What is the worst thing you or a customer has done to a circuit? (smaller photos

[aqarwaen]

my worst experience was,then i needed to fix some guy macbook pro from 2015.it had spilled some kind rubber stick or whatever kind stuff to 2015 year macbook pro.it took 12 hours to remove all that sticky rubber stuff from board,instead normal 2 to 4 hour repair.it also had some screw holes filled also with that same thing.ended up cleaning them with one big needle.that's my worst repair experience....

[JPortici]

For obvious reasons i am not going to say who i work for, but we get some interesting damage back from customers who have ether blatently damaged something or just not cared for the product very well.

automotive? don't you love when you use keyed connectors (with multiple keys) and yet there is always another mechanic that "has been doing this for 30 years so he cannot possibly be wrong" who is able to insert them backwards?
Destroyed connectors, mostly..

My most recent idiot moment was some months ago when i was checking out a board from the competition, at some point i put it aside and got back working on mine. Time for a break, disconnect and put the power supply wires aside! Both leads went over the other board, straight over the MCU pins 

ALWAYS CHECK IF POWER IS ENABLED TWICE.
ALWAYS CHECK IF POWER IS ENABLED TWICE.
ALWAYS CHECK IF POWER IS ENABLED TWICE.

at least it was a quite old board.

[Rerouter]

Customer ordered 20 GSM Network connected devices about a year ago (They are already in waterproof containers that are fitted in dry areas!) , one of the customers workers went and potted them in epoxy with the sim cards in place, 2 weeks later another person in there company cancelled all those sims because they found a cheaper provider, and then rung us saying they would like to change them, and that there tech could not understand how to access the old sim. I still dont know how the boss navigated the service level agreement on those ones.

Had plenty of "For warranty" devices returned, still full of LIVE! insects. you pop the lid to access the test mode switch and hundreds of them come pouring forth.. (Makes me shiver)

Not the worst but the most painful, about twice a year someone will come to us with an automotive instrument cluster that they have taken from one car and want to fit in the other, but obviously it doesn't fit in the same hole, so they grab a hacksaw, or a angle grinder and cut the thing to shape, careful to not harm the dial or visible plastic, but tearing off chunks of the PCB's in the process, they then come to us because it doesnt work.  and want us to make it work.

[Samogon]

I think Louis Rossmann has a case where a customer blew up a MacBook with an eBay charger, and the idiot decided to test it with a second MacBook. How, there were not one, but two dead MacBooks. That's how you do it. Blew up one? Then try to blow up another!

Easy,
He connected to one Mac, nothing happened (no sparks, no flames), then he tried on another one, if he would have third, .....

[tooki]

I think Louis Rossmann has a case where a customer blew up a MacBook with an eBay charger, and the idiot decided to test it with a second MacBook. How, there were not one, but two dead MacBooks. That's how you do it. Blew up one? Then try to blow up another!

In all fairness, the customer probably wouldn't have had any way to know that the charger was to blame. And it's standard IT troubleshooting to swap things to isolate the fault -- it was just dumb luck that the charger was actually causing damage.

What is funny is the DVI connector "hardware virus": Here's a story of when it hit Google, but I'm pretty sure I've heard it happened a few different places: https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2012/09/24/dvi/

(Of course, it's not technically limited to Macs, but since few PC laptops ever had DVI connectors and no VGA, it was mostly Macs that got affected.)

[tooki]

I bought a Heathkit counter from the US a number of years ago and forgot for five fatal minutes that it was a 110v device. Helpfully someone had soldered a wire across the fuse in the device and I'd stuck a 5A in the plug. Smoke came out of the sides pretty much instantly. The pass transistor on the main rail said "screw this" and shorted C-E and dumped 24v across the 5v rail leading to mass ejection of magic logic smoke. Nothing in the device wasn't toasted in some way. When I opened it you could hear some of the ICs still crying.

Reminds me of what happened back in 1999 when I was working at an Apple dealer here in Zurich. Back then, Apple did not have its own subsidiary here, so their products were sold via a distributor who applied a very generous markup. As such, there was a thriving industry in gray-market imports from USA. (Believe it or not, in addition to the added air freight shipping and the dealer's own profit margin, it was actually cheaper to then have us pluck off the 23 keycaps that differed off the keyboard and send the keycaps to a refurbisher who'd reprint them with the Swiss layout.  )

Anyway, we'd just gotten a new hire. I had just unpacked a new Power Mac G3 and begun to custom configure it for a customer, but then the boss asked me to do something else and let New Hire do it.

Now, this was still when the PSUs had to be set to the correct input voltage. Apple gear came with a yellow sticker over the IEC input reminding you to verify the correct line voltage. Had the computer been sourced locally, Apple would have had it pre-set to 230V, but since this was from USA, it was pre-set to 120V.

I told the new hire "I was about to switch the voltage to 230V and already took off the warning sticker, so be sure to change it right away!". He acknowledged it specifically, then I moved onto the task I'd just been given.

5 minutes later I hear a puff, followed by "what the? ohhh shiiiiiit..."

