Vent: watched a guy wreck a control board by using an impact driver on the mounting screws

Saw it happen Tuesday at a job in Portland, stripped the board traces instantly and turned a 15 minute repair into a whole new part order, have you ever had to spend your own money fixing someone else's shortcut?

3 comments

3 Comments

young.thomas2d ago

What if the board was already loose and the impact saved time?

ray_sullivan2d ago

Mounting screws on control boards are almost always M3 or M4 machine screws, not wood screws. An impact driver is just asking for trouble on anything smaller than 5/16 inch. The torque curve on those things spikes hard at the end and the shock transfers right into the PCB traces, especially if the board isn't supported from the back. That's not a shortcut, that's just not knowing the difference between fasteners and thinking brute force fixes everything.

david_reed222d ago

That M3 point you made is spot on. I had a guy try to use a 12v impact on a board in a HVAC unit last spring and it cracked the solder joints on three relays. Took me two hours to find all the hairline fractures under a magnifier. It's rough when someone thinks they're speeding things up but really just adds a whole new headache for everybody. I feel for anyone who has to eat the cost on a part like that because of someone else's mistake.