benchhud: Watching a Board Cook

mrcupp@mrcupp.com (Aaron Cupp) — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 21:00:00 -0700

The two-second look away

Here’s the workflow I was trying to kill.

Board’s drawing current it shouldn’t. You want to know which component is getting hot, so you pick up the thermal camera, point it at the board, look at its screen, find the bright spot, then look back at the microscope and try to work out which part that was. Two displays, two coordinate systems, and a mental transform between them that you redo every single time.

The Bench Is Open

mrcupp@mrcupp.com (Aaron Cupp) — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 01:15:00 -0700

Taking work

Short version: I do board-level repair, and I’m taking work. Here’s the page.

Longer version below, because I think the why matters more than the pitch.

Most repair isn’t repair

Take a laptop somewhere with a dead port and you’ll usually get a quote for a logic board. Not a component — the board. The diagnosis stops at “which module do we swap,” because that’s the model the industry is built around: replacement at the largest convenient unit, billed accordingly.

Microsoldering on IamMrCupp

benchhud: Watching a Board Cook

The two-second look away

The Bench Is Open

Taking work

Most repair isn’t repair