Rant: A customer in Dallas tried to fix his own TV with a hair dryer

This guy brought in a 65 inch Samsung that wouldn't turn on and admitted he spent three hours blasting the main board with a hair dryer on high heat. He said he saw a video online that said it would fix bad solder joints. The board was so warped from the heat that half the tiny parts were loose. Has anyone else had to deal with a repair that got way worse from a DIY 'fix' like this?

3 comments

3 Comments

felix_black29d ago

Oh man, that's a classic. Had a guy bring in a laptop last month that he tried to fix with a heat gun. He was aiming for a cracked solder joint on the GPU, but ended up melting the plastic fan housing right onto the board. The whole thing was just a sticky, smoky mess. You could smell it from across the shop. Why do people think more heat is always the answer?

blair_martin28d ago

That smell must have stuck around for days.

young.kim28d ago

Remember my buddy tried to reflow his Xbox with a regular oven. He didn't take the thermal paste off first, so it just baked onto everything. That weird chemical smell never really left his apartment kitchen.