Future of electronics - Not serviceable?  - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: secsec
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: November 13, 2012, 10:34:24 am
content: Hey guys!I am aware of the throw away mentality. And that people throw away fully functioning stuff. And maybe it will continue in the future, but do you think we will still have a lot of general components shared across all kinds of electronics like we have now? Will electronic devices soon only contain a couple of product specific chips (that has its own specifications and functions) or will it still contain components like resistors/capacitors, 74xx, comperators that can be shared across all sort of devices.Sorry if I ask in the wrong forum or if my question is too stupid, but this is my first question here.Thanks!

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 13, 2012, 10:41:24 am
content: The majority of products (in general) still use off-the-shelf components (i.e. Digikey/Mouser/Farnell available). They have to, as custom chips aremassivelyexpensive. You can't just use the willy nilly.Power supplies are still the thing that fails most often, and they are almost always repairable.The issue often comes down to physical issues (e.g. BGA or other PITA packages) and/or the cost or availability of the part and the "hassle factor".Dave.

author: Rerouter
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 13, 2012, 10:48:11 am
content: its not exactly that things are no longer servicable, it is more that both replacement parts and documentation more complex than a setup guide are very rare to find for most,for instance, just about every cheap chinese good will have a micro in it with a uncommon label, or it will be scratched off, making replacing it harder, if you where then game enough to ask for the HEX, even if all it does it toggle a relay, you would probably never hear back from them,but that is cheap stuff generally made by somewhat dodgy componies, simply claiming standards,on to the next level, high end consumer, e.g. tv's up to test gear, by more reputable brands, you then get into the patent games, and IP acts and such, you still rarely will have a chance a getting the schematics, but you are atleast more likely to get a reply even if its a no, if you where chasing down the software to replace a eeprom, or similar, equally all modern equiptment they would be unlikely to give up to protect there proprietary methods, its only when stuff is EOL that you have a chance at eitherits pretty much that when a product is on the shelves they almost always do not want you to fix it, if its in warrenty, they want you to send it back so they can log the fault and chase it up on upcoming batches, and replace or repair your unit, if its out of warrenty any time they spend with you is a cost, and it is simpler to push you to buy a new unit, its only when the gear is specialised high end gear or small batch gear and then your generally given full documentation with it,its why i like 80's test gear, was close to the end of the era, so many interesting solutions, generally even worded out how the blocks function, more than a mere schematic,

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 13, 2012, 10:51:49 am
content: The 74 series is really already dead.Most electronic products currently on the market use standard components. I don't see why standard components will ever die out.

author: Sionyn
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 13, 2012, 11:43:35 am
content: i like most people here don't care for applethey see there products as disposable and as such don't off replacement components for their devices as do many other consumer manufacturesas mentioned blow, manufactures don't like handing out service and technical documents the problem is the closed source mentality."Intellectual property" is an innately flawed concept considering that intellect can never truly be owned once it has been shared. It is purely a maze of bureaucracy and legal banter aimed to retain earnings within the circle of initial innovators. The way basic business structure exists today, impeding others ability to flourish and protecting ones own innovations becomes more financially enticing than progressing society at large. I am hoping as a collective more people and organizations shift towards adopting open source ideology whenever applicable because open collaboration and transparency leads to real world-changing innovations and rapid development.

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 13, 2012, 01:13:16 pm
content: Quote from: AcHmed99 on November 13, 2012, 12:27:50 pmIt basically boils down to the fact that the cost of cunsumer electronics has plummetted, while the basic costs of repair haven't changed. And don't forget that in general reliability has also increased considerably, so the repair business has even less demand. This means it is no longer viable for manufacturers to spend money on generating service documentation and stocking spares, which adds another nail into the coffin.Would you prefer cheap, reliable stuff or expensive, unreliable but repairable stuff?

