I repair electronics. The work I do varies extremely though. Sometimes I'm doing simple stuff like replacing cracked screens in broken phones, soldering new surface-mount buttons or micro USB ports to logic boards, or repairing broken traces in boards and flex cables. Over the last year I've been building up my own lab for soldering very small things.
It's pretty satisfying to fix something that most people would look at and say "yep you just need a new one." Some highlights of recent memory: just last week I fixed this guy's keyfob for his car. He dropped it on the sidewalk just outside of where I work and the battery terminal broke off the board. I soldered it back together and it worked like nothing ever happened. Easiest $30 I think I've ever made, and that guy was eternally grateful since he could actually drive his car again. There was also this other time where I fixed the microUSB port on a $600 or so graphics tablet. The port was physically okay, but all the leads were broken and some of the pads were lifted so I had to solder 40AWG wires (scale comparison, with a strand of my own hair) with surgical precision to restore continuity and make those leads work again.
Reballing BGAs is pretty cool too.
Anybody can swap out components, but it seems that this level of soldering work (really, even soldering in general) isn't something a lot of places offer as a service any more. Which is a shame because it makes me wonder how much stuff gets thrown into a dump when all it needed was a quick jumper with some wire, or a new 8 cent filter that committed suicide.
Currently a line cook at a restaurant. I do salads, flatbreads, and desserts. Been there a year next month with 8 of those months as a dishwasher. Thinking of leaving soon tbh
I work as a relief support staff helping individuals with intellectual disabilities in group homes. An upgrade of my previous job as a retail clerk.
Do nothing club
(but on a way to be a communicative designer in design studio)
I hang wallpaper in peoples homes.
Currently unemployed, but I used to do work in a grocery store (bagging groceries, stocking) and some freelance video editing for a hospital. I'll be graduating college soon so hopefully I will have something in the coming months.
Hardware Associate at Lowe's. It's a million times better than my job was before it, so I'm not complaining too much
I know what you mean there.
I've been amassing soldering kit and have my own workshop now.
Recently i started doing laptop motherboard repairs, it really opens up a whole load of options when you have the right tools.
Want to hear an insider secret that might actually get me assassinated?
Every single hospital, ever, everywhere - in the United States - does not have your well being, recovery, treatment, or life as a priority. They have only one priority - making sure they can charge you for as many things as possible, and see to it that your insurance (granted you have it) approves as much of it as possible. This money goes straight to the hospital, and this money is accessible by the CEO of whatever organization owns the hospital. This person, 100% of the time, did not open a hospital to help people. Put together the following: Company owns hospital (among other businesses), charges for as many things as possible, and often times neglects your safety as a patient just to save money. I'll let you figure out the rest.
so you get paid to sit on your arse and talk bollocks all day?
I teach English for a small institute that sends its teachers to various companies that needs their employees speaking English. On the side I also teach English, but since I'm working for myself the pay is much better. Aside from that I prepare fireball whiskey as a hobby since I love it and regular bottles of the stuff are expensive in this country, and I sell what I don't drink to friends and students. In the future I'm looking into buying sex toys in bulk and selling them since it's really easy to sell whatever shit as an individual here.
Currently I do security on set for Big Brother Canada. Other than that, I freelance with whoever will take me. Now and then I also do camera work for a live-to-web video production company who also does VR stuff.
In actual design work you than have to then implement and fuck-up-proof the bollocks you just talked.
I am a research engineer, working on improving machining techniques in regards to producing parts for the nuclear industry! Currently attempting to install a Staubli TX200 robotic arm:
https://www.usinenouvelle.com/expo/img/robot-6-axes-tx200-000222545-product_zoom.jpg
This being a 1000kg robot, with a 2 metre reach - at full rotational speed on the main axis, the tip goes at about 13.6 mph with an impact of ~8800N (ouch).
Suffice to say this is very cool to me too!
For the most part I use the microscope for all of it. If it's large enough to see with my eyes I of course don't. But lots of the stuff I fix is way too small to reasonably solder with the naked eye. By X-Y stages, I'm assuming you're talking about a motorized jig to move components and line them up with the board. I don't work on any chips that are large enough to need that level of precision. Most of the BGA work I do is small enough that the surface tension of the molten balls will pull the chips into alignment.
Yeah, a thing to just move your components a consistent, controllable amount at high magnifications - I guess I just don't have the manual dexterity, considering you're manipulating stuff potentially on the order of microns. Also, I will admit to liking mechanical toys to play with. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that you don't, given the SMD-level soldering!
Working as a security guard at a store. I'd prefer a job where I don't have to wear a uniform. Any suggestions?
Working as an undercover security guard at a store.
I work as a video editor and writer for an e-commerce company. If you see those clickbait-y heavily watermarked 'WOW COOL PRODUCT' ads on Facebook accompanied by a 20-30 second video, those are the kind of stuff I work on.
The scope I have goes up to some crazy high amounts, but I'm not repairing broken traces in SMD BGA flip chips where that kind of micrometer precision is necessary. For most of my work it's definitely down to sub-millimeter accuracy though. The smallest SMD components I usually deal with are 0402/01005, which definitely fall into micrometer scale, but I rarely mess with those. For the most part, the devices I fix are usually much larger component failures, but still small enough that you need a decent microscope to do the work.
I actually run that scope with a 0.5x reduction lens, for the purpose of increasing FoV and working distance. I need about 5-7 inches of distance between the bottom of the lens and my workpiece to fit my tools under it. It also has an adjustable optical zoom, so it's easy to be able to go from seeing "the whole picture" to one specific thing. I tried working with the standard 1x but it was very "claustrophobic". It's one thing when you're just doing an inspection, but actually working with that amount of zoom is a nightmare. You need to have a lot of awareness of surrounding components to do this kind of work. You gotta be able to see at least some of the things around what you're working on to look for visual indicators on where your hot air is going when you're trying to remove something. It also helps to prevent you from pushing your iron up against things you shouldn't touch, unless you want to knock out an entire trailer park of desense filters for an RF circuit.
I typically have pretty shaky hands, but it's interesting how the brain works. When you're working under a microscope at this level, your brain can pick up on those micro shakes and compensate for them appropriately. Sometimes I still shake a lot but nothing that a little walk outside or some deep breaths can't fix. Having that wider FoV and increasing your peripheral vision with the reduction lenses helps with letting your brain do most of the work for you.
I've seen some people work with machines to do this stuff though. GPU reballing, for example, usually has specialized machines that line up the replacement chip with the board array with that very necessary micrometer precision. You gotta adjust the machine by hand, but it holds the chip and board for you, which you then line up the chip before slowly bringing it down onto the board for installation. When you get into flip chips that 100+ balls, surface tension alone isn't going to keep it aligned because you gotta place it 100% perfect the first time. Literally one micrometer off and it just won't be soldered properly. But the smaller ones, that can be reballed by hand with a stencil, are small and light enough that the surface tension of the molten solder just "snaps" them into place.
Not anymore. They canned me after a year of work. Over things I talk to my boss about in confidence. Be careful who you trust, folks.
User experience designer
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