Hi
I've repaired TV's for the last fifteen years.
Now that plasma and LCD TV's are becoming so popular I need to find out how to repair them.
Are there any websites, books,ebooks or training manuals avaliable?
Thanks
Rouen

 

Sams Photofact is no more and thier former service to the repair community would be illegal now. So you're stuck getting schematics from the manufacturer if they will provide them.

Your best bet would be to attend factory training offered by all the manufactuers.

You have to become an authorized servicer and there may or may not be an annual fee but the training is something most manufacturers provide to authorized servicers at no charge and it's even required that an employee attend. 1

I've repaired countless monitors and LCD systems when analog was king. The newer digital stuff would require more expensive test equipment as the data is in many cases a high speed serial stream that's eventually decoded to control the pixels in the LCD.
Plasma is similar though the final output to the display is different.

 

In the new digital world, sadly things are not designed to be repaired, but replaced. This very fact may inhibit your ability to find any suitable information. If you do find anything it would be interesting to see what is available.

Dave

 

Hi
I've repaired TV's for the last fifteen years.
Now that plasma and LCD TV's are becoming so popular I need to find out how to repair them.
Are there any websites, books,ebooks or training manuals avaliable?
Thanks
Rouen

Nowadays it is the rule rather than the exception that...
"there are NO serviceable parts inside"

 

Thanks for the input guys, on a different tack then what about a source of cheep replacement boards for various makes of plasmas and LCD's?
As I am in South Africa price is everthing(exchange rate)

 

Thanks for the input guys, on a different tack then what about a source of cheep replacement boards for various makes of plasmas and LCD's?
As I am in South Africa price is everthing(exchange rate)

I am by no means convinced that the manufacturers have any interest whatsoever in making spare parts available. They really don't want people opening the things up and messing around inside. So if they are available at all they are priced the same as a whole new unit. As you can imagine this effectively eliminates any economic incentive to repair a unit. Also since everything is done with software even if you could replace a board how would you upgrade the firmware?

 

do a search for books by robert goodman, he has a new book out on the subject, ive seen it in the bookstore catalog from cleveland institute of electronics bookstore.

 

I found that quite often modern electronics like projectors, LCDs etc.. all have built in switch mode PSUs. When these go wrong they seem to be quite easy to understand and fix.

There is a great site here:

http://www.repairfaq.org/sam/smpsfaq.htm

Having said that one of the most common faults i see with LCDs is a failed inverter. I've only ever looked at a few, one of which was from an old monitor, it turned out a simple component had gone out of spec. However i've seen a lot of failed Fujitsu inverters where the transformer has broken - these are usually proprietary and near impossible to obtain. Same goes for Dell laptop inverters, i've seen a couple with shattered ferrites.

 

Try this website,there is an e-book on LCD monitor repair by jestine yong

www.electronicrepairguide.com/

 

I am by no means convinced that the manufacturers have any interest whatsoever in making spare parts available. They really don't want people opening the things up and messing around inside. So if they are available at all they are priced the same as a whole new unit. As you can imagine this effectively eliminates any economic incentive to repair a unit. Also since everything is done with software even if you could replace a board how would you upgrade the firmware?

This is true. The downside of this mentality is the death rattle we hear in the lungs of our economy. The upside is that anyone clever enough to repair the junk has easy access to high-end toys at near zero cost.