Has this happened to you? You’re installing or testing a Hoppe’s Brain PCB and the magic smoke gets out somehow? It happens to every tech, including me, see below. (Backwards transistor, oops.)
This is a bummer, and a lot of work to fix, and even if this PCB was repaired, it wouldn’t look very nice. I want my customer’s projects to look and work nice! I don’t make the boards so pretty just for people to have scorch marks on them.
If your board is smoked, and you want a do-over, here is my “Do-Over” policy. I’ve been doing this for people for years, but haven’t defined it officially until now.
It’s no secret that quality PCB’s have become cheap to manufacture. The PCB itself is not where the value lies in buying a Hoppe’s Brain board. The value is in their design, and the support I provide. The actual board is a tiny percentage of my own costs. (Parts, however are increasingly expensive and I don’t mark them up much.)
So, if you have well and truly smoked your board and want a new one, I can offer you that at close to free.
My boards come in three flavors; Board-Only, Board with Parts, and Fully Assembled.
If you bought:
- Board-Only: A new board for free, plus shipping, about $10 continental US.
- Board with parts: A new board for free, plus shipping, but I cannot sell individual repair parts. All parts are available at reputable vendors like Mouser and Digikey. Part numbers are in my ADCOM BOMs document linked here.
- Fully Assembled:
- A new bare board for free, plus shipping, and you perform your own repair, with your own parts. ~or~
- Send it to me for repair at a rate of $75/hr, capped at $200 maximum. No parts charge. If I cannot re-work the board to work perfectly, and look decent, I will just replace it entirely. If I wouldn’t use it, I won’t send it to you.
Proof of destruction:
I don’t need your board back, but before I can send you a new board, I need proof you have destroyed the original.
Just drill a big hole through it and send me the picture! (Harvest the parts you want to keep first.)
