Author Topic: What was your easiest repair ever?  (Read 62338 times)

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Offline TerraHertzTopic starter

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Re: What was your easiest repair ever?
« Reply #125 on: February 07, 2017, 12:03:55 am »
When I see street-tossed small office machines (photocopiers, etc) I usually grab them, generally to strip for fun and useful parts like polished steel shafts, motors, etc. The rest goes in the recycling bin.

Last week I found a small all-in-one type, a Samsung SCX-3405FW.  Scanner, copier, laser printer, FAX, ethernet & USB. It seemed surprisingly new and clean, like almost just out of the box. Virtually no dust even. I expected there must be something drastic wrong with it, and it would be just more parts.

Problems found: Very drastic indeed! Two tiny corners of torn paper stuck in the paper path. One only reachable by sliding out the drum cartridge. After removing them, it works perfectly. Absolutely clean copy images.

Total time to 'repair' - about 20 seconds, and no tools at all.

Possibly there may also have been a failure in the LCD screen backlight, if it's supposed to have one. Anyway, it's readable without.

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Online Messtechniker

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Re: What was your easiest repair ever?
« Reply #126 on: February 07, 2017, 07:43:46 am »
Firmware update in two minutes at no cost
on a Philips TV switching itself off an on
constantly in a 5 s cycle. Many such Philips TVs
seem to exhibit this behaviour suddenly for
reasons unknown. :palm:

Yours Messtechniker
« Last Edit: February 07, 2017, 10:41:15 am by Messtechniker »
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Offline SingedFingers

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Re: What was your easiest repair ever?
« Reply #127 on: February 07, 2017, 08:33:40 am »
Just had another one. Old Heath FET bench analogue meter described as untested no mains lead!

Cracked it open, replaced batteries. Sorted :)

(mains is optional on these)
« Last Edit: February 07, 2017, 08:37:09 am by SingedFingers »
 
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Offline Zeitkind

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Re: What was your easiest repair ever?
« Reply #128 on: February 07, 2017, 12:11:21 pm »
Loooong time ago, 24" CRT with calibration were quite expensive, about 4k Euro. Got a broken one, "not working, couldn't waste my time, take it!". Powered on, no picture. Opened the case, found a broken input selector switch.. bingo. :-DD
But.. 42kg..  :o
Don't turn it on - it will explode!
 

Offline tpowell1830

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Re: What was your easiest repair ever?
« Reply #129 on: February 07, 2017, 02:02:57 pm »

I just popped it back in, and screwed the case lid back on. Four screws. That was it. This is a really nice projector, very small, with lots of inputs, and even WiFi video input. Also the lamp is LEDs, so no short-lifetime HID lamp to fail.
In the pic showing it running I have the brightness turned down to the very lowest setting.

I had Sony 32" CRT TV and the screen suddenly had video noise all over. I walked over and slapped the case, and, voila, it worked fine for ten more years.
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Offline NottheDan

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Re: What was your easiest repair ever?
« Reply #130 on: February 07, 2017, 04:23:45 pm »
Colleague had borrowed an LM30 laser level to get started sorting out some site issues at our production plant related to drainage and was trying to get it to work. He had a fresh set of batteries, put them in, damn thing wouldn't turn on. He took the batteries out again, put them back in, tried again, still nothing. This kept continuing about a dozen times.
I admit, I wasn't much thinking about helping him sort it out but watching him the arrangement of the batteries in the compartment and what I saw from a glimpse if the conductors in the compartment cover (they are basically crossed with a small insulating washer in the centre, not larger than the width of the conductor so at a quick glance it looks like it is a single cross-shaped conductor) made me curious, so I grabbed it and had a closer look. And while I had it in my hand I scraped some corrosion off one of the contacts.
Well, what do you know, the next time he tried it turned on without any problem.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: What was your easiest repair ever?
« Reply #131 on: February 07, 2017, 04:47:52 pm »
Does a car count as equipment? Plenty of electronics. Well, I once had a Honda Accord and its Check Engine light came on. Pulled out the service manuals and based on the LED blink pattern on the ECU, the flow chart indicated a reboot to the ECU. Did that. Fixed. Problem never recurred. 8)

Laptop that wouldn't boot anymore. Removed dead battery. Booted and ran just fine thereafter.

Let's see, what else. A dead 27" computer monitor. Classic fix with a $0.29 capacitor.

Speaking of cars, back in 2000 I bought a Volvo 740 Turbo with a "bad engine" for $500. It had water in the oil, I found that the o-ring was missing off the dipstick. I changed the oil and installed a new o-ring, water never came back. It's still my daily driver 17 years later.

