6 Super Simple Steps to Troubleshoot Electronics Down

to the Component Level without Schematics

The Art of troubleshooting electronic down to the component level is almost a trade secret. If
you have taken college courses or have completed your degree in electronics, you know that
most, if not all are taught to you in theories only. You don’t get any practical hands-on training
on how to actually troubleshoot real world electronics. Anyone that has any knowledge of
troubleshooting down to the component level has gained that knowledge from a job or from
tinkering with electronics at home.

As a business owner that have been repairing electronics from many different industries and
have employed many electronic technician from entry-level to experience, this is the standard
steps that we take in troubleshooting down to the component level without schematics.

These steps are perfect for the entry-level electronic technicians because of their lack of
experience. An entry-level tech is not experienced enough to look at the components on a board
and know what that circuit is supposed to do.

For an experienced electronic technician, by a glace of the board and seeing the types of
components on that board, he has a pretty good idea of what that circuit is doing. For example,
if an experience tech is handed a board with a huge transformer, big capacitors, bridge rectifiers
and some voltage regulators, he pretty much knows that it’s a linear power supply. By
knowing this, the experience electronic tech can apply the correct voltage and work his way
through the power supply circuit all the way to the output without any need for a schematic.
Sure, if there was a schematic that will greatly help him navigate through much easier and
faster.

But for an entry-level tech, it is much easier to break the circuit down to the component level
and test the individual components versus trying to comprehend the circuit and figuring how
to test the circuit. And, to try and figure how to test the circuit without a schematic, you would
most likely have to draw out the circuit anyways. This can take some time and will require
patience and some practice.
 Things to Consider Before You Start Troubleshooting
1. Start troubleshooting from quickest and easiest to longest and hardest

• In most cases, we complicate things and we start troubleshooting by starting

with the hardest component to test. I.e. IC, microprocessor, RAMs….

2. Be ready to pull datasheets if you don’t know what the component/IC is so you will
know how to test it. This will help you to have an idea of what the circuit is.

• Digchip.com is a good source to look for datasheets

3. Must know how component works before you can accurately test.

• Youtube.com is a great resource to understand how an individual component

work

4. Once you find a bad component, 85% of the time you have fix the problem

5. You might want to look at components which are connected to the defective component
and check them out to see if they are still good. When a component fails, there is a
possibility that there may be some latent damages to other components that are in the
same circuit. You might want to replace those components as-well.

6. There may be a component that caused the component to go bad

 So let us explore these 6 super simple steps to troubleshoot electronics
down to the component level.

Step 1
• Do a visual inspection of board on Primary and Secondary side

• Check for any signs of heat

• Check for any arcing’s on the board

• Check for any burns on the board

• Check for any burnt components

• Check for any loose components

• Check for any burnt traces

• Check for any cold solder joints

• Check for bulging capacitors

• Check for missing components

• Water damages

• Broken components

• Some components may be shorted and heat up to a point of melting the

solder and falling off

• If the board is in a high vibration area like a machine, the vibration can
cause the component to vibrate out over time especially if the component
has enough weight on it like a PCB transformer.
Step 2
Test the discrete components using the “diode mode” setting on your
digital multimeter as in the image shown here. This is the fastest method to
finding a defective discrete component.

Discrete components are components that are packaged by themselves or

individually like:

 Diodes
 Transistors
 Resistors
 FETs
 Capacitors etc…

Remember that you must have some kind of knowledge of how each individual
component work so that you know what you are testing and if you are testing the
component correctly.

Here are some discrete components and what you should expect to read on your
multimeter

– Fuses – Fuses are pretty straightforward. It is just a wire that is passing current
through rated at a max current and when there is more current passing through
at a “X” amount of time, the wire will burn and open up. A fuse is either open or
still good which is shorted.

• Should read short (o.ovdc remember you are in the diode mode setting so
you are not reading ohms but voltage)
– Diodes – diodes are components that only allow currents to flow in one direction
(Anode to Cathode) which is called forward bias and blocks current from
(Cathode to Anode) the other direction which is called reversed bias.

There are many types of diodes out there but what you are really looking for is
the two reading mentioned below. Most diodes functions the same and this
simple diode test will give you a good enough test to know if any diode is good
or defective. If you get any short reading, the diode may be shorted and you
should take the diode out of circuit to see if it actually shorted.

• Should read 0.3v - 0.75v in forward bias

• Should read “OL” in reverse bias unless you are reading the parallel
circuit. “OL” stands for over-limit which means open.
– Transistors - transistors are like switches with three pins. The Base, Emitter, and
Collector. There are also many types of transistor with different packages. If
you are unsure if the component is a transistor, pull the datasheet on the
component to make sure you are testing a transistor.

• Whether it’s a NPN or PNP transistor, you are looking for 2 diode drop
voltages (0.2 – 0.8vdc) but as longs as you don’t have a short across any of
the three pins, the transistor should be good.

– Bridge rectifiers – Bridge rectifiers are diodes put together in a package or circuit
to change AC voltage to DC voltage. Again, we are looking diode drops
readings because of the diodes within the bridge rectifiers.

