How I became a soldering iron
One friend worked as a technical specialist at the regional Internet provider near St. Petersburg. In the afternoon on the phone at home (tech support), in the evening - visits to customers. Being an inquisitive person, savvy in electronics and generally a geek, he, when setting up the Internet for clients, sometimes took it upon himself to fix the client’s laptop. Familiar? I think many here. Gradually, he learned how to repair not only computers, but also smartphones, and other hardware. And it became clear that another profession may appear, bringing even more income than the main job.
The article scorches professional chips from a service engineer or a “soldering iron” who works at home in slippers on his device, chooses clients to his taste and collects all the revenue for himself.
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About universities and technical schools here we will not go, because the article we have about the nugget soldering iron, which either has this small business in parallel with the main work for his uncle, or is about to go into free swimming. Issues of taxation, the organization of a legal entity or individual entrepreneur will also remain behind the scenes, since they are not the subject of the article.
rom.by
No matter how trite, but about the basics of electrics and electronics you can find a lot of information in Wikipedia. It is also useful to read textbooks on repairing power supplies and circuitry (one of them is given at the end of the article). Basically, everything is understood during experiments with peeping on exciting issues on the forums:
notebook1.ru
rom.by
espec.ws
vlab.su
GSM forum
W3bsit3-dns.com
easyelectronics.ru
The equipment must be at least 200 000 - 300 000 rubles. Although the minimum set (without bga soldering) can reach 70 thousand. It is clear that at the beginning of the experience no one invested in serious tools, since the professional level is still low. Boards are soldered on the knee, the desktop is combined simultaneously with computer and dining, and so on. But if you seriously go to the customers, and not just repair the htc-patches of friends once a month, you need good equipment and a convenient workplace , and this (in descending order of importance):
Most of the infrared soldering stations can be easily bought second-hand on Avito, but before buying you need to thoroughly examine the issue on the Internet. Buying the rest of the staff better in well-established stores such as Chip and Dip , Profi (Siriust). As well as in the technology markets (in St. Petersburg this is the famous Juno) and on Aliexpress (Except for the chips! A lot of remarks and reballs). It is better to take chips on partsdirect.ru and for Peter - chipbuk.ru .
chipbuk.ru
Before the start of repairing expensive customer equipment, you must have at least a minimum level of professional training:
It would seem that a competent rule, acting in any business niche and any service sector. Why not just remember him here too? It was not there. The overwhelming percentage of customers do little (to put it mildly) in engineering in general and computers / phones in particular. Plus, quite often (yes constantly!) There are people who find it extremely difficult to explain on their fingers what happened to their device and what are the ways of its treatment. That is, you explain to them about cooling, thermal expansion of metals, about chips that do not like overheating and subsequently fail, but they look at you as an alien, saying “pi-pi-pi-piu” and nothing more.
And you think: “Well, what are you so stupid, the 21st century is in the yard, well, I say the elementary things, I chewed everything”. Many have long to prove that prevention is cheaper, but now repairs cost 6,000 rubles (some immediately refuse). There are those who think that they are frankly deceived. True, this is not unreasonable: there are a bunch of charlatans, including the so-called “warmers”, who use the diagnostic measure of short-term heating of the chip chip as a “repair” method and remove several thousand rubles from the client; The warmed-up chip works from several days to several months, but in the end it inevitably fails.
If the client, for his part, begins to pump the customer’s rights from the “customer is always right” series and why it’s so long in general, then you feel how an animal growl grows from the depths of the body, which will result in rudeness (and this is unprofessional) or in personal stress - accumulated fatigue - daily beer - belly - alcoholism. The solution in this case is indicated in the subtitle above: do not look at the client, as at r ..., but look at the person who turned to you for a solution to the problem only because he himself does not understand anything about it. Precisely because you are a service. And the things that seem elementary to you, for him is a dark forest.
Danny Trejo looks at the client as if he were ...
Better from the beginning everything is calm and explained in great detail (by analogy with medicine - by the collegial method). Or imagine that you are a doctor, and in front of you is a child who needs to pull out a tooth. It is polite and almost affectionate to explain the order of actions, methods of decisions and variants of results (pastoral method). It is these approaches that will provide a stream of grateful customers who will choose you, and not a service at the metro, and which will create you a good word of mouth.