New Hire didn't last too long.

[bd139]

That really doesn't surprise me. I was in Zurich a few years ago (my family is actually mostly Swiss, from Bulach) and the prices were absolutely insane on everything. I must have blown about £50 on a reasonable meal for two people (usually £25-30 here in the UK). I spent most of my week walking around with a calculator going "pffffff..." at everything.

I've learned over the years not to subcontract important things out to lower staff. The success rate is very low. At least he got the blame for it and not you. Some companies I worked at, that would have ended up with me in trouble

[tooki]

That really doesn't surprise me. I was in Zurich a few years ago (my family is actually mostly Swiss, from Bulach) and the prices were absolutely insane on everything. I must have blown about £50 on a reasonable meal for two people (usually £25-30 here in the UK). I spent most of my week walking around with a calculator going "pffffff..." at everything.

Well, you know, it's an interesting question. When I first moved to Switzerland in 1992, from the United States, everything in Switzerland cost substantially more. Eating out was easily 3x as expensive, electronics and computers cost almost double. The Swiss routinely ordered from USA and Germany to get things cheaper.

But it's changed. Some things, like groceries, are much cheaper in Germany, but the US has come surprisingly close in this. (Vegetables, for example, can be more expensive in USA than here!!!)

Eating out is similar: whereas it used to be a 3x difference in price, it's now maybe 1.5x. It depends heavily on what it is. The US has far more at the very low end of the price range (so e.g. McDonald's is way more expensive here), but once you get up to haute cuisine, there's not much difference. (One thing where Switzerland needs to get its act together is sushi: you pay double the cost of a decent non-michelin-star-type sushi place in USA, but the quality and selection is awful.)

Now, electronics are a whole different matter. Back in the 90s, in Germany you'd pay about 1.5x the US price, and Switzerland 2x the US price. I don't know what happened to change this, but these days, the price in Germany is still approaching 1.5x the US price, but the price in Switzerland is the same as the US price, give or take 10% either way. For example, take the entry-level iMac that sells in USA for $1099 (all prices checked as of today). In Switzerland, it's CHF1229 ($1264) -- but remember that that includes 8% VAT (~sales tax) and the statutory two-year warranty and a recycling fee, whereas the US price is before any sales tax (anywhere from 0 to over 10%) and with only a 1 year warranty. In Germany, it's €1299 ($1525), including the EU 17% VAT and statutory 2-year warranty.

A different example, the Nikon D7500 DSLR body:
USA (Amazon): $1247, plus tax, 1 year warranty
Germany (Amazon.de): €1301 ($1530) including tax and 2 year statutory warranty (1 year + 100-week warranty as promo through end of year)
Switzerland (cheapest authorized dealer, online): CHF1393 ($1432), including tax and three-year warranty

Finally, though, "expensive" is relative. For example, a Big Mac sandwich costs CHF6.50 ($6.70) in Switzerland and about $5 in USA. But how long does a McD's worker have to work to pay for one? In USA, at $7.50/h, that sandwich represents about 40 mins of labor, pretending there were no income tax. In Switzerland, a McD's line worker earns between CHF18-21/h ($18.50-21.60/h), so that sandwich represents at most 22 minutes of labor. So while Switzerland is undoubtedly expensive for visitors, it's not actually that bad for people who live and work there. Currency exchange rates are reallty bad at capturing these issues.

I've learned over the years not to subcontract important things out to lower staff. The success rate is very low. At least he got the blame for it and not you. Some companies I worked at, that would have ended up with me in trouble

Well, the thing is, I didn't delegate as such, the boss reassigned. But yeah, a crappy boss might have misassigned the blame!

[senso]

Next time, do us a favour and downscale the photos before posting them. The forum only displays a photo at around 1000 pixels wide, so having originals at 5k wide (7Mb a shot instead of perhaps 150Kb) is just a waste.

Further, it's generally accepted that it's preferable to actually upload to the forum rather than to link to your own content, so if your Google/Photobucket/Whatever account goes away then the content is still there in the thread for as long as the thread is there. (cf breakage caused by Photobucket's recent change in terms and conditions.)

Very hard to open them with paint, press resize, input new dimension, save as png, if still too big, go for jpeg..

notes, but re-sizing photos to fit into the forums limits is a royal pain. particularly as they are only .3mb over the limit.
i will look into doing it 'properly' however, just for you 

[Samogon]

Resizing photos is three mouse clicks operation. At least on windows OS

Open it in paint
Ctrl+w
Set widh 30% (keep aspect ratio is enabled by default)
Save as ... give it new name.

Linux
convert image.jpg -resize 600x400\> image.jpg

[macboy]

Next time, do us a favour and downscale the photos before posting them. The forum only displays a photo at around 1000 pixels wide, so having originals at 5k wide (7Mb a shot instead of perhaps 150Kb) is just a waste.

