the time, it's your problem.

I like old stuff, it's repairable. I have 35 YO lawn mowers.

 

[DerStrom8]

I've seen this so many times in the past--a repair ends up costing more than a brand new unit.

A quick story:

I had a job at Kmart a couple of years ago as an electronics sales associate. One day a gentleman comes in looking for replacement parts for his old tube-type TV. I tell him we don't sell them, all we sell are TVs. He's looking on the shelves and of course is only seeing the modern flat-panel types. He asks me the advantages and disadvantages of just buying a new TV. The main one I told him is that the flat panel types have a better picture and are lighter-weight, but they only last about an eighth as long as the tube-type. The other one was that it's cheaper at the moment to just buy a flat panel than to repair a CRT, at least at this point in time. However, looking in the long run, if your new TV only lasts 2 years instead of 16, then you'll be be buying a new TV 8 times in a 16 year period instead of only one.

The moral of the story: They don't make things like they used to.

I'm sure you hear this all the time, but it's entirely true. I remember when appliances were built to last. But then big business took over and decided to design things to fail, so that people have to buy more items more frequently. Items are now specially designed to make repair of older models much more expensive and inconvenient. Again, it's nothing but a trick to give the modern electronics companies more money.

I'll leave you with a video I stumbled across several years ago. It's an excellent description of what's happening with today's electronics manufacturing and distribution:

Regards,
Matt

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

The main one I told him is that the flat panel types have a better picture and are lighter-weight, but they only last about an eighth as long as the tube-type.

Sorry, but utterly and completely incorrect.

Statistically LCD TV's are considerably MORE reliable than CRT ones ever were.

If you buy a cheap crappy one it might not last very long, but if you bought a cheap crappy CRT TV they didn't last very long either.

Incidentally, the average life of (decent make) CRT TV's was 7 years or so.

 

[DerStrom8]

Sorry, but utterly and completely incorrect.

Statistically LCD TV's are considerably MORE reliable than CRT ones ever were.

If you buy a cheap crappy one it might not last very long, but if you bought a cheap crappy CRT TV they didn't last very long either.

Incidentally, the average life of (decent make) CRT TV's was 7 years or so.

Not in my experience. I don't think my tube TVs ever died. I still have the one I used 15 years ago, and it still works great. The only reason I changed was because I needed a larger screen, not because there was something wrong with the CRT. However, I have had two flat panel TVs in the past 3 years, one I've had to open up and repair several times.

I have talked to several other people and they have had the EXACT same problem, and agree with my statement.

Statistically LCD TV's are considerably MORE reliable than CRT ones ever were.

Do you have proof of this? Where is the research?

Regards,
Matt

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Do you have proof of this? Where is the research?

Only 'proof' I have is my own experience, with LCD sets been far more reliable (which is why I'm typing this at work and not mending a TV). The only stat's I can personally vouch for are our Sony warranty stat's versus our sales figures - with warranty claims only running between 1% and 2% over five year warranties.

However, a more 'respectable' proof which isn't public domain, and I don't have access to, but my boss HAS seen, is insurance company statistics and large rental company statistics - both of which proof LCD are about 3.5 times more reliable than CRT sets were.

 

[DerStrom8]

Only 'proof' I have is my own experience

Sounds familiar

However, a more 'respectable' proof which isn't public domain, and I don't have access to, but my boss HAS seen, is insurance company statistics and large rental company statistics - both of which proof LCD are about 3.5 times more reliable than CRT sets were.

I'll believe it when I see it. I certainly haven't seen it in real life yet. In fact, it's the opposite in my experience.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

I'll believe it when I see it. I certainly haven't seen it in real life yet. In fact, it's the opposite in my experience.

Presumably you are only seeing cheap crappy makes? - certainly the crap makes over here don't last long either, but neither did the same make CRT sets (Vestel from Turkey is one of the biggest offenders!). Samsung also used sub-standard capacitors in their sets for a good many years, which made those pretty unreliable as well.

 

[DerStrom8]

Presumably you are only seeing cheap crappy makes? - certainly the crap makes over here don't last long either, but neither did the same make CRT sets (Vestel from Turkey is one of the biggest offenders!). Samsung also used sub-standard capacitors in their sets for a good many years, which made those pretty unreliable as well.

I'm referring to companies like RCA and Panasonic. I have seen both die after only two years or less of use, and these companies are some of the better ones out there.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

I'm referring to companies like RCA and Panasonic. I have seen both die after only two years or less of use, and these companies are some of the better ones out there.

No idea on RCA (don't trade here), but Panasonic here have very high reliability, as do Sony (the top two makes, by a long way).

You say you've seen both die, but how many, and what percentage of sets sold is that likely to represent?.

As I said above, I'm seeing one 1% to 2% failures in 5 years on Sony LCD's.

 

[DerStrom8]

No idea on RCA (don't trade here), but Panasonic here have very high reliability, as do Sony (the top two makes, by a long way).

You say you've seen both die, but how many, and what percentage of sets sold is that likely to represent?.

As I said above, I'm seeing one 1% to 2% failures in 5 years on Sony LCD's.

That is a good point, I can't say the ones I've seen are a good representative example. I could just have very bad luck, as could the people I talked to. Tell you what--If at any point you can submit the actual statistics, and it turns out that flat panel TVs DO, in fact, last longer than CRT TVs, then I'll take it all back. Deal?

Matt