I plan to buy some soldering equipment to work on some soldering kits. Soldering is definitely the most important skill in this field.
Ask HN: How do I learn practical electronic repair?
11–20 of 115 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do I learn practical electronic repair?
#121. Multimeter. 2.Soldering iron, for starting out I suggest spending a little more and getting a Hakko 888 instead of something cheaper. 3. Flux, Leaded solder, Braid. 4. Broken things you want to repair (for me it has been electronic musical instruments). 5. Practice, Patience, and hobby money. 6. Pay for Youtube Premium. 7. Ali Express Account.
You can get quite far with a Pinecil + additional tips (chisel tip is nice).
The Hakko 888 can take a big chunky tip that will usually put enough heat into a ground pin to desolder it when there is a healthy ground plane.
It is hard to get a healthy amount of thermal mass with a small iron.
Hot air and tweezers, cheap is fine.
Re: Ask HN: How do I learn practical electronic repair?
#13There’s a great (and very entertaining) YouTube channel that really shows what’s possible with minimal knowledge and good troubleshooting skills.
Re: Ask HN: How do I learn practical electronic repair?
#141. Multimeter. 2.Soldering iron, for starting out I suggest spending a little more and getting a Hakko 888 instead of something cheaper. 3. Flux, Leaded solder, Braid. 4. Broken things you want to repair (for me it has been electronic musical instruments). 5. Practice, Patience, and hobby money. 6. Pay for Youtube Premium. 7. Ali Express Account.
Get an isolation transformer and a cheap storage oscilloscope.
Re: Ask HN: How do I learn practical electronic repair?
#151. Multimeter. 2.Soldering iron, for starting out I suggest spending a little more and getting a Hakko 888 instead of something cheaper. 3. Flux, Leaded solder, Braid. 4. Broken things you want to repair (for me it has been electronic musical instruments). 5. Practice, Patience, and hobby money. 6. Pay for Youtube Premium. 7. Ali Express Account.
I would add
3.5: scrap PCBs for soldering practice that you don't necessarily want to repair.
Re: Ask HN: How do I learn practical electronic repair?
#161. Multimeter. 2.Soldering iron, for starting out I suggest spending a little more and getting a Hakko 888 instead of something cheaper. 3. Flux, Leaded solder, Braid. 4. Broken things you want to repair (for me it has been electronic musical instruments). 5. Practice, Patience, and hobby money. 6. Pay for Youtube Premium. 7. Ali Express Account.
Get an isolation transformer and a cheap storage oscilloscope.
A good oscilloscope is stupid expensive but is also amazing for this type of work. I count myself lucky I have a friend who's an electrical engineer and I can borrow his work one. It makes everything so much easier.
I'm sure for someone experienced the benefit is marginal but having a bunch of probes and being able to see the waveform feels like cheating for an amateur like me.
Re: Ask HN: How do I learn practical electronic repair?
#17I believe Youtube videos are a great resource for learning this! I picked up electronics and computer/gpu repair as a hobby over the pandemic lockdowns.
A cheap multimeter and a cheap soldering iron/hot air station combo will get you very far in the hobby. I enjoy these channels:
MyMateVince (a guy who fixes many useful household items): https://www.youtube.com/user/mymatevince
StezStixFix: https://www.youtube.com/@StezStixFix
Electronics Repair School (more advanced, he fixes laptops, tvs, and sometimes gpus): https://www.youtube.com/@electronicsrepairschool
Re: Ask HN: How do I learn practical electronic repair?
#18YouTube. Pick any piece of consumer electronics and you'll find videos of people diagnosing and repairing it, at both hobbyist and pro-repair-shop level.
The Nintendo Switch Lite is a fun piece of hardware because they're cheap to buy used/broken and there are many opportunities for component-level repair.
Some great written info (specific to the switch) here:
Re: Ask HN: How do I learn practical electronic repair?
#19I dabble a bit in this but only because one of my hobbies is vintage hi fi (1970s level aluminium faced classic Japanese hi fi really)
I think it helps if you have a specific niche you want to play in. I stick with the era before integrated circuits became dominant because troubleshooting those is next level from replacing blown caps or whatever. Motivation is generally that I want to hear the thing I’m fiddling with and that there is usually some mechanical part of that gear that makes them interesting.
Get a desolder gun when you get a soldering iron.
Also the TechMoan guy on YouTube is fun as he shows his failures repairing things along with the successes
Re: Ask HN: How do I learn practical electronic repair?
#20"Getting Started in Electronics" by Forrest Mims, if you don't know basic electronics. It's a delightful hand drawn book, even if you do. Also some basic tools. Then, all you need is a broken gadget. If you search for the symptoms, and the name / brand of the gadget, you'll find the most likely causes. Open it up and check for the simplest / most probable cause, and work through them.
My most recent fix was on a washing machine. After ruling out the simpler issues .. it turned out to be dry solder on the main relay on a rather hairy looking control board. Before this the drain pump had died .. it was amazing technology shipped home by someone on ebay for $20!