How pedantic are you about noting everything you do to a board?

[Paul Daniels]

With all my repairs, I tend to run the microscope and bench camera via OBS to capture everything I do, for internal purposes.

Does anyone bother to note down each and every part they replace as they do it, or do they find ( as I do ) that it's a bit too disruptive to the process of fault finding?

As a second point/question, often I have wholesalers asking for a run down on what was wrong; does anyone bother to list out specifics, or simply write it up as "component level board repair" ?

Mostly used to dealing with end-consumers, so "CLBR" is good enough but I'm finding wholesalers frequently seek for more.

 

[MUUK]

Hi Paul, I do tend to note down what i replace, along with any other things of note such as previous rework simply in case of warranty return so i know what i have done if needed many months later. I often simplify to "LP8550 and surrounding" for example but it has helped me in the past when a machine has come back or even if customers walk in / phone calls occur and i forget where i was. I have two notes fields, one internal one external and the external one prints on the receipt so that the customer has a record too. (like the 11" air last week which a previous store had reflowed the SMC and heat gunned the CPU when in fact it was one resistor near the clock chip - as such the customer had copies of what was done before and what i did). I suppose it depends on your volume - board repair is a welcome addition to what we do but is not yet a mainstay (working on it!).

 

[JohnB8812]

I usually notate what fixed it but I don’t mark each cap and resistor UNLESS I remove tons of nasty shit and I know I won’t remember which ones I did without writing it down.

 

[Nick]

I note down everything i do on a board for warranty purposes, the management tool we use for our costumers has lot of space for that stuff. plus it helps seeing what are the most profitable repairs considering time used and replacements (especially for industrial boards). although I am not the one writing all down in it, I just dictate it to the store front guy who types it down so I guess it is cheating because I don't have to waste time writing it down myself.
If i have a boardview or schematic i usually get down just the components code, if it is a board of which I got nothing I don't bother.
Most customers don't care for what i replaced as long as it works, usually the ones who want a rundown of everything are macbook owners who got refered to come to my shop by other people or that came already knowing what could be wrong but feared fixing it themselves. funny enough the factories for which I usually repair boards (80% of the times they are motor speed controllers) do not care at all what was fixed, I thought they could be the ones more prone of asking me a full rundown but nope, zero question asked just gimme the board.

 

[Atomrepair]

I create a folder for each board repair and store images and an excel in there. The excel has all information about the repair: what the customer told me, what I found during visual inspection, how the device behaves while with me and all replaced components and other repairs. Measurements go in there too. My memory is terrible, so if I don't write that stuff down I'm going to be questioning myself at every turn.
Its nice to be able to show and/or explain to people what I actually did (not nearly all customers are interested in that, but I do get them) and I like having a database of repairs I can look back to in case I end up stuck on a repair I may have already done. This forum is a better source for that most of the time, but not always. All this takes a fair bit of time, but its great to be able to look back at what I did (and why) if a board ends up coming back.

 

[Paul Daniels]

My memory is terrible

Interesting comment to make, and goodness knows I feel the same way multiple times every day, I even forget what I did to customer machines from the morning by the afternoon. I don't think it's bad memory per`se, rather it's just a case of it's utterly infeasible for "standard humans" to retain that level of information for any duration other than for that which it is absolutely required, your brain will choke otherwise. Clearly there's _some_ people who can recall such things from 6 years ago on demand, but I'm referring to "the norm".