What happens when you take your Intercom to the wrong shop for repair

I had a customer bring his IM5006 Master Station to the shop today to see if I could repair it for him.

He had recently taken it to another "repair shop" that told him they were qualified to fix it.  The original problem was the typical Power Supply Failure that I have written about before.  The other "repair shop" had the IM5006 for 4 weeks and told the owner that after several attempts they could not fix it any more than they had, and if it needed more repair it would have to be sent to another shop.

What I found when I dismantled the IM5006 was appaling.  The other "repair shop" only replaced six of the capaciotrs in the power supply circuit (the 6 easy ones) and in their attempt to "fix" the IM5006 they managed to mangle the circuit board.

The IM5006 has 2-sided circuit boards which have "through-plate" vias that connect circuit traces from one side of the board to the other.

Inside these vias there are metal sleeves which the component lead passes through and are filled with solder.  If the original component is not desoldered correctly, with tools specifically designed for this type of work, the via will remain solder to the component lead and it will be ripped from the circuit board when the component is removed.  This essentially ruins the circuit board.

By looking at the "workmanship" for the other shop, it easy to see that they have no business working on this type of board.  

When you see scratches all over the conformal coating and on the solder mask, caused by their attempt to desolder the pad, you know that something is very wrong.

With any luck the damage to this board is not as bad as I fear.  If the vias have been pulled through the board, it will be necessary to re-sleeve the vias (not a fun job).

When you see big blobs of solder on a solder pad, you can tell that person doing the work has no business using a soldering iron.

More to come. . . 

Update on Wednesday, April 17, 2013 at 7:50AM by Cindy & Christopher

The damage to this IM5006 was mainly to the solder pads where the other shop tried to solder some new components.  The pads were over heated and this caused the adhesive to fail, which allowed the pads to lift off the board.

I used some circuit board repair materials to rebuild the damaged traces and I replaced the solder pads with some solid eyelets.  After the circuit board repair was completed and the new capacitors were in place, I covered the repairs with new conformal coating to reseal the board.

The rest of the power supply circuit was rebuilt and this IM5006 worked the first time it was powered up.

The additional work to correct the other shops "repair" was not to time consuming and it only added a small amount to the final cost.