[time-nuts] huntron tracker advice & troubleshooting without schematic advise
Magnus Danielson
magnus at rubidium.dyndns.org
Wed Nov 26 08:13:10 UTC 2008
Patrick wrote:
> Hi Everyone
>
> I have consistently had success repairing laboratory instruments(my
> small business) when I have a schematic and I have consistently failed
> without one, lots of opportunities are slipping threw my fingers.
>
> I want to invest in tools that will help me troubleshoot without a
> schematic. I was thinking about getting a Huntron tracker. Has anyone
> had any experience with one? Could you feedback?
>
> Are there other tools that have helped you fix circuit boards without a
> schematic?
The Huntron tracker does not solve your basic problem of not having the
schematics, rather it helps you for some of the analysis when you do
have a schematic. We do alot of analysis at work and the trackers sits
there idling on a shelf, since we rarely have problems at which we have
a short on a power-plane or a slightly broken semiconductor. Only a
handfull of problem would apply. We have alot of other usefull tools
instead.
For you to buy a Huntron tracker you should do it for the right reason,
that it applies to your kind of problems and would aid in locating
problems and measure basic semiconductor behaviour.
Now, Huntron claims that it will aid on undocumented boards. It will to
a certain extent, since it is agnostic to the design as such, it just
measures electrical properties. However a Fluke multimeter is similarly
agnostic and may do similar but not all of the tests the trackers do.
Also, to some degree a tracker becomes somewhat difficult to use in some
cases without a functional board alongside for reference.
I don't want to say it is a bad tool, it isn't. I just want to kill your
overly high expectations. Only then you can buy one and feel happy about
it in the long run. What the tracker does as a basic measurement tool is
to do I/V diagrams. You can make your own I/V setup by using an
(preferably analog) oscilloscope in X/Y setup, a simple diffrential amp
(4 resistors and an op-amp in a cook-book diffrential amp setup), a
resistor for current-to-voltage conversion and an audio generator
producing a sine. This is sufficient to get you started and try the
principle out. If you learn to use it and find it usefull, getting a
dedicated instrument might aid your work. If not you have not wasted as
much money and you only cry over the lost time.
Cheers,
Magnus
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