Paul,
As a serviceman of things Electronic, what would be your staple equipment that you repair?.
We have only 1 Electronics technician here in town and I have heard so many nasty comments about him, it makes me think.
After I get settled again, I'd like to settle into a job that is relatively easier than climbing poles and so forth.
I can repair radio's,TV's, Stereos and VCR's but the question is Paul, how do you make a living doing it?.
Are you based at home or do you do most of your work at your customers places?.
Do you have a van with a lot of parts in it?
I'm well known around here as an Electrician/Faultsman (mainly for cutting people's power off), but I'd like to get into Service work.
Any thoughts Paul?.

[This message has been edited by Trumpy (edited 09-17-2005).]

As a technician myself I can't help but input to this one. Back when I was a student I used to make a bit of pocket money doing repairs on everything from washing machines to TV sets. I didn't need to advertise as word of mouth was sufficient. Then I ended up being employed full time by a technical college, intially specialising in RF work, but eventually branching out back into general service work, which covers everything from computer peripherals, lab instruments, to domestic appliances and power tools. Yes, servicing domestic appliances and electronic gear is less physically demanding, (except for lifting TV sets which has given me a crook back) but there's plenty of times I'd rather be doing house wiring, TV aerial installations, or phone/data cabling.
Unfortunately servicing is becoming less of an income earner compared to what it used to be. For example; even the cost of a belt replacement in a VCR is enough to make some people think twice when you can now buy a new one for not more than $100.
With CD players, if it's the laser which costs around $50 (for the laser itself) again they often don't want it fixed. And a lot of CD player faults are laser based.
With televisions, it's usually the predictable blown up power supply or line output stage. The economics of repair are somewhat better; esp. for large screen sets.
With a lot of modern gear, mainly portable stuff, is the joys of surface mount components. Capacitors and resistors aren't a problem, but something like a 100 pin IC really requires an expensive rework station to replace it. And when you get into Eproms used in some TV's and monitors things can get awkward. Having said that, those sorts of faults are in the minority. The worst thing about servicing is the dreaded intermittent fault, and the service job that bounces. Fortunately in my line of work I don't have to deal with irate customers who can't understand these things; if the item is becoming a pain in the arse to repair it gets written off and replaced.
Parts and service manuals aren't what they used to be either. Most manufacturers now want you to get parts through one of their agents. The days of just wandering up to the front counter of well known maufacturers and asking for a photocopy of a circuit diagram, or parts are pretty much gone. Fortunately, here in Australia there is a well known company that has collected most service manuals that have been released and they are available for rental. There are also a few suppliers of generic replacement parts which are cheaper than the original and usually are just as good.
Test gear is something that needs to be invested in also; mine had been built up over the last 20 years or so as I've needed it, or been given it.
Few suburban TV repair shops remain; and as their owners retire that's the end of them.
The amount of people with electronic skills has decreased markedly...how many people know how to build a crystal radio these days? Once upon a time many kids at least had a go at trying to build one.
It's not all doom and gloom though; most faults are obvious and easily fixed. There is of course demand for things like teaching people how to use their modern, non user friendly, audio visual gear. Installing home theatre sytems, setting up home networks and upgrading PC's are other things with a good future. With retro things being in vogue, I get a lot of demand for restoring vintage electronic gear. People are happy to pay quite a lot of money for say, restoring their first B&W TV set from the 50's, a radio for their vintage car, or connecting up their bakelite telephone. Working with valve based gear is a very specialised area these days with few having the skills.
I avoid servicing on site unless the fault is blatantly obvious and easily repaired. Nothing is as good a quiet bench with your test gear away from the customer. Besides, you can only guess at what parts you'll need and it's the one you didn't bring that you need.
One thing is for sure, the variety of work keeps the job interesting.

I'm getting better with Electronics repairs.
I'm taking my hat off to PaulUK for getting me set up with an Oscilloscope and knowing how to use it.
I have a signal Injector, an AF Generator and an RF Generator.
I also have an AF Amplifier to trouble-shoot stuff here.
Knowing what you are hearing is a bonus too.

That's pretty much covered the main factors.

