Ah, our little green friends…the printed circuit board. Taken for granted until they fail, circuit boards are key to the operation of virtually everything these days. So if you are suspicious, or even absolutely certain, that your circuit board is the problem, you may need some advice as well as circuit board repair or replacement.

Always remember the Electronic Axis of Evil: Moisture, Heat, and Dirt. If you can avoid these, your circuit boards will last longer.

Four Top Reasons For Circuit Board Failure and Tips to Identify The Problems & Causes:

1. Discrete Component Failure. (Includes capacitors, resistors, zener diodes, diodes, GALs, PALs, IC’s, Microprocessors, Driver Chips) Causes of failure: normal component aging, excessive heat, over or under voltage surges and sags, rises in ESR (equivalent series resistance) values, corrosion and drying (esp. of electrolytic capacitors). These problems can sometimes be visible to the naked eye such as blown/burned components or obvious corrosion, but usually these items need to be checked with meters.

2. Power Component Failure. (Includes transformers, transistors, IGBT modules, rectifiers).  Causes of failure: heat, over or under voltage, normal component aging. Some problems can be visible such as exploded components, or, more often, they could look perfectly good and require meter testing of each component.

3. Trace Damage. (These are the conductive pathways, tracks or signal traces etched from copper/silver coated sheets and laminated onto the non-conductive substrate) Causes of failure: power surges, lightning strikes, use of inappropriate acid core solder causing shorts, contamination such as metallic dust. Trace damage is often visible to the naked eye and can often, though not always, be repaired.

4. Physical damage - This is plain, old damage such as when your NASCAR-wannabe forklift driver skewers it like a sausage on a grill. Don’t think it doesn’t happen…we’ve seen it! This is sometimes repairable; replacement is often the only option.

Repairing printed circuit boards can be a bit like surgery: lots of testing, probing and prepping followed by precise repair work and retesting before the patient is ready to go back to work. The good news is, your board is most likely repairable.

Before it comes to that scenario, consider this:  We all know HEAT is the root of all evil when it comes to electronic equipment.   Add some MOISTURE and DIRT and you have the electronic axis of evil and disaster!

So, practice prevention first by:

-  keeping your electrical cabinets CLOSED

-  keeping your FANS  in good REPAIR

-  making sure those cabinent FILTERS are always CLEAN

Eventually, most drives will experience overcurrent alarms or deviation/function alarms.  Avoid swapping top boards to troubleshoot – yes, we know, many of you do this and it usually works out ok.  However, it’s a risky move.  Bad boards can blow the power modules which then blow the top boards and you end up with more than one machine down!  And you thought you were frustrated BEFORE! 

If you want, you can check for the correct base drive voltages on the top board without DC bus voltage.  This can help identify the location of the problem.  Call your OEM and find out how to check the power modules with an ohmmeter. 

If you are past the warranty date (you kept that information handy, right?) and need third-party service on your drive, send us your drive for fast and reliable drive repair.  We offer free evaluations, a warranty on both parts AND labor, rush services for emergencies, and excellent customer service.

Reliability was followed, in descending order, by quality, safety, maintenance, service, price, throughput, technology, noise, speed, and “green”.

Maintenance ranked 4th out of 11 so we know it’s pretty high on your list.  Nobody wants equipment that is difficult or excessively expensive to maintain.  Downtime is lost time and lost time is lost money.  

Save money in the long run by purchasing quality industrial electronic equipment with a good warranty.  And when that warranty runs out, or the OEM does not provide responsive service, send your repairs to a reliable expert. 

The ACS tech team is trained and experienced in the repair of virtually all types of industrial electronics including drives, PLCs, power supplies, controls, encoders, servo motors, CNC equipment, printed circuit boards, touch screens, stepper motors, CRT monitors, test equipment and more.  We service most brands including Yaskawa, Okuma and Mitsubishi.  Rush service is available upon request.

With the economy just beginning to climb out of the basement, saving money is a  high priority for all of us.  The pain of this recession will stick with us for a long while (I promise I will not get political here! That would be a whole ‘nother conversation.  LOL).  

So, let me reiterate the absolute necessity of repairing your existing electronic equipment whenever possible.  For a lot less money – sometimes as much as 75% less than the cost of new – you can repair.

OK, I know you’re busy.  Maybe you’ve got lots of equipment and weren’t sure whether the item was still under warranty (we can help track warranty information) or maybe you had 20 line operators hounding you for repair or replace decisions and it seemed way easier to just buy new that week (we can help solve this dilemma with our rush service).  

And have you taken a look at your shelves full of  “does not work” equipment with dust on them in your storage area?  We can repair most of that equipment. 

