opening a shop in 3 weeks :)

[G.Beard]

I use heat proof glass that I stole from an old oven door. Spray it with IPA and wipe ready for the next board. I was silly enough to by oak surfaces...... The glass does it's job protecting

 

[iambehr]

My opinion is if you aren't looking to the future and transition from break fix to managed services and IT support you are going to run out of headroom to grow eventually anyway. Unless your market is huge you are not going to sustain a business on one type of repairs. You could probably stay in repair but you have to learn new things and branch out constantly or risk your core business going stagnant.
We personally have gotten heavily into printer repairs. It's not glamorous, but it's lucrative and opens the door in to so many businesses that wouldn't call back or give you the time of day if you tried sell them the hard way.

 

[gcain]

Don't you always need to evolve though? Repair won't "end" but it will definitely change. It will be come more specialised meaning the ones keeping up have less competitors.

I've been a programmer for over 15 years now, and have always had to evolve my methods and practices. Even changing languages to stay where the money is. That's part of business.

If you're standing still, you will be left behind in any industry.

Speaking of doing other repairs; I have done repairs on devices I didn't even know existed. Even soldered a bunch of jewellery the other day.

 

[Nick]

Don't you always need to evolve though? Repair won't "end" but it will definitely change. It will be come more specialised meaning the ones keeping up have less competitors.

I've been a programmer for over 15 years now, and have always had to evolve my methods and practices. Even changing languages to stay where the money is. That's part of business.

If you're standing still, you will be left behind in any industry.

Speaking of doing other repairs; I have done repairs on devices I didn't even know existed. Even soldered a bunch of jewellery the other day.

For the weird shit of this month I got:
-a steam console controller
-2 Nintendo Switch
-a Diesel car's water methanol injection control unit
-a fridge running Windows 10 (wtf)
-4 of these high voltage ionizing things I still don't know what they do

-2 blue ray players/headrest screen of a Mercedes
- the board of a drier machine
-a 1981 global radio which needed a new manual rebuilt coil

-a Garmin satnav of a fishing boat
-a vacuum tube radio for which I spent an whole entire day rebuilding the output transformer because there were none spare (that job alone paid my new car's alloy rims)

shit is fun. Repair is 20% of the job. The rest is finding stuff to fix and people willing to trust you

 

[Nick]

to the list add a bloody CRT. This thing is a touchscreen out of a 1981 CNC machine. a replacement costs 5000 bucks for the conversion so they decided to fix it. Bloody amazing

all because of a custom made propretary touch interface