Electronic Equipment Repair - Can You Really Repair It?

Electronic equipment repair? Yes it is true if you wanted to. Everyone has their passion since when they are young and some begin to know it at the later age. There are many kinds of interest and passions such as wanted to be a singer, dancer, artist, lawyer, doctor, police, scientist and so forth. But in this article, I'm talking about the passion of the electronics. Once you are certain that electronics is the field that you are going to venture in, then do your best to acquire the necessary knowledge about electronics-look beyond the dollar signs. Find a job you are passionate about and you will increase your chances of having a long and successful career.

Do not give in to pressure from parents or other forces or base your decision on the money will make. You may get a good paying job but you may not necessarily be happy. If your work does not match your values, interests and personality, it will not be long before you feel the strain. You need the passion in you to keep yourself going on bad days.

Sometimes being passionate about your career is not good enough. You should consistently plan and prepare to ensure that your technical skills and abilities are on par with your career ambitions. Let's take this for example, if you want to be a good electronic repairer, you need to stay ahead of the learning curve and update yourself on new technical issues.

Ok, let's come back the topic of "You can do all kinds of electronic equipment repair". Why I want to bring up the word "Passion" because only passion that can help you to repair the equipment. Passion in you will tell you not to give up and continue to find the answers for the electronic problems. Passion in you will drive you to even a greater level of learning and understanding of electronics troubleshooting. Passion in you that motivates you to come out with new ideas of repairing and passion in you will help to guide you on what are the next steps you should make.

If you do not have the passion for electronics, I guess you will find this article boring and immediately exit this article as fast as I sent it to you. Well, I hope you are not because I presumed you love electronics otherwise you would not have subscribed to become the ERG member.

First you must know how to test and measure electronic components. There is no point for you even if you could able to identify the defective circuit in the equipment if you don't know how to check and measure basic electronic components. Assuming you have locate that the vertical section was at fault causing one horizontal line in the display, but because you are weak in testing electronic components, voltage checking or even scope probing, your percentage of able to repair the Monitor would be not high. In order to overcome this problem, you must be able to test and check electronic components accurately by doing lots of practical test and read more information about electronic components either from the repair books or from the internet. You must pass this test first before going further. Once you had grasped the techniques of accurately testing electronic components, you have won 50 % of the battle.

Second, no matter what kind of electronic equipment you are repairing it will always start from "how this electronic equipment works". If you don't know how the equipment function or work, you will have the disadvantage and may completely can't repair it. Take a look at this example, if the Monitor problem is in the horizontal section and you conclude that the problem is in the vertical section, you will lost countless of hours trying to find the faulty parts where actually the caused of the problem is in the horizontal section. In other words, if you do not know how electronic equipment works you will not know at where you want to begin the repair.

This scenario happened very common to beginners where they just started out in the repair field. In order to solve this problem, get the electronic board back home or whatever place you find convenience where you can slowly analyse the electronic circuits. Ask yourself these questions such as "why this board need to have the optoisolator in the power supply"? Is the optoisolator functions are for overvoltage or overcurrent protection and etc? What is the part number of the optoisolator? What is inside this optoisolator and how to test it to confirm whether it is good or bad? What would happen if the optoisolator developed a short circuit? Will it cause the power supply to shutdown, produce low power or even power blink?

Hope you get what I mean. By asking questions yourself, you are actually training your mind to understand more about electronics (in the above case is the optoisolator). Using this way on other parts of the circuits in the board and I'm sure one day you will definitely truly understand the electronic equipment that you are trying to repair. If you can't find the answer, refer to electronics books, electronic repair forum or just surf the internet from different search engine (we have google.com, yahoo.com, msn.com, ask.com and etc) to get the answer you want.

Third, you need a schematic diagram to back up on what you are trying to understand on that particular electronic equipment. If you want to understand how LCD Monitor works then you should buy or download free LCD Monitor schematic diagram and start to practice how each of the circuits works. Break the circuits into different sections thus we have the power supply section, inverter, LCD panel, mainboard and etc. Study and understand each of these circuits and start to ask questions as explained in the above. Similarly, this example is applicable to you if you want to repair Plasma or LCD TV or whatever electronic equipment.

Fourth, investing in you-Invest in yourself. Notice that the first rule of investment isn't "invest in your business" or anything else other than yourself. While investing and reinvesting into your repairing business is important, investing in yourself is your first priority of investing. You may ask "What to invest in yourself"? When I said, "invest in yourself", I really meant that you should invest in your education (electronic repair courses), testing equipment, electronic repair books (either eBooks or physical books as long as the information are very helpful), schematic diagrams, tools and other necessary things making yourself better than you were yesterday. I think that by not investing in yourself by saving the little money you have actually had robs you of your technical knowledge (that you should know) or even financial independence! Why allow the excuse of not having money steal your technical knowledge (that you should add more) from you? In the technical line, one should have to go forward and not backward or "still" for such a long time. That kind of "still" mindset not only didn't bring improvement to your technical knowledge but also your life.

There was a saying which I found it to be true-"There are three types of persons in the world:

First-The one who make things happen.

Second- The one who wait for things to happen

Third- The one who doesn't know what happen.

I wish that you are not in the third category. You should be in the first category where you make things happen and not to wait for things to happen. Make your decision now as not to wait for things to happen. If you found that there are websites selling information like the training manuals, schematic diagrams or even repair tips that can help you to understand more about the electronic equipment you are repairing then buy it. Let me tell you another fact is that "no one will walk to you and show you how this or that functions in full details" you just have to make things happen by finding your own answers from the information you had bought. How many times have you post questions in the repair forum and you did no get the reply? If you are the one in the second category (wait for things to happen) I can guarantee that even after many years in the electronic repair line you will still loose out to a beginner who has the mindset of making things happen. Those beginners have the mindset of moving forward, invest (time and money), never give up, and willing to learn.

Conclusion-Do you believe now that you can do all kind of electronic equipment repair? I believe you can if you carefully follow the steps that I had explained above. The reason I write this article is to tell you that do not limit yourself, give yourself a chance to change! People just don't like changes, they like their routine things but if you are able to make changes in your mindset, you can actually go further of what you are doing RIGHT NOW! Think about it my friend.