Agilent Network Analyzer: repaired! You know it might be a bad day when even the test equipment can’t test and you realize you might need repairs…or when you are getting distressing messages like these from your malfunctioning test equipment: Data acquisition failure Unit failed signal pa

Under the weird but true category, we sometimes get rodent damaged electronic equipment in for repairs. And it’s not always just the gnawing that causes the damage, it’s also what happens AFTER they EAT your wiring (yes, that! Yuck!). It’s autumn and it’s getting colder! If

The short answer is no, probably not. We get calls regularly from folks who are really frustrated with their oven circuit boards or other appliance boards. Whether it’s damage from that time your aunt set the sweet potato casserole on fire, or maybe your very pricey oven clock finally dec

When is a repair not a repair – Sometimes we receive parts for evaluation that are not definitely faulty. They might be the prime suspect, but the case isn’t closed. We look carefully at ALL the information, and when a customer tells us that their control board might be causing p

What does a failed DC servo amp look like? Servo amplifiers can and DO go rogue and this can happen anywhere. For example, this damaged Copley Controls DC Servo Amplifier p/n 800-232 failed on the job at a large, East Coast U.S. university. The failure, as described by our customer: “D

      REPAIR SOLUTIONS FROM THE PLANT FLOOR: KABOOM! Rarely a good sound on the plant floor! What happened to this Allen Bradley Powerflex servo drive p/n 20AD065A0AYNANC0 to give our food industry plant customer a headache – literally!? Excessive current is the t

What are cold soldering connections and why should you care? You should care because a cold solder connection is bad soldering! And bad soldering often results in a bad connection. Bad or loose connections will often cause your industrial electronic equipment to fail – a hot mess! Wh

Heat, moisture and dirt are the mortal enemies of circuit boards! That means nearly ALL circuit boards eventually need repairs. Useful knowledge about preventive care and maintenance can extend the life of your circuit boards. It can also put off the need for repairs a little longer. T

Is your CNC operator keyboard having problems? Has your F2 key gone bad and refusing to do anything? If so, you could have a nasty case of “MSKS”! That’s short for Machine Shop Keyboard Syndrome! This is a common “infection” in machine shops everywhere. The pictured dirty

Repair Solutions From the Plant Floor What would YOU do if your OEM told you they wouldn’t repair your circuit board because it wasn’t “economically feasible to repair”? The OEM should know, right? Well, not always. And, there ARE often other factors that go into that business decision abo

REPAIR SOLUTIONS FROM THE PLANT FLOOR – Allen Bradley VFD Blown! Can it be Repaired?  Should it be repaired? Unlike in a box of Cracker Jacks, there was an UGLY surprise waiting inside of this drive! When this Allen Bradley VFD failed, the screen gave only a wimpy “bad fuse” alarm. B

REPAIR SOLUTIONS FROM THE PLANT FLOOR – A CASE STUDY: MG INDUSTRIES PLASMA TABLE CONTROL FAILS Is double-sided tape the only thing holding YOUR control together? Or maybe a bit of duct tape? If so, you are very much not alone.  We see this all the time! Take this MG Industries Pl

It’s a good thing we have always liked playing in the dirt! Because this guy (and a few more just like it) were so dirty when they arrived on our dock we had to degrease and clean them just to identify the components. But we get it. We know our customers work in some pretty grimy situa

CASE STUDY – REPAIR SOLUTIONS FROM THE PLANT:  TINY parts can cause BIG problems. Perfect example – this 6 inch square ISO board was blowing a 1 amp fuse bringing the Charmilles Form 20 to a stop in our customer’s Mid-Atlantic tooling shop The results of this “mini-explosion” are

Is your repair report baffling you? Wondering what in the heck those techs did?  Many purchasers of industrial electronic repairs are very knowledgeable about electronics, but more than a few are not.  And just for the record, we agree, repair reports can sometimes be mysterious and co

Manufacturing will never be the same again, but mostly in good ways! That’s the takeaway from all of our research. To save you time, we sifted through scores of tech and manufacturing trends articles** and surveyed our staff to identify key trends and business outlooks that we t

Are you suffering from an expensive case of downtime – the unplanned kind? Unplanned downtime in manufacturing is a budget-killer like no other.  Some estimates put the average cost at $7,900 per MINUTE and its rising! It’s frustrating to watch production come to a stop and deliveries

Your production line went down due to electronic equipment failure and now you have to decide fast – replace or repair? Every minute down is killing your bottom line. When to hold and when to fold can be a gut decision (and often is) but there are some hard facts to be considered when

Encoder tips to diagnose problems… BEFORE sending out for encoder repair service. If motion control is important to your production, then your encoder is one of the keys to your success.  Encoders are exposed to shock, contaminants/oil, excess vibration, moisture, and high temperature

The sad but simple answer to this question is some water damaged circuit boards can be repaired some of the time.  Once exposed to water, damage to your electronics begins within seconds – and the longer the exposure the worse the damage. Technically, it’s not really the water it