Electronic Troubleshooting, Fourth Edition

Book Preface

Introduction

The fourth edition of this book has been updated to include the latest electrical and electronic devices and troubleshooting methods. It continues to be very suitable for anyone—associate’s, bachelor’s, or master’s degree electrical and electronic engineering or technology students, service technicians, hobbyists, apprentice technicians, trade, industrial, and vocational students—who wants to understand electrical and electronic troubleshooting. This book is ideal for adoption in electrical and electronic troubleshooting courses or as a required supplemental text for technical, vocational, or engineering courses. For optimum textbook use, a basic knowledge of electricity and electronics theory is advised.

The book can also be used by any technician or engineer as a handy reference guide in troubleshooting a wide array of electrical and electronic products and devices. The book’s unique strength is that it consolidates fundamentals and troubleshooting information of a wide range of electrical and electronic devices, thereby eliminating the need for several books. The authors have written the book in a practical and down-to-earth fashion and have included numerous tables, charts, illustrations, graphs, and troubleshooting flowcharts. The authors have included many “rules of thumb” and time-saving “tricks of the trade” acquired through several years of hands-on experience as electrical and electronic troubleshooters and consultants. This book has also been written to incorporate sound principles of learning and methodology utilizing the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains of learning to enable the reader to comprehend and understand the material.

The book blends traditional electrical theory and equipment (motors, controls, and wiring) with modern networking and electronic technology (computers, microprocessors, embedded microprocessor systems); the cutting-edge technology of biomedical equipment is also included. The reference guides at the back of the book will also allow the reader to quickly focus on the problem at hand, instead of requiring her or him to read the entire book for just one problem.

The organization of the book follows a progressive approach of understanding basic troubleshooting analysis and traditional products to more complex and advanced technology. Chapter 1 covers the essential principles and methods of electrical and electronic troubleshooting and provides the basic theory and testing of components such as capacitors, diodes, silicon-controlled rectifiers, integrated circuits, resistors, ultracapacitors, and inductors. This chapter also includes a practical problem-solving approach and presents the various circuit faults commonly found in electronics today.

Chapter 2 provides a valuable overview of modern-day test equipment used in troubleshooting electrical and electronic products and devices. Commonly used test instruments such as the VOM, FET multimeter, DMM, and oscilloscope are covered, as well as specialized test instruments such as the megohmmeter, digital logic probe, optical time-domain reflectometer, and network, spectrum, and waveform analyzer.

Chapter 3 explains the basic theory and repair of electric motors and generators—the heart of industrial machinery. Some of the types of motors covered include shaded-pole, capacitor, threephase, repulsion, universal, synchronous, and the increasingly popular stepper motor as used in digital applications.

Chapter 4 explains the essential principles, applications, and servicing of industrial controls. Several controllers are presented, such as a manual starter, magnetic overload relay, pneumatic timing relay, bimetallic thermal overload relay, drum switch, electronic drive, and programmable controller.

Chapter 5 covers troubleshooting of residential and industrial wiring. The basic theory and fundamentals of wiring are explained, followed by troubleshooting of such circuits as distribution panels, three-way and four-way switching controls, wye and delta wiring, polyphase industrial wiring, fiber optics, and television and antenna distribution systems.

Chapter 6 covers the troubleshooting of radio and television. It begins by describing the theory and component stages of AM, FM, FM multiplex, and HD, UHD, and smart television circuitry. This chapter then presents the typical problems encountered, along with methods for testing and repairing these products.

Chapter 7 is an introduction to digital systems and troubleshooting. Topics include analog and digital circuits, basic logic gates, digital technologies, safety, open and short digital circuits, troubleshooting examples, and troubleshooting equipment such as oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, logic pulsers, and logic probes.

Chapter 8 explains the building blocks of modern combinational and sequential circuits. It starts with flip-flops, decoders, and encoders. Next, it covers shift registers, counters, and digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital converters that are constructed from flip-flops. Troubleshooting synchronous logic is covered as well.

Chapter 9 introduces microprocessors, microprocessor-based systems, and troubleshooting. Memory, input/output, troubleshooting microprocessor-based systems using in-circuit emulator (ICE), microprocessor chips such as Intel’s LGA2011 and Zilog’s Z-80180, memory upgrade, and disassembled and decompiled memory dumps are the major topics covered in this chapter.

Chapter 10 presents the cutting-edge technology of biomedical equipment and troubleshooting. Electrical safety is emphasized. Biomedical engineering technology concepts related to equipment such as defibrillators, and ECG, EEG, hemodialysis, MRI, ultrasound, and X-ray machines; and troubleshooting, and preventive maintenance are introduced.

Chapter 11 provides a modern overview of computer networking. Topics include configuring network devices such as routers and switches using Cisco IOS commands, IP addressing, subnetting, virtual local area networks, network troubleshooting through OSI layers, a network troubleshooting example using a flowchart, and a troubleshooting example for routers.

Chapter 12 covers the exciting field of embedded microprocessor systems. Embedded systems are explained briefly, followed by the troubleshooting of microcontroller-based systems; timing diagrams for microprocessor and microcontroller; Zilog’s Z16FMC microcontroller; recurrent-sweep and triggered-sweep oscilloscopes; logic analyzers; programmable devices such as PALs, CPLDs, FPGAs, and FPLAs; and Raspberry Pi.

The authors believe that this book will be valuable and insightful to you in advancing your or your students’ knowledge and skills in the exciting and important field of electrical and electronic troubleshooting.