increase repair rate

10 Reasons How You Can Increase Your Electronics Repair Rate

Ever wonder how one could increase their repair rate of electronics equipment thus making more profit? There are many factors involve in increasing the repair rate of electronics equipment. Here are the 10 reasons how you can increase your repair rate:

1) Good in Testing Electronic Components

There is no doubt about it. One has to be really good and accurate in testing electronic components. If you are weak in testing electronic components then there are chances you may miss a bad component. If you miss a bad component then the rest of the board checking will be a waste of time. Ask yourself if you really know how to test resistors, mosfet, bipolar transistor, relay, triac, varistor and etc. If you think you are weak in testing electronic components then you practice more to improve your testing skills on electronic components.

2) Good in Soldering Work

You must be good in soldering and removing parts from circuit board. I have seen many circuit boards had the circuit tracks broken due to inefficient of the repair tech in handling the solder gun. The solder joints were big too and this can easily short the adjacent joints. A poor soldering work could cause more problems than you can solve. Get the right solder gun and start to practice on some junk boards. You may search YouTube on how to learn soldering and desoldering work.

3) Have Variety of Test Meters and Tools

Everyone has a choice to choose if they would still depends on one multimeter to do the repair job or invest on some specialize test meter to speed up their job. As for me I will choose to invest on good meters that can make my live easier. That means there will be no guess work in electronics repair. If the component is bad means it is bad. If you use only multimeter, a bad component still can be registered as good! Precious time will be wasted and at the end you still not able to solve the problem. If you can’t solve the problem, meaning to say no incomes for you. If you could solve a problem fast with the help of good meters, this means you will have more time for other repair work. A good meter will always pay itself back.

smd rework station nozzle

Having good tools is also very important. Surely we would not use solder gun to remove spider ICs. We have to use a rework station that comes with different nozzle to match the spider IC. If you are dealing with lots of BGA ICs such as laptop and CPU motherboard repair then you need a BGA station to do the job.

4) Be Able to Read Schematic Diagram/Service Manual

If you understand the equipment function and know how to read the schematic diagram, chances is very high you could solve the problem fast. You will know which section is having problem just by analyzing the fault of the equipment. For example- if you see along the supply line to a particular IC there is a low ohm resistor (1 Ohm to 4.7 Ohm) connected in between the supply line you will know that the function of the resistor is to act as a protection just incase if the IC have short circuit. Other name for this resistor is called as protection resistor. This means if the protection resistor is open circuit, you will automatically knows that the IC also may need to be replaced.

You will also save your time by not simply checking on unrelated circuit/section. You must train yourself to be good in reading and understanding of schematic diagrams. Even a burnt or missing component in the circuit board can be easily identified if you know how to read a schematic diagram.

5) On Board Voltage Checking

Here is another powerful way to increase the repair rate. There are lots of repair techs that are good in using meters and know how to test electronic components but they afraid of doing a live voltage test on electronics circuit.

Just choose a suspected test point in the circuit to make a test and you will easily know if the section is working or not. Massive amount of time can be saved just by placing your test probe on certain points in an electronic circuit.

Of course you cannot simply just put a test probe on any point you like. You need to understand the circuit well, how the circuit functions then only you use the voltage testing method.

Practice it on DC circuit board (without AC source) or any circuit board that is powered by batteries. Once you are good in checking the DC test points then slowly move on to circuit board that uses AC source.

6) Osciloscope Testing

Having to know about voltage testing on board is still not good enough. You need to learn how to use a scope for troubleshooting purposes. Many test points in electronic circuit can only be viewed by using Oscilloscope and voltage test result is not accurate. On certain circuit test points, you will still manage to get the voltage reading but without a good working waveform that part of section will still not work.

Although I don’t use Oscilloscope all the time in my troubleshooting work, whenever I’m facing some tough dog repair, Oscilloscope will be my best helper!

7) Know Where to Find/Buy Spare Parts

Even if you are the best electronics repairer in the world, without the right spare parts the equipment will still considered as “not repair”. You have to learn where to source for spare parts. Bookmark all the important electronics supplier websites and who knows one day you may need to get some parts from them. You may click on the link below to access a website link in my blog where I have compiled all the electronic suppliers under one category.

http://www.jestineyong.com/category/electronic-suppliers/

8) Mixing Around With Good Repair Friends.

We can’t be like frogs hiding under the rock. You need to socialize with others in order to keep yourself updated in the repair field. Whenever you are facing with electronics problem your repair friends will be a good help to you.

Two weeks ago there was a repair friend from other state called me telling me about some new meters in the market. He sent to me the link and also a Youtube video on another meter. I really appreciated of his willingness to share with me those information.

We chatted for a while then he told me he used to get helps from another repair friend from another state in my country. Both of them are in Car Audio Repair and he said not many people were involved in this kind of repair line that’s why both of us need to help each other out.

Note: Not all repairers are willing to help and friendly. I do came across repairers that are jealous and always think of you as an enemy instead of friend.

9) About Marketing

If you would like to treat electronics repair as a hobby then marketing is not your main concern. However, if electronics repair means business to you then you need to really think of ways to bring in customers. Remember, no customers mean no money. As mentioned before in my previous article eventhough you are the best repairer in the world, without customers means no income for you.

I’m not sure if you still could remember about a blog post that I have posted back in 2009. Please click the below link to check it out:

http://www.jestineyong.com/how-to-get-customers/

Try your very best the marketing methods that I have listed in the blog. If it is still not successful then you may need to do a survey about it. Is the price that you are charging too high? Is the turnaround time too long? Is the place that you are covering is too small thus have little equipment to repair? Is there any other good repairer in your area? and etc.

You may also do a joint venture with other repairers. Tell them that you also do repair and if they could not cope up; they can send their items to you for repair.

10) Know Where To Source For Orginal Software/Programs for EEPROM, Flash Rom, MCU and etc.

Among all the reasons above, this is the toughest one. Nowadays almost all consumer electronics equipment is using Microcontroller and EEPROM ICs in the circuit design. If the memory ICs have problem like corrupted data and short circuit, you need to get back the same data or a new IC with original data in it. If you can’t find the original data this means the equipment will not work.

It is not easy to locate the original file. Even if you could find the original data from repair friends or from repair forum you still need an IC Programmer to copy the good data into the IC. The good news is, the IC Programmer is not expensive nowadays and you can buy one for your own use and you can also help to program files for your repair friends.

Note: Some equipment the data inside the memory ICs are very robust and not easily corrupted. However to some designs, the memory IC losses its data after few years in service.

Conclusion- Focus on where your weaknesses are and improve from there. I hope the above articles in some ways could help you out thus making more money from the electronics repairing line that you always love.

Jestine Yong