No products in the cart.
I repair farming equipment for a living. This is Cebis, a $5200 main module in a Lexion 460 harvester, which I’ve just repaired after 6 hours of searching for the root cause (without schematics or documentation). The culprit: a dead oscillator (worth $3). 41
I repair farming equipment for a living. This is Cebis, a $5200 main module in a Lexion 460 harvester, which I’ve just repaired after 6 hours of searching for the root cause (without schematics or documentation). The culprit: a dead oscillator (worth $3).
If you don’t have a schematic, What are your basic steps for finding root cause? I struggle with this.
But what if another problem killed the oscillator
[deleted]
Damn dude, you’re doing the lord’s work. You’re a real MVP, thanks for what you do!
That’s a neat old piece of embedded hardware. 386 PC on a card, the board is just I/O for it!
This is fascinating! How does one learn this stuff? I’m really interested in embedded stuff and kinda wished I took that path at the beginning of my career. I program in C# now, so think I’d struggle massively to make such a change.
CLAAS is notoriously opaque about such things. Don’t even ask about their CAN bus encryption.
I am impressed. There are damn few of you left out there doing repairs to component level. Thank you.
I used to do that work when it was common to repair down to individual transistor level. I can only imagine how tough it is to track problems today with no schematics.
How did you end up getting into this. This really interests me being an electrical engineer from a farming community. This is totally something I think Id like to do haha.
*Good man. You are worth your pay.*
Is it the oscillator or the accompanying electrolytics? Asking because every (freaking) time I come across a dead board, it’s almost always a dead cap or caps.
But can it run doom? It does have a 386 in it.
Right to repair is a big goddamned deal for farmers these days. Wasn’t there recently a “win” in that legal battle?
What was the issue told at first
If one can ask… How much are you charging your client for this?
We recently had a CF Card fail on a Greenstar, and the “experts” from JD came up with the brilliant solution of buying a new one, and re buy all the codes.
The thing just crashed every time it tried to save a file.
This is why you deserve your money.
I am at the moment driving a combine with that board running xD
This is the fucking reason why “Right to Repair” is so GD important. Supply the documentation. Fix shit. Godspeed OP and great job.
Is that a 386 CPU on that little card? I’ve never seen that before
Those 90 degree bends in the traces.. i hate that i love them
Now the world needs to know your equipment and techniques! Thermal camera?
man that’s a real pain. Good job on the repair!
Do you observe any form of planned obsolescence in the hardware you work with? Like the same oscillators breaking or one capacitor that always dies.
I hope you repair John Deeres because fuck John Deere for their dickhead hindrance of repairability.
I do a lot of similar work, fixing all sorts of scientific and medical equipment, without schematics!
I really think we should start a sub to help each other with this, people who do this kind of work, what do you think?
Could not see the oscillator in the picture…
Could have died due to vibration of the harvester… I would assume they are using a quartz osc because the board seems old. MEMS oscillators might provide longer life time during those conditions…
Nice one op. I hope to have the brain some day to figure out boards that do not have exploded components.
I’ve just repaired a Onkyo N525 Home Theater Receiver but the this it was a dead Microfuse 1A250V worth 1$ and it took me a while to figure it out. It was a 600$ Receiver. But the this it was my boss (not very fond of). How much you decide to charge for something like that?
Write to your politicians, local members etc, and tell them you want them to support “Right to repair” legislation that forces manufacturers to give access to documentation, and the right to purchase parts.
To me, you are a god. Half the time I can not find the problem even with proper schematics.
May I ask what your education/training is? I’m a 1st year electronic engineering student and this is where I’d hope to end up
I am actually a component-level bench tech, and I would love to get into self-employment for repairing things like this… Never thought to include farm equipment as a source of work. (In SW Ohio. I think there would be one or two repair work opportunities). Can I DM you about the steps you took to start your business and such?
That’s impressive. I’ve always aspired to have such skills. I read [How to Diagnose and Fix Everything Electronic](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0071848290/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_S6ilFbAQAKH1T) but dont have a scope and really dont have enough familiarity with electronic components to feel confident enough to even try. :/
If you had a YouTube channel, I would watch the shit out of it.
Its very impressive to see a 386 running the show… I assume its running some Real Time OS rather than MS DOS/Windows 3.1 however…
#Right2Repair
The Right to Repair Law is long overdue.
props man.. debugging digital circuits without a schematic is time consuming and rather difficult.
There’s a story my professor told me.
At a textile factory a new electric loom has stopped working. The foreman calls a technician. The technician gets to the factory and looks over the equipment. After 5 minutes of scanning, the technician takes out a mallet from his toolkit, and strikes the side of the machine. The machine instantly jumps to live as if it had never stopped working. Without missing a beat, the technician gathers his tools and hands the foreman a $2,000 invoice.
“2000 dollars for a single hammer tap?!” Says the foreman in a surprised tone.
” One dollar for every problem I ruled out, and 5$ for the tap of the hammer” replies the technician.
I used to work for a guy who’s last resort when troubleshooting a difficult board was the “bandsaw solution”. Instead of cursing a blue streak for 5 minutes he would calmly walk the offending unit over to our bandsaw and saw it into many small pieces. Then, satisfied with himself, go order another new one.