Every probe repair company writes “OEM quality” on its website. Almost none of them says what it would mean if it were true. The phrase is worth exactly as much as the evidence behind it, so this page sets out what we mean by it, what we measure, and — more usefully — what you should demand from any repair vendor, including us.
The four questions that separate claims from evidence
Buyers who have been burned once tend to converge on the same four questions. If a vendor cannot answer all four in writing, the “OEM quality” claim is decoration.
1. Who did the work, and what exactly did they replace?
Not “the probe was repaired”. Which subassembly, which part, replaced or refurbished. A repair that replaced the scan head is a materially different product from one that re-terminated four conductors, and it should not be described in the same sentence.
2. Where did the replacement material come from?
This is the question most often dodged, and it is the one that matters for counterfeit risk. Salvaged parts, OEM-sourced parts and aftermarket parts are three different things with three different lifespans. Ask which one you are getting. We use our own housings and new crystal stacks on scan-head replacements, and we say so on the report rather than leaving it implied.
3. How was it verified against a reference?
A repaired probe should be tested on a matching ultrasound system — the same model family it will go back to work on — and compared against a known-good reference. Continuity testing alone proves a channel is connected, not that it performs.
4. What are the numbers, before and after?
Element counts are the honest metric in this trade because they are countable. “64 of 128 elements dead or missing” tells you something. “Image degradation observed” tells you nothing. Our reports carry the count.
What we actually check
- Element integrity across the full array — the count of dead, weak and shorted elements, before and after.
- Uniformity across the aperture — a probe with every element alive can still image badly if sensitivity varies across the face.
- Live-system imaging on a matching system, not a bench jig — the same check that catches an intermittent cable or connector fault a continuity test would pass.
- Mechanical and sealing integrity — housing, lens bond, strain relief, and for TEE and endocavity probes a leak test.
- Electrical safety on probes that contact patients internally.
Where honesty costs us money
Two places, and it is worth being explicit about both.
First: some probes are not economic to repair, and a few are not repairable at all. When your images tell us that before you ship, we tell you not to ship. We lose the job. You keep the freight cost and the downtime you would have spent waiting for bad news.
Second: a repaired probe is a repaired probe. It has a service history. We do not claim it becomes indistinguishable from a new OEM unit, because that claim cannot be substantiated and any biomedical engineer who has opened a probe knows it. What we claim is that it performs to the imaging standard the system expects, that we can show you the numbers, and that we will tell you what is inside it.
Send images before you send the probe
Most repair shops find out whether your probe is repairable after it has crossed a border. We do it the other way round: send us the on-screen images from your own system, a short video of the fault, and the model and part number. We assess it first.
If we judge it not repairable, we tell you not to ship it. That happens rarely — with this class of probe most faults are recoverable — but when it does, you have not paid freight, waited two weeks, or taken the probe out of service for nothing.
A phone call or an email thread is usually enough. What we need to see: the artifact as it appears on your machine, the probe’s behaviour when the cable is flexed, and any visible damage to lens, housing or connector.
Repair, replace, or retire the system?
The repair-versus-replace decision is usually posed as a price comparison, and that framing is incomplete. Three other factors change the answer:
- The age of the host system. Spending on a probe for a system approaching end of support, where parts availability is already thinning, can be money spent twice.
- What fails next. A probe with a fresh scan head and an original twelve-year-old cable has a known next failure.
- Provenance of the alternative. A cheap used probe of unknown age and unknown service history is a gamble — that is the consistent verdict of people who buy them. A repair you have documentation for is not.
Terms, plainly
Assessment from your images before shipping: free. Repair turnaround: about one week from arrival (see the UK and Europe round trip for door-to-door timing). Inbound freight: yours. Return freight: ours — including when the probe could not be repaired. Written test report: issued on request. See what one looks like.
Frequently asked questions
Do you use original manufacturer parts?
It depends on the part and the model. For scan-head replacement we use our own housings with new crystal stacks. For cables, connectors and mechanical components the source varies by availability. The report says which, per repair — that is the point of issuing one.
Can you match the original probe’s specification exactly?
We test the repaired probe against a working reference of the same model on a live system and record the result. Where a repaired probe does not reach reference performance, we say so rather than shipping it and hoping.
What happens if the repair does not hold?
Tell us and send it back. Repairs carry six to twelve months of warranty depending on the probe and the work involved, confirmed with your quote before we start — and a fault that returns within that period is repaired free. Our reports identify exactly what was done, which makes a recurrence traceable rather than a matter of opinion.