Repair of run-of-the-mill domestic TVs, VCRs, radios, etc. has pretty much come down to just doing them for friends and neighbors these days. Even then it's mostly just the simple and obvious faults: Replace the belts, clean and adjust;fit new power transistors in the chopper supply; that kind of thing which doesn't take much tracking down and is cheap to do.

Once it gets to worn out video heads or a blown up LOPT (line output transformer) the cost of just obtaining the parts is often more than someone is willing to pay. They can go to the supermarket and get a "throw-away" VCR for £40 with a 2-year warranty. Sure, it's Chinese garbage, but hey, it's cheap Chinese garbage.

Those old TV repair shops have vanished here too. The economics of repair vs. replace coupled with the horrendous increase in the costs and bureaucracy of running a business here just made them unviable.

As Aussie said, restoring old equipment has become quite fashionable these days. It's amazing to think that the sort of 1950s radios which are now highly sought after were the sort that when I was a kid in the 1970s you could pick up for 50 pence at the church jumble sale because nobody wanted them!

If you can get enough work like that, people are willing to pay quite a decent amount for good repair/restoration work, especially as even the supposed whiz-kids now have almost zero-idea about how valve/tube circuitry works.

Commercial is also a field to look into, such as working on VHF PMR sets (Private Mobile Radio). People are generally more prepared to pay decent amounts for installation/repair work on these.

You have to be ready to look into all sorts of diverse fields these days.


[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 09-17-2005).]

Thanks Paul and Aussie240,
I've alwys have a thing for fixing Electronic things but on the other side of the coin, turning that into a paying business is a totally different thing guys.
Thanks a heap for your advice, it's more or less just a hobby to me, and by the sounds of things it should stay that way!.

Paul,
I have an elderly 15" CTV here that has worked with a great picture and good colour for years, I bought it when I first started my time with the local PoCo, when they had a retail shop.
Anyway, It's probably worth about NZ$5 now, but it still works and I watch it every night before I go to sleep.
We've certainly gone backwards from where we were.
It's all very well to say I'm going to go into business, but you have to have customers.
Blast!!.

I'm sure that progress has slipped into reverse somewhere along the way.

Sure, we have equipment which offers all manner of facilities and gizmos, but some of the basic construction these days is just terrible, and is another factor which is making repair a less viable option much of the time.

I had a look at a neighbor's TV a week or two ago -- a wide-screen Philips model. Once the rear cover (itself rather flimsy) was removed almost everything inside was just hanging by one edge, flapping around on its mountings and straining PC boards and connectors.

It was a job in itself to be able to prop the now back-less set in a position where it would sit without putting pressure on the main board and where I could get at it to make tests.

A perfect example of flimsy construction (and a bodged installation) is a 26" Panasonic I had to look at a few months back. It was mounted on one of those mounting brackets that clamps around the set cabinet and is attached to the ceiling (it's in a security office used for CCTV). Problem was short cables put a strain on the RCA video input socket causing a fractured joint. Easy run of the mill job to sort out I thought. To make things easy I thought I'd just climb up a ladder, take the back off, and resolder the socket. Well, upon undoing the last screw and withdrawing the back, I looked in horror as the front part of the set cabinet concaved inwards and the whole lot fell forward and toppled out of the bracket, bouncing against the gyprock wall, leaving a hole, and coming to rest on the floor beneath about eight feet below.
Whoever installed this had simply tightened the clamp around the set, relying on the slight deformation of the cabinet preventing it slipping out. The cabinet should have been secured with small screws in the holes provided.
The CRT survived the fall and suprisingly had perfect convergance and purity once I fixed the broken PCB (the usual corner where the LOPT is took all the force). My luck was short lived however as I'd forgotten to link a broken track which subsequently killed the whole thing when I applied pressure to the board. They replaced the set.
Cabinet design of modern sets is just pathetic. Once upon a time you could pile sets five high and stand on the cabinet.

Oops! Somehow I've never really trusted those brackets and mounting arms which have become common in some places these days.


Don't you just hate all the modern designs in which the soldered joints are the only thing supporting the socket? It's bad enough when you know about this lazy construction method and thus go gently with connections, but the strain they're under from the average Joe who just jams the plugs in sure takes its toll.


Ah.... The old early-sixties Decca TV my family owned when I was a kid. Now that was a cabinet!

