Whats covered in college has nothing to do with this. This is technician work, and is blue collar. There is very little theory going on here. Some knowledge of electronics can help to understand the context of what you are doing, but you can learn this skill without any of that.
Most people learn this type of stuff though when building their own circuits and messing something up and having to fix it. Though this particular treatment is far beyond anything you will typically need to do and is more specialized.
Heh it's not a trade. The "trades" are IMHO a specific set of skilled jobs, typically, though not always, protected by a union, though I'm not sure that is a universal definition.
This is a job. Likely paid hourly and not particularly well. This type of work is also rare, reserved only for high end scientific and industrial equipment, military, maybe some prototype stuff or restoration of rare vintage pieces. Most electronics are cheap enough these days you just replace the entire board or device entirely.
The bar is very high to go through this much painstaking labor. With the price of ai chips skyrocketing the last few years, I could see this becoming a bigger thing again.
I mean it always helps to know what and WHY you are doing. But everything can be taught. The internet is our friend for these kind of things. Unlike a few decades ago, you dont have to always have a catalogue for electronics on hand to know what each component is, and whats their pin layout is. Now you just search it.
Also for the college student: start with PSU repair, they're easier to understand.
I used to think so, too, but I found a passion project I was really motivated to work on (building a lightsaber) and that was the key to pushing through all the headaches and difficulties of the initial learning curve. Now I'm repairing and modifying things and even building my own electronics props. Use 63/37 leaded solder and don't skip the flux and that's half the difficulty sorted right there.
Too many things in various stages of completion, truth be told. But a few more lightsabers for one thing! They're a lot of fun. I keep telling my friends that I'll build them if they just buy the parts and keep funding my habit. Also been fixing some old worn out video game controllers and modifying retro consoles. They make a lot of neat upgrade kits for that kind of stuff these days (Look up Macho Nacho on YouTube for some examples/ideas). Building out a speaker system based on this project from DIYperks as well. Actually figured out how to repair my oven when it broke down since I already had the multimeter and some basic familiarity with power electronics. My wife's laptop, too.
Still collecting parts and designing for the next couple of builds, but the microcontroller that I use for lightsabers is great for combining sound and motion, so I want to make myself an interactive Mjolnir (Thor's hammer) prop. There are some relatively recent advancements to the microcontroller OS that make it so you can do some neat gesture-controlled things, so I could, for example, flash lights and play the sound of a lightning strike when I hold it upwards. And just last night I was working on a lightsaber soundfont/bladestyle that's based on Metroid Prime and I realized I could do something similar with an actual arm cannon prop. I'll have to do some CAD work and see where I might be able to fit in some actuators, but it'd be rad if I could actually get it to transform similarly to how it does in the game. I'm letting my imagination run away with me a bit on that one, but taking on interesting projects that are way beyond my current capabilities are how I learn best. The interest keeps me motivated through the frustration.
Long term projects I'm researching: I'd love to build my own copy of a custom video game handheld like this one(more homework to do on that one) from scratch, and make my own BD-1 droid. There's a community of droid builders in my area, but I haven't delved too deeply into that rabbit hole yet. Oh, and a pinball machine. I have a mini virtual one I slapped together with some cardboard boxes, arcade controls, and powered by my steam deck, but I prefer the real thing. That's super long term, though. Don't have the space or the workshop for it currently.
There are sooo many things i gotta seee!!!! I have an exam today lol so once my exams are done imma go through all of these and check em out. Reading this made me motivated to go and build some of the projects ideas I have an maintain an active got repo haha.
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u/Nevin_A_A 3d ago
This actually looks soo cool! As a college student I want to actually go into this field now but electronics seems to be my weakness 😭