@Samtech - ezzacly right. I think playing with an arduino kit or something like that as a hobby or self-teaching experience is awesome and I do alot of that kind of thing myself. Some of it even has insight implications for what I do in the business of troubleshooting and repairing other people's appliances.

But offering board repair that as a service to customers is penny-wise and dollar-dumb. Someone who does this may get jazzed about the buck two-eighty they made fixing someone's control board. But, if they're looking to build and grow an appliance repair business, they're trading the bigger vision-- a low volume, high margin, multi-tech appliance repair company-- for navel gazing and chump change. 

@dave316 - Thanks for watching. Hope it gave some thoughts for planning your own business. 

Great comment, @BoardFruit- thanks for confirming my perspective and sharing your insight and experience in this business.

I hear some appliance techs talking about repairing electronic boards in terms of "beating the manufacturers at their own game," as if the engineers are deliberately designing in failure or somehow making a game out of it. Anyone who's worked in manufacturing and engineering (I've done both) knows that this is just silly nonsense. Engineering departments have a budget they have to work within. Meeting that budget means making some hard decisions about hardware and software. There is no nefarious plot or conspiracy to defraud the customer or make the lives of repair technicians a living hell.

For appliance technicians, the most sensible and cost-effective thing to do (from the appliance repair company's perspective) if a board has provably failed is to either replace it with a new OEM board or have it professionally rebuilt by someone like your company.