Most of the appliances made today have circuit boards in them. This is to help make them more “energy efficient” as mandated by the Energy Star requirements, to save costs over using discreet mechanical switches, and also to make them more amenable to being controlled through the Smart Grid nightmare being unleashed across the country. Point is, if you’ve bought a major appliance recently, then it has at least one, maybe more, over-priced and shoddily-made circuit boards in them that will one day go poof at the worst possible time. I guarantee it.
When that fateful day arrives, you have two choices:
– Buy a new circuit board (thru www.Fixitnow.com, www.Appliantology.org, or www.ApplianceGuru.com 8) 365-day return policy on parts ordered thru those sites!)
– Repair your existing board
If the failure is not something visible, there’s a slim-to-none chance that you’ll be able to repair it because the appliance manufacturers guard the schematic and tech info on the circuit boards like the secret ingredient to Coca-Cola (psst, it’s high-fructose corn syrup).
If, however, you remove the control board in your Bosch dishwasher or the muthaboard in your GE refrigerator and you see an obvious burn spot, well, you got nothing to lose by going ahead and taking a whack at trying to fix it. Worst case scenario: your repair will fail and you’ll have to buy a new control board.
I’ve previously posted some repair tips for working with electronic circuit boards. But here’s an annotated photo describing some common repair techniques for the types of burn damage to circuit boards that you’re likely to actually encounter. Click the image for a larger view.
If you need more help fixing your appliances, whether or not it has to do with the circuit boards in ’em, come start a new topic in the Appliantology Academy and we’ll help fix y’up ==> www.Appliantology.org
