Sweatshops was Re: [Gllug] Monitor repair

[Chris Bell]

On Mon 05 Aug, Jonathan Harker wrote:
> 
> On Sunday 4 August 2002 20:28, Chris Bell wrote regarding Sony monitors:
> > ...the cost of repairs is so often greater than the cost of a new one...
> 
> Probably because they're assembled by Vietnamese 12 year olds  :-/
> Sorry - I've just finished reading No Logo (Klein, N. No Logo. London: 
> Flamingo, 2001)
> 
> Hope everyone had a good weekend!
> 
   Some of the components may be inserted by hand, but computer monitors are
produced in fairly large quantities, and they look as though they are
normally machine made, flow soldered, and machine trimmed; I have not seen a
hand soldered monitor board for ages. The final box will be assembled by
hand, correction magnets positioned, and final adjustments made, then bonded
in place. Weak or problem components soon get well known on an assembly
line, but trying to identify an unknown number of obscure faults without the
circuit diagram and full design spec is much more difficult. You need to
work out how it was designed to work, with unlabelled custom chips, before
you can decide why it is not working now, then try to find replacement parts
that are often unavailable on the open market. I had a faulty component
valued at 10p in some domestic equipment; it was an item that often failed,
but it required a complete strip down, rebuild, and realignment, and there
was a minimum charge of about 40ukp for spares orders. 
   "Professional" equipment, produced in low quantities, is much more likely
to be hand made, and have multiple design changes. The BBC ordered about
1000 strong metal cased monitors for outside broadcasts use. A large batch
was stacked for testing, and about half of them died within 24 hours. It
took a while before we discovered that each had been hand modified from a
variety of end-of-run commercial TV boards, with a variety of different
power supplies and other components. Each had been supplied with an
unlabelled manual relevant to that monitor only, but the manuals and
monitors had been separated.

-- 
Chris Bell


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