Lead-free Solder ( continued ... )

order,

it

we

"the

??

I wonder how many small heatsinks I've added to TO220 ps pass transistors at the same time as having to resolder the overheated joints.

-- Diverse Devices, Southampton, England electronic hints and repair briefs , schematics/manuals list on

Oh absolutely, but I don't agree with opening up an item of equipment unnecessarily unless I`m sure that there`s an impending problem. We all know the most common failings in our individual fields and I`ll go round the usual suspects simply as part of the overall repair if only to help insure against a bounce from a problem unrelated to the original fault.

I certainly wouldn`t advertise such a service. Imagine, every tiny thing that goes wrong from then on would be 'my fault' and obviously would be under guarantee! (forever!)

Ron(UK)

order,

it

it, we

of

"the

... ??

fair point

No one said that "Routine maintenance" is "Free maintenance". I started several "Routine maintenance" programs while in the US Army for electronics equipment to reduce downtime.

That's a good point. Lots of things of course have routine maintenance - your car or house furnace for instance. Also, thinking about it, I get lots of items in for repair with "please service" on the repair ticket. We all know that in most cases that we get such a request, there's going to be very little in there that can be 'serviced', but I suppose that doesn't stop us pulling the lid off anyway, just to look ...

I guess that the difference with your army kit, or a furnace or car, is that a need for some routine service work has been shown and proven, and that makes it of genuine benefit. Because a routine maintenance program is the norm for items like this in the civilian world, it is perfectly normal for car repair shops to offer "10,000 mile service for $x" or for a plumber / heating engineer to offer "annual furnace service $y". In the case of the army electronics gear, I'm guessing that it's a combination of taking care of known issues with the kit, which probably spawned the need for the program in the first place, and 'belt and braces', to ensure that the kit is ready for full active service when needed ...

Arfa

Military "Preventive maintenance" is done on mission critical equipment. We had over 300 vacuum tube 25" monochrome tv/video monitors that were used for air traffic control, pilot ready rooms and classrooms at Ft. Rucker's helicopter pilot training center. We also maintained 17 CATV and CARS systems to link multiple airfields and other areas. If anything went down we had 15 minutes to find and repair the problem, or the airfields were restricted to instrument rated pilots, only. That meant instructors, because any pilot who had finished training was transferred somewhere else, usually Vietnam. We had over 50 miles of trunk, plus dozens of single channel microwave relay systems, and VERY little spare equipment. Some of the older systems had no spares left, yet were allowed zero scheduled downtime for maintenance. Its very similar to being a TV broadcast engineer with studio and transmitter sites scattered over a 50 mile range while trying your best for zero downtime.