When it comes to electronics, I've had this sort of thing happen more times than I can count. Frequently I didn't even have to fix something, it simply started working once it was in my hands.
 

Offline SingedFingers

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Re: What was your easiest repair ever?
« Reply #132 on: February 07, 2017, 05:41:21 pm »
Those 740's are bomb proof. A friend had one with an oil leak. They reckon he drove it a hundred miles after all the oil had gone before he noticed. It did another 120k miles aftet that event before the timing belt went snap at 290k miles!
 

Offline CJay

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Re: What was your easiest repair ever?
« Reply #133 on: February 07, 2017, 09:15:00 pm »
Most cars will drive a surprisingly long way with no oil before they give up the ghost. They get a bit rattly if they've got hydraulic tappets but they carry on.


 

Offline james_s

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Re: What was your easiest repair ever?
« Reply #134 on: February 07, 2017, 09:18:37 pm »
The Volvo redblock motors have solid lifters, the design dates back to the mid 70s but it was very modern for its time and I'm always impressed by the robustness. Even if the timing belt breaks it's little more than an inconvenience, the 8 valve motors are of the non-interference design. I've changed a timing belt in my other car on the side of the road once.
 

Offline Cubdriver

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Re: What was your easiest repair ever?
« Reply #135 on: February 07, 2017, 09:54:37 pm »
Got an HP 5216A frequency counter from the 'bay a few months back.  Not counting, self test unresponsive, displaying all zeroes.  Discovered that the 'frequency standard' switch on the back panel was set to 'external', so it wasn't seeing the built in oscillator.  Flipped the switch to 'internal', and it's now operational.

 :-+

-Pat
If it jams, force it.  If it breaks, you needed a new one anyway...
 

Offline bitseeker

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Re: What was your easiest repair ever?
« Reply #136 on: February 07, 2017, 10:00:16 pm »
Got an HP 5216A frequency counter from the 'bay a few months back.  Not counting, self test unresponsive, displaying all zeroes.  Discovered that the 'frequency standard' switch on the back panel was set to 'external', so it wasn't seeing the built in oscillator.  Flipped the switch to 'internal', and it's now operational.

D'oh! Lucky guy.
TEA is the way. | TEA Time channel
 

Offline SingedFingers

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Re: What was your easiest repair ever?
« Reply #137 on: February 07, 2017, 11:09:44 pm »
I love those ones. Similar with my scope. The seller stuck it in X-Y mode because he didn't know how to use it and it looked like it wasn't sweeping. Was fine.
 

Offline Cubdriver

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Re: What was your easiest repair ever?
« Reply #138 on: February 07, 2017, 11:42:18 pm »
Got an HP 5216A frequency counter from the 'bay a few months back.  Not counting, self test unresponsive, displaying all zeroes.  Discovered that the 'frequency standard' switch on the back panel was set to 'external', so it wasn't seeing the built in oscillator.  Flipped the switch to 'internal', and it's now operational.

D'oh! Lucky guy.

Indeed.   ;D  Though the 3450B now on the bench is more than making up for the ease of 'repairing' the 5216A.   |O

I'll get the 5216A teardown and cleanup pics into a thread one of these years...

-Pat
If it jams, force it.  If it breaks, you needed a new one anyway...
 

Offline MarvinTheMartian

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Re: What was your easiest repair ever?
« Reply #139 on: February 08, 2017, 01:06:19 am »
Got an HP 5216A frequency counter from the 'bay a few months back.  Not counting, self test unresponsive, displaying all zeroes.  Discovered that the 'frequency standard' switch on the back panel was set to 'external', so it wasn't seeing the built in oscillator.  Flipped the switch to 'internal', and it's now operational.

 :-+

-Pat
As Monty Python would say "You lucky, lucky  bastard!"

Deeply envious!   :clap:
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Offline Robomeds

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Re: What was your easiest repair ever?
« Reply #140 on: February 08, 2017, 05:27:06 am »
I had a recent one.  Bought a Fluke 73-3 listed as not working.  Turns out the springy part of the 9V battery's terminal was bent open a bit too much.  Squeezed the battery's terminal a bit and it now fit tightly on the meter.  All is well!
 

Offline CatalinaWOW

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Re: What was your easiest repair ever?
« Reply #141 on: March 02, 2017, 12:59:39 am »
Got an HP 5216A frequency counter from the 'bay a few months back.  Not counting, self test unresponsive, displaying all zeroes.  Discovered that the 'frequency standard' switch on the back panel was set to 'external', so it wasn't seeing the built in oscillator.  Flipped the switch to 'internal', and it's now operational.

