Diagnosing intermittent power loss on control boards

[Alan]

You find yourself facing a control board that seems to fail at the most inconvenient times. Let’s share some tips, clever troubleshooting tricks, and tried-and-true hacks to hunt down those pesky gremlins that cause intermittent power loss before they really start to frustrate you.

 

[voltagepathmaker]

After a long day my board started flickering as if it had a mind of its own.
Grabbed the multimeter, checked the continuity, and found a bad solder joint.
It was a simple fix, but such a relief there's nothing worse than trying to figure out why the power keeps dropping out

 

[Currentaffair]

Last month my control board decided to give up right in the middle of my shift while I was handling a full load.
I spent about thirty minutes checking all the wiring and connections before I finally found a loose terminal.
Now I always make it a point to double-check those connections first it really saves me from a lot of frustration.

 

[TheOhmBreaker]

Mine began cutting out at random times and I started blaming everything from the fuse to the wiring. Finally discovered that a corroded connector was causing the issue. A quick clean and retightening did the trick, and just like that, the problems disappeared definitely learned to check the obvious first.

 

[barfle]

Wasn’t my design, and it wasn’t my installl, but it ended up being my responsibility.

My last jobbefore I retired was to maintain about 200 conference rooms in a military facility. They used thousands of copper to fiber converters that were powered from external supplies. The supplies +12VDC output was on a pretty sttandard zip cord that the installer would strip and insert into a screw terminal. So far, so good, but it was fairly easy to insert the wire above the clamp, so when you tightened the screw, the wire was left loose. Nothing was moving very often, so they tended to be almost stable. But almost isn’t good enough, and we were getting lots of complaints about teleconferences going dead.

I eventually tracked one down and fixed it. Then I set up a plan to go into each room and test and fix every installation in the place. That took almost a year.

 

[Alan]

That’s some real dedication right there. You didn’t just patch the problem, you fixed the entire system.

 

[barfle]

That’s some real dedication right there. You didn’t just patch the problem, you fixed the entire system.

Well, that was my job. But the whole place was full of design and installation errors. Onr of the jokes I told was that I loved my job because it was so easy to make things better (installation errors) but I hated my job because it was so hard to make things good (design errors). Doubly difficult because I never had a spec of what any of the systems were supposed to do, so I just had to figure it out on my own.

I think I did OK, and most of the people I answered to felt that I did a good job, even though many were clueless as to what I did for a living. Retired for 12 years now. Whew!

 

[Alan]

Well, that was my job. But the whole place was full of design and installation errors. Onr of the jokes I told was that I loved my job because it was so easy to make things better (installation errors) but I hated my job because it was so hard to make things good (design errors). Doubly difficult because I never had a spec of what any of the systems were supposed to do, so I just had to figure it out on my own.

I think I did OK, and most of the people I answered to felt that I did a good job, even though many were clueless as to what I did for a living. Retired for 12 years now. Whew!

Totally something to be proud of. Well-earned respect, no doubt.