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Please
note: This is solely the views of the author by experience and does
not reflect on anyone or any company.
Categories
Technicians, Good or
Bad?
Q. I have had bad experiences calling in
service techs, many of them do more damage than repairs to my
machines and then they disappear. What criteria do I look for in
hiring a tech and how do I avoid these fly by night
techies ?
A. One of the first things you
need to look out for is do they have a place of business, and
if so, how long have they operated from that location. Many times
you will find fly by night techs who are actually Service Tech
helpers that pass off as technicians. Or they have a day job
not related to Electronics and want to augment their salary. Because
they usually don't stay in business long, they tend to have
either a home address or a P.O. Box as an address. That is a sure
dead give-away.
Q. I tend towards hiring the tech that charges the
least, is there any benefit in that?
A. Generally the saying goes "You pay peanuts, you get monkeys",
That particular saying is not far off. In fact the cheaper guys
usually end up costing you more. An experienced technician could
charge $90 dollars and finish the job in an hour with minimal parts
replaced, whereas an inexperienced technician could charge you $50
per hour.......replace a few expensive parts using the hit and miss
technique and end up taking 6 hours to complete the repair. It's
your choice.....it's your machine.
Q. How do I know a good
or experienced technician from a bad
one?
A. Find out to what level the person troubleshoots. A very
experienced technician will troubleshoot right down to component
level. Many PC boards can cost thousands of dollars to replace,
repairing these boards can cost a fraction of the price and at most,
half the price of a new board. The down time is also reduced
drastically. Then you get the average technician who will isolate
the problem to a particular area, usually by calling the
manufacturer of the machine, then change that PC board at an
exorbitant price to you. A bad technician will change cards at
random and poke around until he finds something. He wont
troubleshoot systematically.
Q. The
technician that I have been using seems to know so much. It boggles
my mind when he explains the problem to me about my machine. Yet he
always seems to struggle to repair my machines and tells
me I bought a lemon.
A.
Beware of the BBB type!....Have you ever heard the
expression "Bullshit Baffles Brain"? Usually when a person is incompetent or does not know
what he is talking about, he will use your lack of knowledge in that
particular field to throw a smoke screen using technical terms he
does not know the definition of himself. He may sound intelligent
but what he is saying is usually garbage. A good technician will
usually explain to you in laymen"s terms because he has nothing to
hide
Q. Does a person have to have experience on a particular machine
to be able to fix it?
A. No, a good
technician goes by the schematics or by just looking at the
electronics. He just has to look at a PC Board to know what it
is regardless of whether he knows how that machine runs or not. It
is like an automobile, all the engines operate the same, the only
difference is the parts are in different shapes and
places.
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Categories
Lightning, Surges and
Brownouts
Q. Although I have thrown the main isolation switch off to my
machine, how come it still got damaged by lightning several
times?
A.
Air is an insulator, lightning is
positively and negatively charged particles attempting to come
together. It seeks a path through the air to the ground or
sometimes from the ground. To break through the barrier of air, it
has to exceed a few thousand volts. If your utility pole is struck,
the open isolation switch is merely a small gap of air insulation
which the lightning jumps across quite easily. The safest bet is to
unplug the machine
if possible.
Q. I have a surge protector on my computer, how come it did not
protect it against lightning?
A. A surge or
a spike, sometimes called transient voltage, is when the
voltage briefly goes too high, usually caused by bigger machinery
turning on or off in the area or a distant lightning strike. A surge
protector only protects against that. If your surge protector takes
a direct hit by lightning, it will not only fry your surge protector
but also your equipment.
Q. What is a brown out?
A.
A brown out is a deliberate lowering of line
voltage by a power company to reduce load demands. Minor events of
this type often pass unnoticed by the average consumer. More
pronounced events produce observable effects. It can also occur if a
particular line is overloaded and cannot meet the current (amps)
demand of the machine. Usually it is more destructive than a surge.
If the voltage is lowered beyond the switching thresholds of the
logic circuitry, you get a scramble of data trying to share the same
bus lines which cause false triggering and short
circuits.
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Taking Care
of Your Electronics
Q. I have CNC
machines on which I machine graphite blocks for my EDM
machines, how often do I need to clean the electronics
out?
A. It is best to have a very good extraction for the graphite
particles. A lot or your electronic boards consist of parts made
from graphite. So the graphite that settles on your PC Board will
conduct between components and create
problems.
Q.
Do I blow the cabinets out using air or do I
vacuum?
A. It is best to vacuum. Blowing may lodge bits of metal or
other conductive particles under or between components and will
short out. I usually vacuum using a brush as well and then blow the
fine dust off. Be careful of water in your air
line.
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