Further, it's generally accepted that it's preferable to actually upload to the forum rather than to link to your own content, so if your Google/Photobucket/Whatever account goes away then the content is still there in the thread for as long as the thread is there. (cf breakage caused by Photobucket's recent change in terms and conditions.)

notes, but re-sizing photos to fit into the forums limits is a royal pain. particularly as they are only .3mb over the limit.
i will look into doing it 'properly' however, just for you 

Yeah right, one user.
If I had opened this on mobile network instead of WiFi, I'd have used most of my monthly data just loading your ridiculous photos. The forum normally doesn't load any photos on mobile devices unless clicked, but you worked-around that with direct linking of absurdly large photos.

[little_grey]

to you and other Haters. Photos are now uploaded into the forum format.

and to whoever said, 'just save them in paint' you lied, lied terribly.

[tooki]

In all fairness, the customer probably wouldn't have had any way to know that the charger was to blame. And it's standard IT troubleshooting to swap things to isolate the fault -- it was just dumb luck that the charger was actually causing damage.

A 9-ball BGA blew its one ball away along with the pad on PCB, and the silicon WLCSP itself has discoloration (you won't have this for under 600C). I bet some magic smoke must have been released.

Probably true, but if the machine was off or asleep (and thus no fan running), I doubt the smoke would have made it out of the case immediately.

And people are oblivious anyway.

[mzacharias]

I'm still trying to crack the code of posting an image to this forum. I click on "attachments and other options" I click "Browse", navigate to my image, say, on my desktop. The file name appears where previously it said "No file selected" but no clue where to go from there.

I was able to post a couple pics a couple years ago, but don't remember now.

I've got a good one for this thread.

[Cerebus]

Probably true, but if the machine was off or asleep (and thus no fan running), I doubt the smoke would have made it out of the case immediately.

And people are oblivious anyway.

Also, not everybody recognises 'that' smell. You or I might be going "It smells like some electronics have blown or about to catch fire in here.", other people might just say "There was a peculiar smell in here earlier, but it's gone now.". Furthermore, some people have a very blunted sense of smell compared to others.

[tooki]

I'm still trying to crack the code of posting an image to this forum. I click on "attachments and other options" I click "Browse", navigate to my image, say, on my desktop. The file name appears where previously it said "No file selected" but no clue where to go from there.

Do that and then post the post. The image will upload as an attachment. To display it inline (which you should only do if absolutely necessary for clarity in a text), then you must take click the posted attachment to zoom it in, right-click to copy the URL of the image, then edit the post to add img tags with the image URL inside.

[mzacharias]

Here's one that came in my shop. I couldn't believe it. A Marantz 2325 butchered.

[GreyWoolfe]

Years ago, the father of a friend was working on cleaning out a building prior to renovation and found an old computer system, complete with 8" floppy drives, basically a station wagon (shooting brake for those on the other side of the pond)full of stuff.  He was playing with it and called me about a problem.  Turns out he had manhandled the AT power connectors on the motherboard in reverse and powered the beast up, magic smoke released.  When he asked if it was repairable, I said no.

By the way, I use Ifranview to resize any photos I post anywhere on the web.  Free and easy.

[tggzzz]

basically a station wagon (shooting brake for those on the other side of the pond)

I've never heard the term "shooting brake" until now! I'd have guessed a shooting brake would have been pulled by horses Estate car is the usual generic term in the UK, but most people would understand station wagon.

[little_grey]

its getting more common over here.
I thought for a while it was a particular style of estate car, but no, just sounds 'sexier' or something

[jmelson]

Sold 35 units of a $150 resolver to digital converter to a company.  The units run from a 5 V supply, it has 5 V written on the board, and all over the literature.  They tried one out on the bench, worked fine.  Then, they built the whole system and powered it up, smoke came out.  They had wired 30 of the units to 24 V DC.  Then they threw them all in a pile with the ones that had not been used yet.  They were NOT real happy, but all I could do was sort the fried ones from the unassaulted untis, and then make them another batch.

Jon

[schmitt trigger]

An internal user came in for a 6 amp fuse. I asked why, because users may not replace fuses themselves. He answered because the 2 amp fuses kept blowing. He tried the 4 amp fuse too, but that blew too.

Along these fuse stories, one customer required a 5 amp fuse, which he did not have.
What he DID have were 10 amp fuses.

You can guess what he did next: Wired a pair of 10 amp fuses in series!!

Because, you know, if you wire two equal-value caps in series, the total capacitance will be halved.  Fuses must behave the same, correct?

[mariush]

not quite "you or customer" but i posted it a while ago, this is the worst i've seen :

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/beginners/horrible-solder-job-buyer-wants-money-back-after-butchering-kit-with-his-skill/

[jmelson]

not quite "you or customer" but i posted it a while ago, this is the worst i've seen :

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/beginners/horrible-solder-job-buyer-wants-money-back-after-butchering-kit-with-his-skill/

OK, that IS pretty legendary!  I've seen bad soldering, but I'm actually impressed.  I never knew it could get THAT bad!

Jon

[StillTrying]

I'd forgotten about 'that kit'.    Reminds me of this https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/worst-pcb-ever/