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I used to think board-level repair was a waste of time for modern phones
A customer brought in a water-damaged Pixel 6 last month and told me I was just swapping parts, not fixing things. He said, 'You're a parts changer, not a technician.' It stung, but he was right. I spent the next two weeks practicing microsoldering with a cheap hot air station. Yesterday, I replaced a single blown capacitor on an iPhone 13 logic board and saved the whole phone. It cost the customer $40 instead of $300 for a full swap. What's one piece of harsh feedback that actually made you better at this job?
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sage2863mo ago
My old boss said my soldering looked like a spider took up welding.
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the_julia3mo ago
That "spider took up welding" line is perfect. My first soldering job looked like a metal porcupine. I had so many cold joints and blobs of solder, the circuit board was basically a paperweight. The foreman just sighed and told me to watch him do it again.
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the_ruby2mo ago
Did your foreman at least show you the trick with the damp sponge? I've seen people turn out perfect joints for years but never clean their tip, and then wonder why it all goes wrong. That "metal porcupine" stage is basically a rite of passage, @the_julia. I swear some of my early boards looked less like circuits and more like modern art sculptures made of silver snot. The real test is whether you can look at that mess and actually figure out what you did wrong.
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