We have a very old tv cabinet, 1949, with doors which hid the 9" screen. This was a must back then, as having a tv was seen as very bad taste.
I gutted the set in the early seventies, when 425 went off and we keep our best china in it, as it is a beautifully made piece of cabinetmaking.

ps. Been away on a short vacation again! Went to les Sables d'Oleron on the Atlantic coast for 4 days, fantastic food and sunshine, but specifically to spend all day Sunday at the 2005 Festival Vendée Cheval at the Haras Nationale at La Roche sur Yon ( the National French Stud, housing the finest stallions of all breeds in France ), to see l'École Royale Andalouse d'Art Équestre de Jerez, putting their Lusitanien horses through 2 and a half hours of excellence. My head is still spinning! Unforgettable!
http://www.realescuela.org

Parked in the street right outside for free all day, because being France, all the carparks were shut ("It's Sunday M'siuer, park where you like!!")

Alan

PS it's on again in 2007. In 2003 it was the
French Garde Républicaine. Who knows, next time it may be the Spanish Riding School of Vienna!


[This message has been edited by Alan Belson (edited 09-26-2005).]

[This message has been edited by Alan Belson (edited 09-26-2005).]

Guys,
Is it just me, or is TV manufacture down to a formula these days? (just like music)
It may have been this way for years going by the chassis' I've seen.
Power supply on the rear left (looking from the back), audio and video in the centre.
LOPT and EHT to the right?.
Just wondering.

Trumpy, I think you're absolutely correct, and it goes to show how 'conditioned' I am, the fact I never queried why.

Part of the reason for the power supply section being on the left when viewed from the back may be because people expect the controls (including switches) to be on the right, and things got fitted in round that.

Interesting observation...that chassis layout has been around since the 50's. In fact I'm trying hard to think of any set, valve or solid state that doesn't have the EHT bits on the right rear corner. I think we can say that the reason for EHT and power transformers being along the back is simply to allow less of a gap between the PCB or chassis and the bottom of the CRT. Being along the edge is obviously better from a weight distribution point of view, but why is the EHT always on the right? Interesting question. As far as a 'formula' for the electrical design there aren't any radical designs these days....like the Sony seperate EHT and line output stages of the 70's. Philips' combined switchmode PSU and line output stage they played around with in the 80's, and who remembers Sony with their unique PAL decoder to avoid paying royalties to Telefunken? Instead of reversing the R-Y every second line, it stored and released the R-Y from the previous non inverting line instead. It could be said that the colour definition was therefore effectively halved. Also, a manual phase or hue adjustment was required like NTSC sets. Nevertheless, it did work very well. And of course was RCA's thyristor line output which allowed the first fully solid state colour sets. Today's robot built sets coming from one or two Asian factories and supplying the world market are in comparison quite boring and predictable.

Ahh so it's not just me that has picked this up?.
I'm sort of thinking that maybe it has something to do with cooling.
As in, keeping the EHT gear and the power transformer away from the tube would help keep the radiated heat (and magnetic fields) away from the degaussing coils and the yoke coils?.

Hmmm..... You've got me thinking now. I'll have to dig out some old service sheets tonight see if I can come up with anything.

Murphy was a British manufacturer noted for often coming up with "odd" ways of doing things, so those sets might be worth a look.

The controls down the right-hand side convention may well have contributed to the layout. For example, once varicap tuning came along the channel selector could have been placed almost anywhere in relation to the actual tuner, but before then the tuner was normally fitted right behind the controls, for obvious reasons. With the tuner(s) on the left, as viewed from behind, it would then make sense for the I.F. stages to be close by, and so on, down the chain.


Again, I'm pretty sure some of the earlier Murphy sets (possibly others too) did this in the early 50s. The EHT in some of those could be quite lethal -- Literally.


I don't remember that one. What sort of time period was this?

By the time you add the delay line to store the non-inverted R-Y, it seems you might just as well have gone with a conventional PAL decoder, but I suppose it depended how much they would have been saving in fees.

I don't know about Australian models as color didn't arrive there until later, but some of the earlier color receivers in Britain were the PAL-S type. They had the R-Y inversion synched to the swinging color burst as usual, but no delay line, so they just relied on a visual averaging between lines to cancel out any phase errors.