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 13, 2012, 01:30:08 pm
content: I often encounter an ethical issue with electronic repair.Sometimes I come across faulty electronics at a business and it's not worth them paying me to repair it considering how cheap a new unit is.(Especially when it may take anywhere from 10 minutes to 6 hours to track down the faulty $2 component)The issue is that often the device is something that i personally would be willing to spend time fixing if it was mine.Couple that with the fact that the client usually wants me to take away any stuff that's dead and you can see the problem.The whole thing stems from the fact that an engineers time is worth more to others than himself.

author: ptricks
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 13, 2012, 02:13:57 pm
content: I worked doing consumer electronics repair for a few years in the 90's for GE, Sharp, and a few others. On average we charged $50 /hour for labor + parts. The service documentation often was not available and when it was you had to wait up to 2 weeks to get it and customers don't like to wait that long. The other option was to open up the item and try to troubleshoot it for any obvious issues, this worked about half the time. One of the problems that many shops faced at the time was the amount of parts that were unique to each item , if it wasn't a resistor or cap or something common you were again looking at another 1-2 week wait to get a part and again customers would complain .Besides electrical parts things like a VCR have a ton of mechanical parts that fail from video heads to rubber rollers, springs, and lots of plastic gears and widgets and few of these were the same in different models so stocking them all was prohibitive.The other thing that was going on at the time was a lack of information. No internet where you could find data sheets or manuals so it was up to the tech to source the material, and often companies would not even talk to you if you didn't have a contract with that brand. Get a sharp stereo for repair , sharp says no data except to authorized service centers, then you have to hope SAMs photofact exist and if it doesn't you are left tracing entire boards to try to determine where the fault lies and that takes hours, hours a customer will not want to pay for. Customers don't like to be told "yes it can be fixed, but it will cost you $200 in labor", on a $150 product.Some brands had well known faults by the manufacturer but without direct access to the manufacturer a service tech had no way to know and could spend hours troubleshooting a problem and those faults were secrets they kept well. One of the most memorable is the RCA CTC177 chassis. These tv would present all kinds of weird problems like failure to turn on or off, sometimes the buttons wouldn't work, sometimes the picture would shrink and sometimes the whole set would power off and on by itself. Techs not inside the manufacturers circle of knowledge would have spent hours looking for the fault, is it the power, the MCU ? Nope it was the tuner. When the tv was designed the tuner contained a chip that controlled the tuning by way of a SPI type interface. As the set heated and cooled the solder on the tuner casing would crack breaking and making ground connection. They had used the metal shielding of the tuner to carry the ground signal around the tuner to other parts. When the tuner IC lost ground connection it would send out bad data on the shared interface lines and prevent the main MCU from controlling the function. Solution was to use a factory kit that included a new solder designed to not crack. But someone without that info would have spent days finding the problem.I think that now with easier communications and internet access doing these type of repairs would be a ton easier and manufacturers could make items that were meant to be fixed rather than trashed, but why ? They are making profits from all the new sales and repairing old equipment doesn't profit them .

author: saturation
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 13, 2012, 02:23:29 pm
content: I agree 100% with Mike, but as the OP topic asks, this is mostly the case forconsumergear. In many industries,repair is the norm: healthcare, aerospace, military, power, metrology, telecom aka satellite, cell etc.,Quote from: mikeselectricstuff on November 13, 2012, 01:13:16 pm

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 14, 2012, 05:25:25 am
content: Some manufacturers are actively trying to discourage servicing of their products:http://www.tim.id.au/blog/2012/11/10/toshiba-laptop-service-manuals-and-the-sorry-state-of-copyright-law/I've noticed in the far East there is a much greater trend towards repair instead of replacement, probably because of lower labour and parts costs and the relative availability of (leaked) info such as schematics and service manuals. Maybe this could be termed "pirate repair". Tools such as SMD rework stations are also cheaper over there. I can't read the language but have a few friends who say there are Chinese sites that have reverse-engineered schematics and detailed troubleshooting information for many consumer electronics.Quote from: mikeselectricstuff on November 13, 2012, 01:13:16 pmUnfortunately the cheap stuff these days tends to be neither reliable nor easily repairable.

author: Blofeld
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 14, 2012, 04:48:42 pm
content: Quote from: AcHmed99 on November 13, 2012, 02:31:20 pmThe aerospace industry and the military have a massive problem with the obsolescence of the components. The lifetime of the end products (aircraft, tanks, whatever) is measured in decades, but many of their electronic components become obsolete in a few years. Good luck finding a replacement for a current microprocessor in 30 years...

