My hot take on finding board shorts: just use your eyes and a quick probe with the iron.

You can often spot a broken trace or cold joint without even touching the multimeter first.

4 comments

4 Comments

Yeah, I've totally been that guy who gets the meter out only to realize the capacitor was literally cracked in half. Why do we make it harder on ourselves?

carter.john1mo ago

But what about the stuff you can't see? I've fixed boards where the problem was a shorted chip getting hot or a corroded trace under the solder mask. My eyes didn't catch that. I'll do a quick look, sure, but then the meter comes out. It tells you the real story the board is hiding. Sometimes trusting your eyes too much just sends you down the wrong path.

elliot_roberts1mo ago

Grace is right about the visual check, but your nose can find a hot chip before your meter does.

grace_knight191mo ago

Totally spot on with the visual check first. Burnt resistors are so obvious, or a solder joint that looks dull and grey instead of shiny. Found a tiny ring crack around a pin just by tilting the board under a lamp. Saves so much time not hooking up probes right away, you just... see it. So many times I've almost wasted minutes setting up the meter for something my eyes caught in two seconds.