Bench Signal #009 — three things from the bench, every Tuesday.
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① This week's tip
iPhone 12/13 with no power after a drop, no visible screen damage, no charging response at all. Before ordering a battery or condemning the board, check for a lifted or shorted Tigris (charging IC).
A drop can crack the solder joints on Tigris without any external sign. Test for a short on the battery connector first. If it reads shorted, that's your IC, not your battery.
Five minutes on a multimeter saves a battery swap that was never going to fix anything.
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② Prompt of the week
Use this to build a one-page intake checklist for board-level jobs, so you're quoting on data instead of instinct:
I run an independent Apple repair lab and take in board-level repairs (logic board, charging IC, liquid damage). Build me a one-page intake checklist with four sections: fault identified (yes/no, description), component cost vs quoted price, realistic time estimate at my hourly rate, and past success rate with this specific fault. End with a clear accept / outsource / decline recommendation based on the answers. Format for printing, one page, fillable by hand in under 5 minutes.
Print it. Fill one in before every board-level quote. It won't make you say yes less, it'll make you say yes for the right reasons.
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③ Resource this week
OpenBoardView — openboardview.org
Free, open source viewer for boardview files. If you're doing any board-level work beyond swap-and-test, this is the tool that shows you what you're actually looking at before you reach for the hot air station.
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That's it for this week.
If this was useful, forward it to a colleague who'd appreciate it.
— BenchNotes