• Here is how a single phase bridge rectifier’s schematic symbol looks like.
Notice the 4 diodes that make up the bridge rectifier. It has four pins
which are:

• the two AC inputs

• Negative DC output

• Positive DC output.
These are the four ways to test a bridge rectifier and your results should be similar.

Noticed the 0.572vdc, just remember that you are looking for a diode voltage drop somewhere
from 0.3 - .75vdc
Step 3
After you’ve tested all the discrete components and you haven’t found any defective
components, it’s time to power up the board.

What I normally do first is make sure there are no shorts on the board before I attempt to
power up. Shorts would most likely be on the DC side of the board.

First you must figure out how to power up the board. If you don’t have a schematic,
then you will have to figure how to power up.

Here is how I figure out how to power up a board without any markings, instructions,
or schematics:

I’ll start by identifying how to power up the board by using these components to help
guide me to make a decision on whether the input is AC or DC.

The board will required an AC input if you see these component/devices on the board.

 Transformer
 Bridge Rectifier

– Transformer – a device that requires AC

voltage to the primary side of the
transformer and then it’ll give you an
output AC voltage on the secondary side.
Usually, these transformers are step-
down and each transformer is made
differently having one or multiple
secondary outputs.

Check the transformer to see if there are

any markings to see what the primary
and secondary voltages supposed to be.
If there are not any markings, then look
for other clues like the bridge rectifier or voltage regulator.

For example, if you have a voltage regulator on the secondary side like a
LM7805, you know that the LM7805 voltage regulator requires at least 7vdc on
the input for it to work correctly. So what you do is apply AC voltage to the
primary side of the transformer using a Variable AC Power supply by slowly
increasing the voltage while monitoring the input of the voltage regulator. When
you get 7vdc at the input of the voltage regulator, you know you have minimum
required AC voltage input to power up the board.
 – Bridge rectifier – Again, a bridge rectifier turns your AC
voltage into DC voltage. The output voltage from the
bridge rectifier is probably going to a voltage regulator
and you would use the same example I mentioned above
about the LM7805 voltage regulator.

You would still apply AC voltage to the input of the

bridge rectifier and you would have to monitor the input
of the voltage regulator to make sure you are getting a
minimum of 2 volts higher than the rated voltage of the
voltage regulator.

The board will require DC voltage if you don’t have any transformer or bridge rectifiers.
You will have to look for these components:

 Voltage regulators
 ICs

– Voltage regulators come in many different packages. The

best thing to do is to pull the datasheet on the voltage
regulator and apply voltage according to the datasheet.
Here is a good website to get your datasheet.

Digchip.com

– Intergrated Circuits (ICs) requires a DC voltage

to power up also. Again, look at the ICs on the
board and pull the datasheet for them. Once
you find the datasheet, apply the required DC
voltage to power up the ICs. Keep in mind that
there may be multiple DC inputs. When you are
dealing with op-amps, you’ll have another set of
DC inputs.
Step 4
Once you’ve power up the board, the next step is to see what the board is actually doing
and record it. This seems simple enough but sometimes, we forget if an LED came on or
not. So get in the habit of recording what happens. With technology these days, its best
to use your phone’s camera and record what happens when you power up for the first
time. If something does blow up / smoke, with a camera rolling you could easily go
back and find out what blew up.

Here are some examples of what to record:

– LEDs:
o which one comes on
o which one is solid
o which one is flashing
– Displays:
o Does it come on
o What does the display say
– Relays
o Which one came on

Step 5
Check if anything is heating up

Hopefully at this point, nothing has blown up. Next, you would want to see if any
component is heating up. If you find one that is heating up, replace the component and
power back up again and see if the new component is heating up too. If it is, then you
would have to determine if that is normal or something else on the board is causing that
heat.
 Step 6
Checking ICs

If you have not found a problem, start checking your IC’s by pulling datasheet. This is
where it gets time consuming and complicated.

Now where do you start if you have a ton of IC’s? You start where the problem is at and
whatever ICs are in that circuit, then start testing those ICs.

You can use an Oscope to scope the output of the IC and if you need too, inject a signal
to the input(s) of the IC’s by using a function generator. This would require you to have
voltage to the IC.

Another way you can test the IC’s is to take them out of circuit and build a circuit to test
the IC.

If you have some kind of IC tester, you can also take the IC out of the board and test the
IC’s in the IC tester. BK Precision has two IC testers one for digital and one for analog.
All you have to do is put the IC in the socket (if it’s a DIP package) and enter in the part
number and the IC tester would go through its test and come back letting you know if
the IC passed or failed.

There are ICs that you cannot test without having any schematics. Even with
schematics, there are plenty of ICs that you will not be able to do anything with. If you
get up to this point and you still cannot find the problem, you’ve probably missed
something or there is an IC that you cannot test. You would just have to accept the facts
that the board may not be repairable.

Hopefully you will find this useful in helping you troubleshoot electronics down to the
component level without any schematics. Without schematics, it’s pretty difficult to do a full
test on the board and even if you would like to create your own schematic, it will take you a
long time to ohm each trace out.

We wish you the best of luck and if we can help in any way, please visit
www.electronictechinc.com.