Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!onfcanim!dave
From: dave@onfcanim.UUCP (Dave Martindale)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: electrical codes
Message-ID: <15572@onfcanim.UUCP>
Date: 6 Mar 88 22:22:18 GMT
References: <17905@topaz.rutgers.edu> <196@conexch.UUCP> <4134@ptsfa.UUCP>
Reply-To: dave@onfcanim.UUCP (Dave Martindale)
Organization: National Film Board / Office national du film, Montreal
Lines: 33

In article <4134@ptsfa.UUCP> dmt@ptsfa.UUCP (Dave Turner) writes:
>
>A guy in my carpool in NJ commented that he thought that a qualified amateur
>often does better work that most commercial professional electricians, plumbers,
>etc, etc simply because the amateur knows that it is his house and has pride in it.

The other difference is that the amateur can afford to take the time to do
it right.  I generally do my own electronic repair, electrical repair,
plumbing, auto mechanics, and other things.  I always take longer than
a professional would.

If I look only at dollars spent, I almost always save a bunch of money
even if I sometimes have to buy another tool to do the job.  Howver, if
I count my own time at $20/hr, then it's cheaper to do it myself only
sometimes.

As an example, I recently fixed my Sony D5 CD player, which had been
having tracking problems.  The fault turned out to be a flexible circuit
board which was damaged by too much flexing and had developed cracked
conductors.  I trimmed it a few mm shorter and resoldered it, for a net
cost of $0.  If I'd taken it to Sony, the first thing they would have done
is replaced the entire laser pickup assembly (which would have fixed the
problem, even if they hadn't figured out what it was) at a cost of
$150 or so for the part plus maybe 3 hours labour.  I figure I saved
$200 - $250 fixing it myself.  On the other hand, it took me a lot more
than 10 hours to find the problem.

But then again, it looks like the circuit board had been damaged when
the laser assembly had previously been replaced by Sony under warranty.
In that case, the problem was really a bad transistor and not the laser
assembly at all.  So, if I'd done the troubleshooting myself then,
even though the set was in warranty, perhaps it would have never
developed this later problem.  And that would have saved a *lot* of time.