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 14, 2012, 06:00:02 pm
content: there is another factor at play. device become more and more complex and 'the old guard repairman ' can't keep up with the newfangled stuff simply because he has no idea how stuff works anymore. let alone has the tools to effectively troubleshoot or solder parts.

author: saturation
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 14, 2012, 06:34:02 pm
content: There is an aftermarket industry supplying most parts, once the stock of spares are exhausted; also the EE on the maintenance team have endless amounts of work redesigning subsystems, if not upgrading them, using modern parts. So, from an employment perspective, its fairly guaranteed for both EE and support techs.Examples:http://www.ecompbiz.com/semiconductor-aftermarket-manufacturing.htmlhttp://www.em.avnet.com/en-us/design/linecard/Pages/Rochester-Electronics.aspxThe worst, IMHO, industry to be an EE or tech is the consumer market, low pay, respect and job security.Quote from: Blofeld on November 14, 2012, 04:48:42 pm

author: T4P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 14, 2012, 07:02:38 pm
content: You won't get any compliments but endless hate for leaving out something on purpose to make something saferConsumers are never happy anyway

author: Alana
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 14, 2012, 08:09:31 pm
content: I do mostly consumer computers and I'm somewhat job-secure - windoze will always fail, and viruses will always be around. But if it comes to hardware malfunctions its just that if its something more troublesome than replace bad electrolytic cap i just tell customer to replace entire module.Reason - i could fiddle with it but i cannot guarantee successfull repair, and i would have to charge for my time anyway. And because cost of my time is usually equal or more than cost of used part of the same kind on eBay... Simple money related issue.But this issue has something of a second bottom, second issue that follows. When i began my work as amateur PC techie i learned stuff and i was able to troubleshot and repair things. But YEARS of simply "get a new one, this one is broken" caused that i forgot how stuff works and repairs that i did quickly in my early years now are very difficult to do.Now to fix something else than a broken cap i need to really dig into things, while earlier i did stuff on intuition.Any of you experiences this problem?

author: ptricks
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 16, 2012, 12:42:46 am
content: Quote from: free_electron on November 14, 2012, 06:00:02 pmThis was addressed by companies that do the regional service center method, you were the only licensed service for that region so you had a direct line to the company. If a customer wanted warranty service it was us or nobody. Several times a year we had to attend classes on any new technology added or to learn what new information the company wanted to provide. The last event I attended discussed the windex effect. The windex effect is caused by housewives spraying the front of the tv with glass cleaner and then using a cloth to wipe the screen clean, the cleaner would often run down the tv screen face and behind the bezel around the screen, then it would drip on the switches and the board, rusting and corroding the circuits. The sets would be sent for warranty repair and we were told that they are not covered to tell the consumer windex damage isn't covered. It was really bad in some sets with those tactile pcb switches looking like someone soaked them in the deep sea.Often we left with new service material and sometimes equipment to do the repairs. The problem with this approach is cost. It doesn't make sense financially to spend the time training people to service electronics that can be replaced for $200. When I was in that business a good tv cost over $600.In the past we used to do part swaps like capacitors and resistors, now the same service manuals say things like "When +5VDC is not present replace module A". They replace the entire board and don't even provide information on how to replace specific parts or what the values of the parts are.The repair facilities themselves vary, but ours had every piece of the latest test gear and equipment. We even had dedicated vacuum hose lines from vacuum pumps in the basement to power desoldering equipment. Surfaces were covered in ESD matts and so was the floor and test benches that were over 8 ft long free of all clutter because the instruments were mounted above. I really miss that work area.