How your electrical parts and devices are repaired.

If you are considering buying a salvaged part that has also been refurbished, have you ever wondered about the different levels of repair? And how these methods affect reliability and performance? This article hopes to explain, and dispel any misconceptions about the process. It starts from basic techniques and moves to more complex techniques. 

Repair Motivations

Before discussing any repairs it is important to note that repairs are motivated by different factors for every situation which I discuss in another article here. 

Hierarchy of Repair

Warranty Repair 

In the first instance, the manufacturer should always be contacted to assess if the part is covered under warranty. All manufacturers and suppliers in Australia must abide by the ACCC's guidance on Repairs and Spare parts, which states; 

When a consumer buys a product, the manufacturer or importer must provide spare parts and repair facilities for a reasonable time after purchase. This applies even if the consumer did not buy the goods directly from the manufacturer or importer.

This guarantee does not apply if the consumer is told at the time of purchase that repair facilities and spare parts will not be available after a certain time.

Essentially it means that if you buy an air conditioner and it breaks then the manufacturer has told you its out of warranty after a year. A reasonable person would expect an air conditioner to last 5 years (example only) so they are required to supply spare parts and repair facilities for that time. 

Manufacturers can sometimes be quick to tell the consumer their product is out of warranty, even when the consumer still has rights under the Australian Consumer Law. This fact leads to a lot of unnecessary E-Waste. 

 

Part replacement

A phone with a broken screen, a motor with a faulty capacitor, an air conditioner with a faulty circuit board. These are all examples of things that can be repaired by replacing parts. This still sometimes takes a lot of time to diagnose from the outset, but usually requires the least amount of specialty equipment and time to actually swap the part. Circuit boards are usually removed with screws, plugs and connectors. Anything that is part of a bigger system could be considered a "part". A motor could be considered a part of an industrial process, a capacitor could be considered a part of that motor. 

In general this is where most modern day repairs are often stopped. If the part is too expensive, or is discontinued, the item is generally regarded as "unfixable" . Fortunately, in my experience it is not always the case. Often the parts can be found, through specialty vendors brand new, or through Salvaged suppliers such as Adelaide Electrical Salvage. 

If the product can have a part replaced, generally this leads to the most reliable and cost effective repairs. It is not always the case though. 

Component Replacement 

A component is basically just a fancy name for "a part of a part" . A good example is an engine is a part of the car, and a piston is a component of an engine. Bringing it back to the electrical and electronics space, component repair is the next step in the repair hierarchy. This step is necessary when the following issues arise; 

• Manufacturer has discontinued the part
• Manufacturer refuses to sell the part to technicians
• Part is too expensive
• Part will take too long to arrive

If we think about the circuit board as an entire part again, it is a specialty part which is only available from one vendor (the manufacturer). If we can diagnose the fault to one component, it brings it back to basic components that are readily available off the shelf or from online suppliers at low cost. 

I have fixed many appliances that were deemed "unfixable" because basic components on the circuit board were faulty. A great example of this is a circuit board for a 20 year old air conditioner with an intermittent fault. Board unavailable form the manufacturer, unit was destined to be tossed. The fault was 2 relays on the board with bad connections. Parts were commonly available and under $30 for the pair of them.

  Common circuit board failures include;

• Electromechanical devices (relays, solenoids, contactors etc)
• Capacitors
• Connectors and connection points. 

Finding and repairing these faults requires time and specialty equipment. Some of the equipment I use to fault find and repair parts includes; 

• Soldering Iron
• Microscope
• Hot Air Rework Station
• Thermal Camera
• Oscilloscope
• Multimeters and other meters

Specialty Repair (Manufacturer or Authorized Repair Shop)

Some repairs are too complex for general repairers to complete. Sometimes documentation isn't available to the public, or the manufacturer refuses to sell parts to anyone except their authorized repair shops. Sometimes there is certain firmware or software only the manufacturer or their agent can load onto the device. 

In these cases it goes back to the manufacturer or their agent. If it is not covered under warranty, this can be very costly. Whether it is worth it is covered in my article about the motivation behind repair. 

Specialty Repair (Independent)

In some cases the manufacturer refuses to support the product, the parts are too expensive, but there is still margin for a repair to be made. There are some specialized repair shops that will do deep dives on certain electronic board repairs, or very specialized mechanical repairs. These shops are rare, but their services are greatly appreciated. On certain jobs where replacing the device or appliance would run into the tens of thousands and up, there is room for a subject matter expert to get involved. 

Good examples of this include

• Motor rewinding shops
• Advanced electronic engineering and repair shops

Custom Manufacture

When all other options have been exhausted, and there is no specialty shops to assist, sometimes a part must be made from scratch. We think of parts as impossible to reproduce as if the manufacture created them by pure act of divine will. However the manufacturer had to figure out how to make the components too. 

This option is becoming increasingly prevalent with the refinement of 3D printers and all the legal and safety risks must be assessed on a case by case basis. 

Examples of custom manufacture that can aid repairs; 

• A coupling for a motor can be machined by a tool making machinist shop
• Sheet metal covers or shroud could be cut on a plasma CNC
• Plastic clips, closures or components could be 3D printed
• Circuit boards could be replaced with custom boards with the same functions.