Yes, there is still such a temptation: if the client does not understand the question, then it is possible to replace something indiscriminately somewhere with profit for yourself. The path is initially slippery in every sense: both in terms of personal karma, and because the truth in most cases will still come to the surface. For reputation this is terrible. We must try to communicate with the client as transparently and honestly as possible. And before very difficult repairs to warn of a possible failure of the device - this will save from the charges “You did worse than it was and you broke everything, pay,” and give solidity in the eyes of the client: they take care of him, warn him from the height of experience (you can change your mind and go to the service with a guarantee). Speaking of warranty. Good move: to give the client a personal verbal guarantee that, if anything, I will redo it. But only in that case, of course, if the breakdown came due to the fault of the engineer.
The same board in the process of straightening after the service
The article scorches professional chips from a service engineer or a “soldering iron” who works at home in slippers on his device, chooses clients to his taste and collects all the revenue for himself.
')
Where to study
About universities and technical schools here we will not go, because the article we have about the nugget soldering iron, which either has this small business in parallel with the main work for his uncle, or is about to go into free swimming. Issues of taxation, the organization of a legal entity or individual entrepreneur will also remain behind the scenes, since they are not the subject of the article.
rom.by
No matter how trite, but about the basics of electrics and electronics you can find a lot of information in Wikipedia. It is also useful to read textbooks on repairing power supplies and circuitry (one of them is given at the end of the article). Basically, everything is understood during experiments with peeping on exciting issues on the forums:
notebook1.ru
rom.by
espec.ws
vlab.su
GSM forum
W3bsit3-dns.com
easyelectronics.ru
Where to get soldering stations and other stuff
The equipment must be at least 200 000 - 300 000 rubles. Although the minimum set (without bga soldering) can reach 70 thousand. It is clear that at the beginning of the experience no one invested in serious tools, since the professional level is still low. Boards are soldered on the knee, the desktop is combined simultaneously with computer and dining, and so on. But if you seriously go to the customers, and not just repair the htc-patches of friends once a month, you need good equipment and a convenient workplace , and this (in descending order of importance):
- Multimeter
- Oscilloscope
- ESR Tester (desirable but not necessary)
- Laboratory power supply
- Actually soldering stations: to start a soldering iron + thermoair soldering station, and later (if you want to solder bga) - infrared
- POST cards
- Programmer and a set of "beds" under the chip
- Fluxes, solder paste, solders, board cleaners (liquid) and other useful chemistry
- Different sets of hand tools
- Vice
- Drill (it is desirable for case works, also allows to cut interlayer short circuit on the board)
- Good lighting
- Hood in order not to breathe harmful evaporation of fluxes and solders (airing during soldering at the infrared station is prohibited, since the thermal profile may not work out as it should)
- Comfortable armchair
- Microscope
- Storage systems
- Large table and a lot of shelves. The table can be hung on chains so that the table legs do not interfere and there is free space: cleaning is so simplified and storage systems can be placed.
- Have a lot of training circuits, do not experiment on the client. You can buy 500 p. Avito faulty, diagnose and pick (for the test you need at least several different processors)
- BGA Wizard Set: special vice, a set of different stencils for reballing, solder paste and lead balls of different diameters, a spatula, an eraser, a brush.
Most of the infrared soldering stations can be easily bought second-hand on Avito, but before buying you need to thoroughly examine the issue on the Internet. Buying the rest of the staff better in well-established stores such as Chip and Dip , Profi (Siriust). As well as in the technology markets (in St. Petersburg this is the famous Juno) and on Aliexpress (Except for the chips! A lot of remarks and reballs). It is better to take chips on partsdirect.ru and for Peter - chipbuk.ru .
chipbuk.ru
Before the start of repairing expensive customer equipment, you must have at least a minimum level of professional training:
- have an idea of ​​the work of radio components (resistor, capacitor, transistor, diode, etc.)
- be able to read schematic diagrams
- be able to use the measuring tool
- have an idea of ​​the principle and sequence of launching a laptop
- be able to solder chips in various packages (DIP, QFP, PLCC, BGA, etc.)
- commonplace care (to examine the board for the presence of darkening, oxides, deformations, missing elements)
- be able to competently google.
Do not look at the client, as in the city ...
