electronics education

jimbecky48001

Active Member
I would like to learn how to diagnose and repair consumer electronics ie:receivers,speakers,cd players,turntables etc. I live in Michigan and I would be apreciative of anyone that could point me to the best place to learn.Thanks in advance Jim
 
Jim,

There are some on line basic elecronics stuff available, (I'll look for some links I think I have) but a night scool electronics 101 class would help immensly to kick start the process. (said the kettle to the pot...)
 
I was suggesting a local community collage to get the basics, but there are some online courses available. I'm of the opinion that for something like this, being able to ask a real teacher questions is invaluable.

I've been struggling through a freebe thing and it is definitly a struggle, and I used to design PC boards for a living. I have also done my share of electronics soldering and assembly. Making point to point connection's from a schematic, and being able to grasp the electrons flowing though the same circuit are 2 different things.
 
I agree that a community college is a good way to go. Also If you have a DeVry Technical Institute near you they are excellent. Everyone I have worked with who graduated from DeVry got a good electronics background.
I can recommend an excellent book:
"The Art of Electronics" by Horowitz and Hill. It is easy to read and understand. They give you the theory and present the math, but in such a way that you can understand the theory even if you don't know calculus.
www.mcmelectronics.com has lots of "How to repair consumer electronics" books, also.
 
It's one thing to know what does what...quite another to have something busted slapped down in front of you and told to make it work. I fix gear all the time for guys with technical and engineering degrees - without the practice and experiance it's all a pile of semi-meaningless parts.

Those of us eeking out a living doing this are all the kind of guys who have been ripping stuff apart and successfully putting it back together all our lives. Some people are just born troubleshooters and fixers, and some aren't. Working at this for a living (mainly in robotics) I saw hundreds of techs that I could not help wonder how or why they chose this as a profession...they did not have the aptitude or insight into real problem solving and troubleshooting that it takes to be the kind of exceptional technician that was required of the job, so they do the easy shit and when it really hits the fan and they're lost, suddenly it's shift-change time and guys like me take up the slack.

This is not to say that one can't learn the basics and get real work done. By all means I'd encourage it. But it's a little like being 50 years old and saying you want to become a concert violinist with no musical background...sure you can learn to play, but the exceptional players have already been doing it since they were 8 years old.

Hope this doesn't come out sounding wrong...
 
Thanks Echo, It did not come out wrong as i understand completely what you are saying.I am putting a business plan together and just want the basics at this time.I do have some ideas on where I would like to go with this ,and it is not at the same level as yourself.
 
I'm in total argeement with EW, Trouble shooting is something your born with. It's extremely difficult to learn or teach someone how to think like that.

I experianced surprsise when I switched from engineering to computer support in my late 30's I was asked how come I was so good at the trouble shooting aspects of the job.

I had 20 years experiance trouble shooting race cars and street cars for whatever ailed them. I told the persons asking it was the same thought process, and it is.

I did it a few months ago when I traced out a bad transistor in a sansui 551 without even having the bloody schematic to help. I have the basics of the basics, but to go further I need that grounding in what electronics really does.
 
An excellent and inexpensive course to consider is NEETS (Google it ).This course covers basic electronics,vaccum tube theory,solid state theory,amplification etc and costs about $20.00 on CD.The neat part ( pun intended ) is that you can preview most of the content online at the seller's site.
 
posted by Echowars:
It's one thing to know what does what...quite another to have something busted slapped down in front of you and told to make it work. I fix gear all the time for guys with technical and engineering degrees - without the practice and experiance it's all a pile of semi-meaningless parts.

How very true. I used to teach basic electronics. I was trained as a Biomed.
I was a GM line wrench in the 70's And I grew up in racing. I used my electronics skills to keep up with the auto field until about the advent of OBD II.

Most good techs are good at/on a specialized section of the field. I know medical equipment. It has been my main job for 25 years. I can weld. I can run a lathe and a mill but it took a long time for me to be able to work with wood. :worried: Go figure!

Basic theory is a start and alot of us have it. The key is understanding circuit design in a given field IMO.
 
yeah, i've been into electronics and such since i was very wee little, i'm 16 now, and am looking into it as a possible career, fun stuff! so is anyone an actual EE or anything?
 
Well, I am - I've had my hands and head into electronics since I was 11, which is, all told, for the last 25 years +... and what I do is about an even mixture of design, troubleshooting, and redesign (when I get fed up with troubleshooting the same things over and over ;) )
 
Learning new stuff is always a good thing, that is unless it leads to your demise. I'm soon to be a NEETS student, thanks for the tip Pete, Beer and Lyn. $6 total w/shipping on the bay.

Never a student of electronics, since finding AK (<year ago) I can do basic circuitry troubleshooting, amp adjustments, and component replacement. Prior to that, if I opened the top of a piece of equipment I'd only be able to say, "that's alot of neat stuff in there, wonder what those things in there are?" Still dumb, but still learning.

Thanks AK!
 
I think that if you really want to learn the most then forget online courses or cd's or book and go to a CC or something with instructors that have a background and knowhow. Hands on learning is so much more valuable than reading something out of a book. I will be starting my second year of getting an electronics technician degree from CC and while i did learn alot from the more bookwork types of things we did I learned the most from the hands on and instruction i recieved from the teacher in our lab. We also have a ton of donations in our shop that we work on and fix (and take home). Maybe the schools around there would have something similar.
 
Gibsonian said:
Never a student of electronics, since finding AK (<year ago) I can do basic circuitry troubleshooting, amp adjustments, and component replacement. Prior to that, if I opened the top of a piece of equipment I'd only be able to say, "that's alot of neat stuff in there, wonder what those things in there are?" Still dumb, but still learning.

So there's hope for me?! :D

I'm at least mechanical, I was one of those kids that tore apart everything, and fortunately could put most of it back together. My other hobby is cars, I've had Fiats and Alfas and have several older BMW's now, and am building a turbo engine for my daily driver with Megasquirt, which is a DIY electronic engine management system. I need to learn to solder better though -- it's not a direct transfer from welding skills...

I have an Asia-only Nakamichi MusicBank that I got when I lived in HK, the cd changer has died a couple times and I've managed to tear it apart and get it working again -- once it was a belt, another time the CD changer popped of it's track. But the last time it went wonky I pulled the lid and found cooked transistors on the control board... So now it's in a box waiting to go to my brother the EE... :thmbsp:

Tony
 
Velocewest said:
So there's hope for me?! :D


I have an Asia-only Nakamichi MusicBank that I got when I lived in HK, the cd changer has died a couple times and I've managed to tear it apart and get it working again -- once it was a belt, another time the CD changer popped of it's track. But the last time it went wonky I pulled the lid and found cooked transistors on the control board... So now it's in a box waiting to go to my brother the EE... :thmbsp:

Tony

Tony, If you can get a Nak Musicbank working you are darn good in the mechanical department! That is one of the worst Rube Goldberg contraptions I have ever had the misfortune to work on! "popped of it's track?" Tell me about it! :thumbsdn:
Also if you can keep a Fiat running you are really, really good!
 
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