And if not, we can dispose of it properly so that you can rest assured that even if it was not repairable, you are still being environmentally responsible.  Environmental requirements being what they are today, this is not to be lightly dismissed.

As you have probably discovered, some OEM’s can be pretty twitchy about the warranty coverage.  (We’re not twitchy at all -you get a 12 month warranty on the whole unit, not just the repair!)

Repairing your equipment will reduce your overall expenses, keep you environmentally responsible by reusing, and will reduce your equipment inventory.  It’s all good and you can’t go wrong by going the electronic repair route. 

Check out our website at www.acsindustrial.com or call our customer service team directly at 800-605-6419 for more information.

You know, I could probably get a car repair for dummies book and learn to do all my own car repairs too…but why would I want to when “Joe” at my favorite auto repair shop here in Hunt Valley, Maryland is already an expert.  He can repair my car a lot faster and better than I can.  Plus, he’s already got all the equipment and parts handy.

Just like at ACS Industrial…we’ve already got the expertise, the equipment and all the parts handy.  And, if the parts for your repair are unusual and “unhandy”, we know where to get them fast.  We will save you time and money repairing your damaged electronics while you keep doing what you are good at.

So, stay balanced this year.  Send us your damaged electronics (electronic repair form) and let us repair it for you while you stay focused at work, or hit the gym, or play with the kids.   Time well spent!

I was just reading a friend’s notes and he made a great case for providing detailed information to your repair service provider.  Here at ACS, we request our customers describe the problem with their item when they send them in for evaluation. You probably could not begin to guess what our Top 5 repair descriptions were for 2009, so I will share them with you:

Top 5 Electronic Repair Descriptions for 2009

1. Does Not Work
2. Blank (as in nothing at all in the problem description box)
3. Dead
4. No output
5. Will not power up

Numbers 4 and 5 are fairly useful.  But 1, 2 and 3…well, they sure won’t fall into the “too much information” category!   We certainly don’t expect our customers to diagnose or repair their damaged electronic equipment – that’s our job!  But most of us would not go to the doctor and make him or her guess what our symptoms are – imagine how that would go!  More information helps us diagnose your equipment better too.

The diagnosis and repair process is faster and therefore less costly if we can provide our technicians with some description of the problem or what happened that prompted you to request repair service.

Here are some actual examples of helpful Problem Descriptions that came from real customers:

• This unit is an emergency (power out) light. Battery was hooked up backwards and now won’t work. Everything seems to check out okay except 2 items. Their numbers are: EUB0002B and TIP41B.
• Heard a loud pop, followed by a loss of +5V
• Units do not give good 5V and 15V readings
• The DeviceNet boards in 7 different drives burned the same exact way as this one. This board is from a Cutler Hammer SV9000 series drive.
• Motor continues to kick out or quit. Won’t keep running. When you enter a spindle drive command the motor stops.
• This is a KME VGA monitor from a MotionMaster CNC router with a Fagor 8050m controller. There is no display and the input to the monitor has been tested. We currently have a PC monitor hooked up and it works.
• This unit is for a fmc wheel balancer 2500. The machine lights up but I have no functions. I had someone look at it and test it they said it was the board, and recommended you guys (hey, I really like this one!!)

We understand that sometimes the person that actually fills out the ACS online repair form is given little or no information about what is wrong with an item being sent in for evaluation.  That’s ok too – we’ll figure it out.  But, a little background information can go a long way and we appreciate the information.

We will call ACS Industrial again when we need electronic repair services.  Their customer service team even got on the phone with us when we called during reinstallation to answer our questions. Three cheers for ACS Industrial Services!

We will call ACS Industrial again when we need electronic repair services.  Their customer service team even got on the phone with us when we called during reinstallation to answer our questions. Three cheers for ACS Industrial Services!

ACS repairs just about any industrial circuit board with highly experienced, expert technicians and fast service. Circuit boards that other repair houses return as unrepairable or beyond economical repair can often be repaired by our highly experienced tech team.

Your circuit boards are evaluated, repaired and returned to you in perfect working order and if your circuit boards cannot be repaired, you don’t pay. Thats right… YOU DON’T PAY ONE PENNY IF WE CANNOT FIX YOUR CIRCUIT BOARDS!

CNC circuit boards, PLC Circuit boards, and other circuit boards that are used in industrial equipment and machinery are our  business. The repair of your industrial circuit boards are covered by a comprehensive one year warranty. Please contact us at 800-605-6419. Email: service@acsindustrial.com so that we can be of service to you.  Or visit us at www.acsindustrial.com.  Our customer service team is ready to help you.