Where the computer repair shop replaces a whole module, the electronics workshop goes one level down: it opens the appliance, takes out the board, looks for the component that gave up and replaces it. It is a trade of measurement and soldering, practised on objects as different as a television, the power supply of a generator, an inverter board, a sound-system amplifier or the control module of a workshop machine. Rather than following a customer journey, this article goes around the bench: every tool on it says something about what the technician does, what they sell and what they refuse.
The multimeter: measure before touching
Nothing is replaced without having been measured. The multimeter, then the oscilloscope and the bench power supply when the workshop owns them, serve to check what reaches the board — voltage, continuity, resistance, the shape of a signal — and to follow the fault back to the component causing it. A power supply that delivers nothing may have a fuse, a capacitor, a switching transistor or an integrated circuit at fault; each can be measured, and blindly replacing “the part that usually burns” is the mark of a fixer, not of an electronics technician.
Measuring also means measuring safely. The appliances that enter the workshop have capacitors that stay charged when unplugged, switch-mode supplies that expose dangerous voltages, tubes and screens some elements of which hold a charge. The ILO recalls that a safe and healthy working environment is a fundamental principle; at the scale of a bench that means systematic discharge before working, an insulated station, insulated tools, and the habit of never working live when the measurement can be taken another way.
The iron: soldering, desoldering, reworking
The soldering iron, the hot-air station, the wick and the desoldering pump are the tools that take the workshop from diagnosis to repair. Replacing a through-hole component is within reach of a beginner; replacing a surface-mounted component, repairing a broken track, resoldering a joint cracked by shocks or heat require experience, good equipment and a board that can take it. The technician can tell the board that can be reworked several times from the one that will not survive a second intervention.
Soldering also has a health side. Flux fumes irritate the airways; lead-containing alloys, still present in many older appliances and sometimes in the solder wire available on the market, expose the worker to a metal WHO ranks among the chemicals of major public-health concern. An organised workshop extracts or ventilates fumes, washes hands before eating, does not eat at the bench, and knows which alloy it uses.
The magnifier: reading a board
Under the magnifying lamp or the microscope, the board speaks: a bulging capacitor, a heat mark, a blackened track, a cracked joint, corrosion from humidity or a leaking battery. That visual reading, crossed with the measurements, guides the diagnosis before any heavy dismantling. It also makes it possible to tell the customer what happened — a mains surge, water ingress, excessive heat, normal wear — and therefore what could be avoided next time.
Reading a board also means documenting it: photographing before dismantling, noting the values of removed components, marking connectors. A workshop that documents makes a repair reproducible and can answer, months later, a customer whose appliance comes back.
The board: repair or replace
Not every board can be repaired. A board whose faulty component can be identified, sourced and soldered is repaired; a board whose main integrated circuit is dead, unavailable or locked by the manufacturer is replaced — when a spare board exists — or condemns the appliance. The technician makes that distinction early, because it decides the estimate: repairing a board is billed in time and components, replacing a board in part and labour, and a condemned appliance in diagnosis only.
The written estimate precedes any paid work and separates these cases. It also says what the repair guarantees and for how long, and what it does not guarantee: a component replaced on an old board does not rejuvenate the others, and the workshop that writes this avoids the complaint of the customer whose appliance fails from something else three months later.
The component box: origin and compatibility
Capacitors, transistors, regulators, fuses, connectors, integrated circuits: the workshop lives on its stock and its suppliers. A replacement component must have the same characteristics as the original, or compatible ones the technician can justify; a counterfeit component, whose marking does not match what it contains, is the first enemy of electronics repair. The workshop buys from identified distributors when it can, tests what it receives, and salvages from boards beyond use with discernment — a salvaged component is declared to the customer as such.
What the workshop does not do: present a makeshift repair as a lasting one, bridge a protection to “get it going again”, or return to service an appliance whose electrical insulation is no longer assured. A repair that exposes the user to electric shock or fire is not a repair.
The customer, the appliance and time
The householder brings a television or a stereo, the artisan their machine, the company its inverter or control board, the colleague from another trade — refrigeration engineer, solar installer, mechanic — a board they cannot repair themselves. Each expects a diagnosis, a lead time and a price; the workshop announces all three, separates the delay it controls from the wait for a component to be ordered, and warns when the appliance will be immobilised for long. An appliance deposited and never collected ends up in the bin; the retention period is written on the deposit sheet.
The workshop earns its living on diagnosis time — charged or included in the repair, but announced —, on labour and on the margin on components; it has no interest in repairing what will not hold, because the return costs it more than the repair brought in.
The bin: what becomes of boards, batteries and screens
An electronics workshop produces waste that is anything but ordinary: irreparable boards, capacitors, batteries, screens, cables. WHO notes that e-waste is one of the fastest-growing solid waste streams in the world, that only a small share is formally collected and recycled, and that lead is a substance commonly released when this waste is recycled, stored or dumped through informal practices. The technician, who handles these objects all day, is the first concerned: they sort, store apart, burn nothing, and hand their waste to a channel where one exists in their city.
In the African context
A storm, a load-shedding cycle, an abrupt return of power: in many cities of the continent, the first cause of the faults that reach the workshop is called the electricity grid — burnt power supplies, blown capacitors, television, inverter and refrigerator boards out of action after a storm or a load-shedding cycle. The technician repairs them, but also advises — surge protectors, regulators, properly sized inverters — and part of the activity consists of protecting appliances rather than repairing them.
The installed base itself is the other fact: many appliances are imported second-hand or at end of life, without documentation, with boards already reworked elsewhere, and the workshop often works without a schematic, by comparison and experience. That is real know-how, passed from bench to bench, which technical training does not always cover; the technician who documents their repairs and trains their apprentices to measure before soldering builds a skill the local market does not supply on its own.
Health exposure, for its part, is more direct than elsewhere. Informal e-waste recycling, which WHO describes as a source of exposure to lead and other toxic substances, including for children, is sometimes practised a few streets from the workshop. The technician who refuses to sell dead boards to whoever will burn them, who ventilates their station and explains to apprentices why no one eats at the bench, exercises a responsibility their trading licence does not mention.
Repairable, not repairable, not worth it
An honest electronics workshop places every appliance that comes in into one of these boxes, and tells the customer before starting. Repairable: the fault is identified, the component available, the board sound — estimate, repair, guarantee. Not repairable: the central component is dead or unobtainable, the insulation is no longer safe, the board has already been reworked too often — diagnosis charged or not, appliance returned or recycled. Not worth it: the repair is possible but would cost more than a replacement appliance, or would not last long enough to be worth its price — the technician says so, even if it loses them a sale.
It is that third box, the hardest to announce, that separates the workshop people come back to from the one they avoid.