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Rheilly Phoull[_2_] Rheilly Phoull[_2_] is offline
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Default Diffferent techniques in troubleshooting

On 31/12/2015 2:19 PM, John Heath wrote:
On Wednesday, December 30, 2015 at 9:09:28 PM UTC-5, John Robertson wrote:
On 12/30/2015 4:10 PM, John Heath wrote:
I remember working for a company that imported cheap radios. I took my seat with the other 20 or so techs repairing radios. Most quotas were in the 20 range while I was only repairing 3 or 5 radios a day. Thinking I would be handed my pink slip I asked the tech next to myself how he was repairing so many radios? He pointed to my draw where I had saves some diagrams off the back of some of the radios. There is your problem he said. You are over thinking wasting time. You can measure 6 transistors faster than you can think if they are RF , audio or IF. In short stop thinking and start measuring. When I looked around I could see that the other tech were measuring not thinking. I took his advise and my quota when up from 3 a day to 10. A lesson I did not forget and still use today. I would like to know if others have found this to be true.


Well, in my field (arcade game repairs - video, pinball, etc.) we (the
industry) used to trouble shoot monitors looking for the exact problem.
Then some lazy tech started simply replacing all the electrolytic
capacitors in the monitors - and the service rate went from a few
monitors a day to five or more. In 90% of the cases replacing the caps
and the HOT (and fuse) fixed most problems, changing the caps, HOT and
LOPT/Flyback fixed most of the rest. Leaving 5% as dogs that one could
spend a day on - if the customer thought it was worth the money.

Mr & Mrs. Gilbreth (Cheaper By The Dozen) who in their Time Management
process would often watch the laziest employee as he (she) would usually
have the best way of doing the job with a minimum of effort or fuss.

John :-#)#

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A friend of mine has an old school arcade machine. No CPUs or monitors in this puppy. Just a pile of relays and paddle wheels. Great stuff. I could not find the tilt detector?

I found a short cut for flat electrolytic condensers in monitors and switching power supplies. First check if condensers that are rounded on top. Failing this use an impedance meter to measure the condenser impedance in circuit without un soldering it. Not un soldering it saves a lot of time. Any condenser with a impedance higher than a few ohms at 10 KHz and you found your problem. The down side is they do not sell condenser in circuit impedance meters so you have to make it yourself. Not a big deal as it just requires 10 KHz at a low impedance with about 100 m volts then monitor the current.


Google "blue meter" or "Bob Parkers ESR meter".