Electronic repair tips for beginners

But thankfully, most people have a set of tips, tricks and secrets of electronic repairs up their sleeves that can not only save you a ton of money, but also increase the longevity of your everyday gadgets. Let us take a look at some of them.

Have a pinch roller that is worn down? No need to worry any more, for you can temporarily fix it all by yourself at home. Take it and press the it between two fingers. Try to locate some radial cracks along the surface. Now you can use a very fine grain sandpaper of at least 1000. The next step involves taking the pinch roller with your fingers and rolling it on the sand paper on a surface, which is flat as well as hard. This movement of rotation of the pinch roller on the surface of the sandpaper has to be in the opposite direction to that of the translation, because if not, then the pinch roller will only roll without any actual effect.

One of the basics of electronic repair is building a VCR belt. This can be done at home using a tire tube from a bicycle. Depending on the kind of diameter that you require, you can either cut it in circular or any angular form. Unfortunately, this trick works only for those belts which are not timing sensitive, for instance, the loading tape belt.

One of the cardinal rules of electronic repair or even console repairs is to have completely clean and dried hands before even you start to touch the equipment. This is because our hands naturally contain a host of oils along with bacteria, sweat and dirt. If we touch a microchip or motherboards, there are chances of them sustaining some damage. Therefore, whenever handling chips, touch them along the edges and not the center.

When engaging yourself in some electronic repairs, be very careful so as not to touch the capacitor directly with your fingers or even any other conductors like a copper wire. This is because they store charge and you will experience a jolt on touching them. Therefore, just unplugging an electronic device before starting to work on them is not enough. In case you intend to change a capacitor, be sure to discharge it first. There is no fixed discharge time, it tends to vary from capacitor to capacitor and depends on their sizes.

Looking for a bad connection point in a circuit, but cannot seem to be able to find it? Try this simple trick, just take an old brush or even a toothbrush and run it across the board. This will push the bad connection into working in the circuit. This tip works extremely well on circuits with cold soldier joints.