Susan Brown

[Susan Brown]

P.S. We’ve removed the statement about the power supply being verified good to simplify the scenario even further.

[Susan Brown]

We’re not asking questions in this exam that require you to know about the rest of the dryer circuit. The purpose of the midterm exam is to test your understanding of fundamental circuit concepts. As for troubleshooting problems using stock schematics on the entire appliance, you’ll be getting plenty of that in the troubleshooting module.

[Susan Brown]

It sounds like perhaps you are not clear on measuring voltage vs. voltage drop. (This is a concept that take a little while to grasp!)

When you take a voltage reading, that does not tell you that current is in fact flowing. It just tells you that there is a voltage difference between two points.

In the question it stated that there was zero volts across the heating element, which tells you that no work is being done, thus no current is flowing in that circuit (so, there isn’t a complete circuit).

It helped me to watch the video in Module 3 Unit 8 again when contemplating this scenario. Watch that and see if it helps. Let me know!

https://my.mastersamuraitech.com/module-3/basic-electricity-voltage-drop-and-load/

[Susan Brown]

It sounds like you are confusing measuring voltage potential vs. voltage drop.

That’s a hint… does that help clear it up? If not, we can discuss further!

[Susan Brown]

The question you are referring to is:
Question #19 – If the Defrost Heater and the Freezer Drain Heater are operating within specifications, what equivalent resistance would you measure from Pin 13 to Pin 7 in the diagram below:

So, we are talking about equivalent resistance.

What kind of circuit is shown in the diagram? Series or parallel?

(P.S. “Current drop” is not something that happens in a circuit – did you mean to say “voltage drop”? Make sure you have a clear understanding of current and voltage, and their characteristics in series and parallel circuits!)

[Susan Brown]

No, because these are specialty items that aren’t needed for most calls, especially when someone is starting out.

[Susan Brown]

There aren’t a lot of times that you simply can’t do a job without a second man. One that comes to mind is replacing the drum bearings on a front-load washer. But, there are some times when a second man can be instrumental to avoiding damage to the surroundings, when there is an unusual amount of disassembly or effort involved because of the particular setting of the appliance. This most often happens with laundry appliances, which can be stacked or in tight closets. You have to evaluate the setting and decide what the risks seem to be – do they have fancy floors or cabinetry or trim work that could get scratched or dented in the process of gaining access to the appliance? If so, you may have to schedule to come back with help.

We eventually acquired some specific equipment to help with these situations – an all-dolly for wall ovens and an air sled to help move appliances in difficult settings. This is pricey equipment, so we charge when they have to be used (essentially, they are the “second man”).

The vast majority of jobs you can do solo. But, it would be good to identify a person or two who you might be able to arrange to help you on occasional jobs. Someone who has a flexible schedule (self-employed handyman, for example). Or even just a friend. They don’t need to be skilled – you just need an extra set of hands, usually!

[Susan Brown]

“Flat rate” is different from an hourly charge. The rate is for a particular repair task. For example, you need to replace a Jazz board on an Amana refrigerator. There would be a set price for doing that repair. It would not be calculated based on the actual time it took for you to do the repair.

There are various ways to implement a Flat-rate system.

We use the online Blue Book. http://www.appliancebluebook.com/

We also live in a semi-rural area, and we account for the variability of drive time by programming the Blue Book with add-on fees for different towns. So, after our diagnosis, we plug in the various aspects of the job (town the customer is in, make/model of the appliance, part number(s) needed for the repair, any extra tasks such as a second man required) and the total rate for the repair is calculated for us so we can present it to the customer and get their decision.

We’ve seen other service companies who develop their own flat-rate system. For example, having a one-page laminated sheet that shows various categories of repairs and what the flat-rate labor price would be for each. That takes a certain amount of experience to develop, however, because you have to know how to cover all of your fixed and variable costs of doing the repair.

