Category Archives: Electronics Repairs Attempted

Job 3 – Plasma Cutter – Attempted

Customer brought in a plasma cutter that had popped when first powered on then did not power on after that.

I fixed the obviously-damaged arc drive lug, but the device still didn’t power on. It was not worth troubleshooting the rest of the device at the time as it is difficult to disassemble. No charge to the customer, but I probably should have checked the primary power section of the cutter first.

I didn’t take a picture of the final solder

The customer still has it. I may try troubleshooting again sometime …

Data Recovery – Attempted

A customer brought in a hard drive hoping to recover the data. The data wasn’t worth paying a laboratory so she brought it to me for an attempt.

I was not able to recover the data, but I was able to diagnose the problem so for no charge she got the peace of mind of knowing the data was gone forever. The platter was badly scratched. I called the lab and they told me they couldn’t recover the data even for $100,000! Impossible?