 :-+

-Pat

Just had the same thing myself.  An HP 5359A, no display, power on didn't test display or show error codes.  About to do some serious debugging when I found the switch position.  You would think lacking a reference oscillator would merit an error code, but not on these machines.
 

Online edpalmer42

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Re: What was your easiest repair ever?
« Reply #142 on: March 02, 2017, 01:42:15 am »
A few years ago I picked up an EIP 545A 18 GHz counter.  It worked on the lower two ranges, but not on the 1 GHz+ range.  Turned out you had to connect the internal cables to the right connectors!  Who knew?  ::)  Plugged the cables into the right jacks, realigned the YIG filter, which the same idiot probably misaligned, and it works fine!

Ed
 

Online edpalmer42

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Re: What was your easiest repair ever?
« Reply #143 on: March 02, 2017, 01:48:24 am »
Two other easy ones that had similar faults:

I bought an HP 6622A dual output power supply, "tested & working".  Right.  So why was one output dead?  Turns out that the output terminal strip is only held in place by the solder joints.  Rather sleazy for HP.  Resoldered the joints and the dead channel came to life.

I picked up a GW GOM-801G milliohm meter.  It goes down to 20 milliohms full scale, 0.01 milliohm resolution.  Totally dead.  The IEC power jack is soldered into the board.  Three connections.  Guess how many broken solder joints there were?  Yup.  Three.

Ed
 

Offline CJay

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Re: What was your easiest repair ever?
« Reply #144 on: March 02, 2017, 07:35:00 am »
Got an HP 5216A frequency counter from the 'bay a few months back.  Not counting, self test unresponsive, displaying all zeroes.  Discovered that the 'frequency standard' switch on the back panel was set to 'external', so it wasn't seeing the built in oscillator.  Flipped the switch to 'internal', and it's now operational.

 :-+

-Pat

Just had the same thing myself.  An HP 5359A, no display, power on didn't test display or show error codes.  About to do some serious debugging when I found the switch position.  You would think lacking a reference oscillator would merit an error code, but not on these machines.

Caused me some grief on a Racal counter too, that at least displayed random gibberish on the LEDs but it turns out the entire counter is run from the reference oscillator so if that's not present you get nothing.
 

Offline bibz

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Re: What was your easiest repair ever?
« Reply #145 on: March 02, 2017, 07:20:38 pm »
Canon L 16-35mm II lens. Auction said it had taken a fall and the autofocus motor had broken. Took a punt at 300 thinking worse case have some manual focus fun then resell as broken if I couldn't fix it.

Lens arrives, flick the mf-af switch. AF is perfect, lens is still aligned and well. Had a bit of fun and got 900 for it  :-+
 
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Offline snik

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Re: What was your easiest repair ever?
« Reply #146 on: November 07, 2017, 10:05:49 am »
Today was my easiest repair. I shot a Basetech BT-305 at eBay as a malfuntion returns product for 15€ with no Voltage at Output.

I open the case and look at the pictures what was the fault ... :

 

Offline Kilo Tango

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Re: What was your easiest repair ever?
« Reply #147 on: November 07, 2017, 10:42:47 am »
I think my easiest repair was :

Bought a 40" Toshiba TV, symptom no picture, thinking backlight maybe, its worth a go.

It was indeed dead, no response to anything. I think tosh TV's have a 2 year guarantee on them, so I contacted Toshiba, gave them the serial number and asked the question, but they came back saying no its out of the 2 year period. OK so I opened it up and like so many other TV's around it is made by an outfit in somewhere like poland, and the manufacturing date label was still stuck onto the PCB and it wasn't 2 years old. So I emailed Toshiba attaching a photo of the manufacturing label, and a very nice man came and picked it up, special box and everything and Tosh repaired it for free !.  :-+

It s nice if you can get someone else to do all the work !

Ken
 

Offline chhrisedwards

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Re: What was your easiest repair ever?
« Reply #148 on: November 07, 2017, 12:48:22 pm »
Every repair is easy, only you need practice and experience in repairing, then every repair is like a twitch.
 

Offline GreyWoolfe

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Re: What was your easiest repair ever?
« Reply #149 on: November 07, 2017, 01:23:08 pm »
The easiest repair just became my HP 3466A DMM.  The function indicator LEDs didn't match the function selection.  Contact cleaner in the gang switches and some vigorous button pushing fixed it.  A nice meter for $30 USD.  Could this even be considered a repair?  Or simply a bit of maintenance.
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