Emergency Surgery

In this blog you will see that an electronic device can be saved from the rubbish heap even though it seems helpless.

We received a lift controller that had been hit by a hole saw when an employee tried to cut a hole next to it! It arrived with an IC that had all the legs on one side broken off and the others bent upwards from the force of it being ripped off the solder joints. Luckily the device was manufactured with minimal soldering so they came off easily enough. The tracks connected to some of the legs were ripped up and had to be located. Here is the picture,



What you can see in the pictures is the final result and while it looks rough, it is much better than a picture of a bin. The legs that were ripped off left behind a cross section off the leg flush with the surface so wires had to be soldered onto them and then bent over to connect with the rest of the available tracks. The wire on the top replaced the track next to it(bent over) which I could not follow because it went under the other IC and into a via. I used a multimeter on beep mode, because it was a multilayer board, and found it went to a few chips there so it must be some sort of enable. I didn't mention why I didn't replace the IC, well they are an obsolete item and would have to be bought in MOQ of $500 worth.

It took and hour to do but worked in the end and saved our customer many thousands of dollars to replace it. If you have an electrical item that has been damaged and you think it could be worth a look then don't hesitate to call us, it just may be worth it.