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System / Voidz

Board repair

Industrial Control Board and PLC I/O Card Repair

Industrial equipment outlives its electronics by decades. The machine is fine, the board is discontinued, and the quoted answer is a control retrofit costing more than the machine is worth.

Book a board inRates and terms

$85

Bench diagnosis

Credited when the repair is approved

$1,200–8,000

Typical replacement

What the OEM board costs new

10–25%

Repair cost

Of the replacement price

1–3 business days

Turnaround

Bench time, plus transit. 90-day warranty.

What to send

Boards handled in this category

Send the board, not the equipment. If the board you have is not on this list, send the part number and ask.

  • PLC I/O cards — digital and analogue
  • Industrial switching power supplies
  • HMI and operator panel boards
  • Machine control and sequencing boards
  • Motion and encoder interface boards
  • Relay and output expansion cards

Symptoms

What it looks like from the equipment side

These are the faults that most often turn out to be the board. None of them prove it — that is what the diagnosis is for.

  • One I/O channel dead while the rest of the card works
  • HMI blank, or backlight out with the display still driven
  • Power supply dropping out under load
  • Intermittent faults that clear on a power cycle
  • Machine faulting with no consistent pattern
  • Board that will not come up after a plant power event

Failure modes

What actually fails, and why

Common to this class of board. The cause matters as much as the fault — a board replaced into the condition that killed it fails again.

Aged electrolytic capacitors in supplies

The most common failure on any equipment over about fifteen years. Capacitors dry out, ripple rises, and everything downstream misbehaves in ways that look like logic faults.

Individual output driver failure

One channel of an I/O card fails while the rest is fine — usually from an inductive load switched without adequate suppression. A single channel is a component-level repair, not a new card.

Backlight and inverter failure on operator panels

A dark HMI is far more often a backlight supply than a dead panel. The distinction is the difference between a repair and a discontinued display nobody can source.

Optocoupler degradation

Isolation optocouplers lose output over years of service. Inputs become unreliable at the margins and read intermittently before failing outright.

Battery damage on older boards

Memory-backup batteries left in place leak and corrode the surrounding board. Caught early it is a clean repair; left long enough it takes traces with it.

Mail-in

Getting the board to the bench

Book it in first. An RMA number comes back the same business day, and the board arrives with the paperwork already attached to it.

Ship to

System Voidz — Repair IntakePO Box 33 (USPS)413 Railroad Ave (UPS, FedEx)Watrous, NM 87753

Use the PO Box for USPS and the street address for UPS or FedEx — a PO Box cannot accept courier deliveries.

Wait for the RMA number before shipping.

Before you pull it

  • Photograph the board in place, connectors attached. It is the single most useful thing you can send.
  • Note the equipment make and model, and the number printed on the board itself.
  • Write down what it was doing when it failed — intermittent, heat-related, or after a storm all change what gets tested first.
  • Pack it in an anti-static bag. Bubble wrap alone is not enough.
Book a board in

Questions

Shop and industrial machinery — common questions

The board is obsolete and nobody makes it any more.

That is the best reason to repair rather than replace, and it is a large part of what this bench does.

A discontinued board with a failed capacitor or one dead output channel is a repair. The alternative quoted is usually a full control retrofit.

Only one input channel is dead. Worth repairing?

Usually the cheapest repair on the list. A single failed channel is one component on a card that is otherwise sound.

Tell us which channel on the intake form — it goes straight to the fault instead of a full-card sweep.

Do you have documentation for old industrial boards?

Rarely, and it is not usually needed. Component-level diagnosis works from the board itself — tracing supplies, comparing channels against working ones on the same card, and testing components directly.

A second identical board, even a dead one, helps a great deal. Send it along if you have one.

Also repaired

Other equipment

Component-level repair is the same discipline across all of it. Only the failure patterns change.

$85 bench diagnosis

Send the board before you buy a new one.

Diagnosis is $85 flat and is credited when you approve the repair. If the board turns out to be good, you have ruled it out for certain and paid the diagnosis fee only.

Book a board inCall (505) 309-0534