The difference is in the way the cutting edges are ground. Also the flush cutters blades meet together flat in relation to each other while diagonal pliers jaws are at an angle. You really need both as you need to protect the flush cutters so don’t use them for cutting wire off a spool save them for pc work. Diagonal cutters are more robust and can take punishment like cutting big wires with heavy insulation.
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Or biting metal cans to shreds… My dad’s an electrician. I got my ass whooped on more than one occasion as a kid, for playing with his tools in creative albeit inappropriate ways.
I loved plugging the analog voltmeter into the house mains to watch the needle slam the peg.
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I fully agree here.
That strongly depends on the size of the board. Some cracks can be difficult to see with even 40x stereomicroscope.
The resolder-it-all approach is the nuclear option to be chosen if the targeted approach fails or would take too long time. (Also useful, if manual one-by-one approach is chosen, to add lead to the joints so the alloy won’t be as brittle as the European Union mandates.)
Hence it is the backup option.
Also, good to see a real old-school repair tech. These are becoming rare. 
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The resolder all approach usually won’t take care of cracks right at the junction of the pad and trace this is even less like;y with the conformal coatings on pc boards. Even if it manages to bridge the gap changes in temperature changes may cause enough expansion or contraction to open the gap. I really hate repairing callbacks that are not making me money. I want to see something else that the customer has so I can charge them. As for real repair techs the electronic industry does not value that approach anymore, most companies have a list of steps and failures then prescribe replacement of whole boards. They can train any half way intelligent person to do that there is no room for diagnosis of actual bad parts today. I had a bad experience with a computer company that rhymes with “Hell” they replaced the same 2 boards 8 times in a laptop that had a thermal failure after 6 hours. Their step list couldn’t deal with an intermittent and there was no testing to see the actual failure. I am sure that replacing the cpu would have solved the problem and I told them that but every time it was the same 2 boards and ship it back it was never in the repair facility long enough to see the failure. Now I just set a timer for 5 hours when I use it and then shut it off. Even if they had competent techs that could actually troubleshoot they were not allowed to do it. I talked to everyone including the highest level.managers and regardless the outcome was the same. That would never have happened in a well run repair facility.
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These are a bitch. I however don’t think I met a single such one on anything that went through my hands (and that was not grossly mechanically abused). I however have to admit a much smaller corpus of experiences. AFAIK most things fail in the solder joint. How common are circuitboard cracks? I know they happen but did not see enough to get a “feel” for them.
Bleh.
Especially in the age where a $5 switching power supply chip can be all that’s wrong with $200+ board.
It can happen when the board is loaded and a component’s lead is compressed and then wave soldered. This can put pressure on the solder pad that with a bit of a bang in shipment causes a break at the weakest point the junction of the solder pad and trace. It is far less common today with surface mount devices than it was 20 or so years ago. I still see it these days in guitar amps that are usually banged around and have the vibration of the speakers. Also when large devices are soldered to PC boards especially in boutique guitar amps where the designer maybe very good but doesn’t have the pc engineering background. I pretty much just repair musical instrument equipment anymore and I sort of avoid most stuff but guitar amps. I started out when tubes were just being replaced by transistors so my vacuum tube chops are probably as good as you can get. I specialize in restoring old guitar amps and some modding although I try to always get the customer to use the amp after I bring it back to original specs before I do any modding. I also still have a bunch of vacuum tube hifi equipment that have been following me for 35 years or more. Unfortunately due to a failed back surgery it takes me a long time to get a repair or rebuild job done as I can only work at my bench for an hour at a time. One big plus about being a repair tech is that I have over the years acquired a lot of cool old guitar amps and FX pedals very cheaply my basement studio (and living room) are like guitar player’s fantasy land. My daughter will have a heck of a time clearing out my house when ever I pass on but if she is smart about selling the stuff it should get her some serious money.
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Wow- that is a really cool way to remove a screw. Drill in through the side and pin it to remove.
Don’t think I’ve tried that one before. Also:
That is by far, the most nerdy and awesome way to remove a screw! I almost want to screw something now just to do this. Unfortunately it would not work well on watches- both for the high surface tension against super small beading of mercury, wouldn’t touch really small screws, and mainly because it would probably remove the plating on the watch through reaction. I’m certain that would happen somehow.
Still, I’m adding those to the book 
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Lube shops will do the same thing to your drain plug, which can fuck up your oilpan too, being somewhat more fragile than a wheel.
This place was pretty good but closed a couple of years ago.
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I hear Suicide Commando combined with Psyclon 9 is so caustic, it burns right through the toughest bolts 
The problem is that it usually burns also through everything else.
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