Im with rolly on this one, definitely need a simulator to assure that a board is 100 percent repaired. If world is repairing tac boards, they must have simulators, and with that they must have some way to access them. I used to repair elevator boards for a few years, and know some of the guys that are still doing it today.
Now just to be fair, you can repair some boards just doing some basic checking of ic, etc. easy to find bad transistors, triacs, basic ic's caps etc. however , replacing these parts still does not guarantee the board will work, and as rolly indicates the board may come back with the result being a pissed off customer, and more down time, I've repaired hundreds of boards this way, and many came back. the old shotgun approach, if you replace enough parts, it will eventually work. the down side is longer down time for customers.
Now if you have a simulator, and more important board prints, then you will have a much better success rate. even the smaller shops have simulators for a good rannge of equipment. Now with the newer more complex boards on the market today, with surface mount components, and complicated communication chips, how can you possibly repair such a beast without some serious know how, not to mention serious equipment. I used to work for reliable elevator in the late 80's, We had many of our circuit boards made and sold by World Electronics, World has been doing a great job of board repair for many years. While at Reliable elevator, which was the largest independent company in los angeles at the time, we sent all of our circuit boards to world for repair, with a very good success rate. We did have an in house board repair shop, but for more complex items world was the choice. Sales, I believe a few of the principles at reliable also had a hand in the early stages of World Electronics business growth, correct me if I'm wrong. Its been a long time. I have always had a great success rate for boards repaired by World, when i need it fixed the first time, i will send boards to either World, or Access electronics. Both do a great job.
Sales, just wondering, How was it possible to create the DMC tool, and sale it legally? If you can sell the DMC tool, why can't you sell the tac 20 tool, are they not both proprietary? or was the dmc not proprietary ? Could you shed some light on this for us?
Well one thing rolly is right on is the money that could be made selling tools that can access all the TAC series of elevators. like rolly, I'm wondering what is the hold up for this tool. it must be something. just not quite sure what that something would be :}