Electronics troubleshooting with PCB boards

[brunofunchas]

I have situations in which I doubt if an electronic board is good on an industrial machine. Sometimes I have the possibility to test it on another machine, which is working well, to see if it's her's fault.

My question is if I should take the board that I have doubts and put it on a working machine or if I do the opposite, shoot a board of a good machine and put in the one that has failure to see if it resolves?

I ask this because sometimes I have to ask the customer to test boards and I am in doubt / I fear that I will have two machines broken!

How do you usually do it?

 

[Pjdd]

Yes, there's some possibility that a working machine may be damaged by swapping boards with a defective machine.

For example, the defective board may have been damaged by something else outside the board itself. If you fit a good board in that machine, it may also get damaged.

The reverse is also possible. The bad board may have damaged something else outside the board itself. If you fit it to a working machine, it could damage that machine too.

How likely is this to happen? It's impossible to say in a broad general sense. It depends on the nature of the board, the machine and the defect.

 

[ads-ee]

Think of this from a customer perspective.

If I had a technician onsite to service a machine and they take something out of a perfectly working machine to test if the board is bad or not and they damage that board I would be really pissed. If they took the "bad" board and put it in our perfectly working machine and the perfectly good machine ends up broken, I would be really pissed.

Basically if you touched our perfectly good machine to "test" stuff then as the customer I'd be pissed.

To be clear about this. Absolutely do not test using a customers working equipment. If you suspect the board tell the customer you need to take the board with you and will replace or fix it or if the board tests prove to be good, then you'll have to trouble shoot the machine, but never ever do anything that could damage a customers working piece of equipment.

 

[brunofunchas]

Thanks for the inputs!

I have to work on the safe side since my compnay it is only me! I can not afford paying breaking down a machine!

Just wanted to know if technicians swap electronic boards!

Thanks,

 

[ads-ee]

Just wanted to know if technicians swap electronic boards!

Some do, and I would probably complain to the company that sent them, in this case I would complain to the guy onsite as you would be both the technician and the guy in charge. ;-)