I understand. But to be blunt, in this day and age there are more companies who copy schematics and put it out as products then companies doing original design. In fact some of our early group diy work was used by a few companies. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. But it happened. So I see why companies hesitate. To me an NDA really shows a you are serious about protecting their stuff and just fixing your stuff. I have a few with different companies for that reason.
Unfortunately, it’s not “lost”. It exists still.
Yes I can attest to that. My last stint the big thing was board swaps for field guys unless it was something super simple. Then the boards came back to the mothership for rework and back into the cycle of use for swaps. While this does expedite things, it really isn't a healthy option IMHO. The better option is field board repair if and when possible as it is the fastest way to resolve things.
I think it is important to distinguish between professional and consumer/semipro suppliers. The professional ones know their customers will want their gear to be earning as much as possible all the time and they cannot afford the time or effort to deal with sending items off for repair. It needs to be fixed now and that is why they have an on site service department who will make repairs. For this reason they provide full service info. For consumer/semipro, little if any of the above applies.
Trying to repair a friend’s Eventide H910 was the most humbling thing I’ve attempted to fix. It took me less than an hour to figure out that the PSU voltages were all bonkers because the power transformer was wired for 220v, instead of 110. I corrected that and changed one of the regulators, then the power was normal, so I had high hopes that I got off easy. Nope. I pulled every one of the million tantalum caps to test them, poked around for a few days after that, and eventually gave up.
It’s been a few years so I’m a bit fuzzy on what exactly it didn’t do, but I don’t think it had any effect at all and do remember that I had signal getting up to the digital section, and could inject signal into the exit and had signal on the output. In the digital section I did all the standard stuff like checking all the power pins on the chips, testing caps, feeling for an abnormally hot chip, testing for shorts, etc., but even with having the schematics I honestly don’t have enough knowledge to troubleshoot the digital circuit.
I don't work with consumer grade or semi-pro manufacturers... When an end-user demands high system availability and or short MTTRs, then the response is to sell on-site spares holding to them (conveniently increasing the manufacturer's revenue). Faulty modules/units can then be managed as above, i.e. repairs are effected by the OEM using a return-to-base model.
But why would you buy a new product from the same company whose previous product failed before it should have ?
Because it's all one can afford?
If it fails during DLP, then it's repaired (or probably replaced) under warranty. From the manufacturer's point of view, failures beyond DLP are "acceptable", or perhaps intentional. Makers also monitor the incidence of warranty claims and use that data to tweak designs and or adjust their future warranty durations.
"DLP"?
Most manufacturers of worth authorise and use third-party repairers to provide in-region representation if they don't have footprint in that geography - and you're right that with no warranty support, future sales suffer - but beyond once warranty expires, I can assure you that manufactures just want to sell new product.The advent of SMD components has sadly for many products brought them to a point where on board service is not deemed practicable and thus board replacement is the only service option - a lot of techs won’t do component level service as many LSI’s are too difficult to solder and/or they don’t want to tackle removal and replacement of the smaller IC’s anyway.
Some pro gear suppliers in this country have single city repair centres where the gear has to be returned to that city for warranty repairs, they don’t have repair centres in each state capital - makes it difficult for studios and gigging musicians who don’t have the luxury of a backup $5000 synthesizer or piece of rack gear - unfortunately the time people find this out is when the gear breaks down. The cost to ship a 20Kg keyboard from Sydney to Melbourne is pretty high - don’t throw out the box as it will cost you almost double to ship it in a reinforced flight case.
I do a lot of warranty work for some importers who supply multiple brands to retailers from a single-city distribution centre, as they have come to realise that without proper representation country-wide they are losing repeat customers and recommendation sales or retail outlets won’t sell the product and need to have service agents in other cities. These companies are good with schematics but there are NDA’s that are in place for the service documentation for many brands, so the schematics are likely never to see the light of day on the open net. A lot of gear has the service docs with test point checks to determine fault status and which board needs to be replaced - some list likely component failures with a cross check table.
Some will not release any documentation and rely on board replacement only service - the replaced boards becoming landfill.
In many cases the cost to do on-board repair in labour exceeds the cost of a replacement board and is not supported by warranty.