It would seem that a competent rule, acting in any business niche and any service sector. Why not just remember him here too? It was not there. The overwhelming percentage of customers do little (to put it mildly) in engineering in general and computers / phones in particular. Plus, quite often (yes constantly!) There are people who find it extremely difficult to explain on their fingers what happened to their device and what are the ways of its treatment. That is, you explain to them about cooling, thermal expansion of metals, about chips that do not like overheating and subsequently fail, but they look at you as an alien, saying “pi-pi-pi-piu” and nothing more.
And you think: “Well, what are you so stupid, the 21st century is in the yard, well, I say the elementary things, I chewed everything”. Many have long to prove that prevention is cheaper, but now repairs cost 6,000 rubles (some immediately refuse). There are those who think that they are frankly deceived. True, this is not unreasonable: there are a bunch of charlatans, including the so-called “warmers”, who use the diagnostic measure of short-term heating of the chip chip as a “repair” method and remove several thousand rubles from the client; The warmed-up chip works from several days to several months, but in the end it inevitably fails.
If the client, for his part, begins to pump the customer’s rights from the “customer is always right” series and why it’s so long in general, then you feel how an animal growl grows from the depths of the body, which will result in rudeness (and this is unprofessional) or in personal stress - accumulated fatigue - daily beer - belly - alcoholism. The solution in this case is indicated in the subtitle above: do not look at the client, as at r ..., but look at the person who turned to you for a solution to the problem only because he himself does not understand anything about it. Precisely because you are a service. And the things that seem elementary to you, for him is a dark forest.
Danny Trejo looks at the client as if he were ...
Better from the beginning everything is calm and explained in great detail (by analogy with medicine - by the collegial method). Or imagine that you are a doctor, and in front of you is a child who needs to pull out a tooth. It is polite and almost affectionate to explain the order of actions, methods of decisions and variants of results (pastoral method). It is these approaches that will provide a stream of grateful customers who will choose you, and not a service at the metro, and which will create you a good word of mouth.
So it is possible to replace something unintentionally somewhere
Yes, there is still such a temptation: if the client does not understand the question, then it is possible to replace something indiscriminately somewhere with profit for yourself. The path is initially slippery in every sense: both in terms of personal karma, and because the truth in most cases will still come to the surface. For reputation this is terrible. We must try to communicate with the client as transparently and honestly as possible. And before very difficult repairs to warn of a possible failure of the device - this will save from the charges “You did worse than it was and you broke everything, pay,” and give solidity in the eyes of the client: they take care of him, warn him from the height of experience (you can change your mind and go to the service with a guarantee). Speaking of warranty. Good move: to give the client a personal verbal guarantee that, if anything, I will redo it. But only in that case, of course, if the breakdown came due to the fault of the engineer.
Parting words from the hero of the article
The most difficult repairs come after other services with incompetent craftsmen. For example, I brought a man a fee, I wanted to sell for 500 rubles. after another service (a new one costs 12000 rubles). They wanted to change the video chip, but according to the client, "we did not succeed." The motherboard was literally twisted: the lower heating was used too small and the thermal profile was not followed, it was not wrapped in foil and the cargo was not attached (a mandatory measure for infrared stations with a small lower heating). He offered the client to try to repair.
He warmed up to 300 evenly on a large thermal bench, applied loads in places of deformations, held for 10 minutes and allowed to cool. Straightened up! Soldered the video chip (the motherboard was brought without a video chip) - it started up, but there was no initialization. He drew attention to the north bridge - there are no several capacitors on it, he soldered - without changes, they and his eels seem to be. Put the chip from the donor - zakolosilos. For repairs took 7000 p. (3000 chip and 2000 donor, from which he removed the north; such a new north costs 3200). For the work itself, he took it purely symbolically - it was interesting to raise the mother from the next world and raise his reputation.
The same board in the process of straightening after the service
Parting words to novice masters? So that they, if they really don’t understand what they are doing, don’t pick the client’s books and pass them on to more competent repairmen or repair them under their supervision. Or at least made a modular replacement (if the client agrees on the price tag and terms).
About reading: Horowitz P., Hill U. "The Art of Circuit Engineering." There everything is explained in detail and there are a lot of laboratory experiments and tasks. Can be recommended as a reference book, a very useful thing!
In general, if you decide to become a soldering iron - think a hundred times. Because we need monstrous perseverance, patience and attentiveness.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/396341/
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