That’s why we just pay for a service that does all of those calculations for us. Occasionally we think the Blue Book quote is either too high or too low, based on our experience, and we’ll make an adjustment, but most of the time, we agree with it. It’s at least a reliable starting point for a new business.

[Susan Brown]

There are two different answers that involve the heater – which one did you choose?

This is a question where you need to look at both the timing chart and the schematic to confirm the answer.

[Susan Brown]

Hi Steven,

Thanks for letting us know your concerns.

As we were developing Fundamentals, I basically went through and took the course myself, so I understand how you feel! I have a bit of a technical background, but it did not include schematic reading, etc., and I completely know what you mean by feeling overwhelmed when first looking at a schematic.

To me, learning to read schematics is a lot like learning to read music. You can see someone present music theory, the names and quality of the notes on the staff, etc., and it makes sense while they are explaining it, but the sheet of music still looks like gibberish to you. Then you slowly start figuring out the music one note at a time. You gradually gain competence until one day you realize that you can look at a sheet of music and read it as well as you can words on a page. But the initial part of the learning curve is pretty steep.

The Fundamentals course gives you the raw material you need to become adept at reading schematics, but it definitely takes practice to gain proficiency. That’s a lot why we developed the Advanced Schematics course, to give students more in-depth instruction as well as the opportunity to practice more.

That being said, Team Samurai is now brainstorming about what we can offer to you and any other Fundamentals students who might feel the same way to help you in the meantime! Maybe a webinar, for example. Stay tuned!

Also – in terms of Voltage measurements, drops, etc. – do you listen to our podcast? There have been a few episodes where Scott talks about voltage measurements in various ways. Hearing him talk about it might be helpful to you. https://mastersamuraitech.com/category/mst-podcast/

[Susan Brown]

We didn’t read Figure 7-19 the way you did, but agree overall that it confuses things a bit by labeling neg and pos ends. The complication/confusion mainly stems from the actual vs. conventional current flow issue. We changed the writeup a little bit in this unit, as well as quiz questions 6 and 7, to (hopefully!) avoid confusion.

[Susan Brown]

Yep, every year that goes by, more and more people are “googling” rather than looking in phone books or other print media. It’s very important to have a good online presence, including a mobile-friendly website, since more and more people are searching using devices. It doesn’t have to be a complicated site – just make it easy for them to call you!

Google AdWords can be very effective, too.

[Susan Brown]

Hi Igor and Mark,

Very sorry for the delay in answering this post! We’ve just realized there is an occasional glitch in our software that sometimes prevents us being notified of a post – we are gonna get that fixed!

We do have a section in Mod 4 Unit 4 of the course on legal structures with info on the most commonly used one for small businesses, the LLC.

At this point we do not include any detailed info on growing a business to include multiple techs. That is a topic we are planning to address eventually, but our focus at the moment is developing more technical courses.

A current resource that I can think of if you have immediate questions about growing your business would be connecting with other business owners in the Tech forums at Appliantology.

Thanks for the question!

[Susan Brown]

Hi Igor,

Basically what we are saying is if you are a self-employed professional tech, are any of the items in that list things that shouldn’t be factored into your pricing so that you are compensated for them?

(And I’ve unblocked you.)

[Susan Brown]

Hi Walter,

I just wanted to chime in and say that we cover the type of questions you’re asking here – current, voltage, voltage drop, various types of circuits, electrical measurements, etc. – very thoroughly in the Basic Electricity Boot Camp (including a discussion on how “the path of least resistance” is an errant way of thinking when dealing with electrical circuits!).

The BEBC lays a firm foundation for folks to then be able to get the most out of the Advanced Schematics course. We’ve found that techs without a clear understanding of basic electricity can have difficulty really getting their troubleshooting skills where they want them, even if they take Advanced Schematics. Click here to see the topics covered.

Just wanted to throw that out there in case you were interested in taking the BEBC! If you are, I can message you privately to discuss it further. Lemme know!

🙂

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