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from the making-broken-vacuum-cleaners-suck-again dept.
If you've ever despaired of getting your vacuum cleaner fixed or thought that your broken lamp was a lost cause, there's hope. A worldwide movement is trying to reform our throwaway approach to possessions.
The movement's foundation is the Repair Cafe, a local meeting place that brings together people with broken items and repair coaches, or volunteers, with the expertise to fix them.
[...] "One of the things that makes it challenging and interesting is that we don't know what people are going to bring," Ray Pfau, an organizer of a Repair Cafe in Bolton, Mass., said in an email.
Lamps top the list of items brought in to be repaired, followed by vacuum cleaners, Mr. Wackman said. The types of repairs offered vary by location and reflect the particular talent in a community, he said.
New Paltz [in upstate New York] has a repair person with a national reputation as a doll expert. It also has a "Listening Corner" with a psychiatric nurse "because being listened to is a 'reparative act,' " he said.
The cafes invite people to bring their "beloved but broken" possessions to the gatherings, which are hosted in church basements, libraries, town halls and senior centers. The cafes make no guarantees that items will be fixed.
"All we can guarantee is that you will have an interesting time," Mr. Wackman said.
The gatherings tend to draw professionals, retirees and hobbyists who volunteer as repair coaches.
None in my area but I would be tempted to show up and help. I like to fix things and have a decent success rate, just coaxed some more life out of our ~30 year old garage door opener.
Similar article at: http://www.digitaltrends.com/home/repair-cafe/ and the main website is at: https://repaircafe.org/en/about/ (also available for NL, FR, DE & ES)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Corelli's A on Tuesday January 24 2017, @04:41PM
I agree that design for repairability seems to be less important now. However, all is not lost.
The internet has brought about two significant changes for non-professionals who fix things: parts and forums. Now I can find all sorts of replacement parts that were not accessible to the average person 30 years ago. I found handles for our countertop electric griddle, an intermittent-pilot for my furnace, and a thermostat for my coffee maker, just to pick a few examples.
There are forums for any specific kind of car, for appliance repair, etc. I don't think I have needed to use a mechanic for diagnosis in fifteen years, and I only use them for tire installs/alignment and air conditioner work (2 cars from the 90's and 2 from the 00's). I learned just about all of my car knowledge from other people on the net who shared their experience.
A great way to build competence is to take your broken stuff apart and see how it works. It's an easy decision if you are already planning on buying a replacement appliance or whatever. After a while you begin to know what sorts of things commonly go wrong.
Vacuum cleaner motors: I have replaced the brushes on mine twice. Toaster ovens and coffee makers: I have lost count of the times I have restored these after the thermal fuse blew. Those fuses are made with a spring and wax. Over time, the wax gives way and the fuse opens. They are about a dollar and attach with a crimper. As for "modules," my experience has been variable. I was able to jumper around a failed electrical weld on an ABS module; still working 10 years later. I found a failed solder joint in another car's HVAC module; reflowed it and restored function. Home furnace control modules are fairly standardized, and there are lots of third-party solid-state replacements for when yours fails due to mechanical relay wear.
It's not all sweetness and light. Whirlpool/Maytag/Kenmore can eat a big bowl o'dicks for its short-lived dishwasher racks, their exorbitant cost to replace, and discontinuation less then ten years after the brand new unit was installed.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Tuesday January 24 2017, @05:50PM
It's not all sweetness and light. Whirlpool/Maytag/Kenmore can eat a big bowl o'dicks for its short-lived dishwasher racks, their exorbitant cost to replace, and discontinuation less then ten years after the brand new unit was installed.
Kenmore doesn't make dishwashers, or anything else for that matter. They just rebadge stuff made by other companies (like Whirlpool, though I saw some laundry machines recently that sure looked a lot like LG units). So some might be good, others might be crap, it just depends on who really made it and what it really is. I have a ~10-year-old Kenmore washing machine, but it's really a Whirlpool Duet.
Whirpool, Maytag, and Frigidaire are all the same company now. They're the last American appliance maker (though much of their stuff is now made in Mexico). And their stuff is short-lived crap. Avoid. Get stuff from Samsung or LG now. Samsung might make an exploding washing machine once in a while, but it's still a lot better than the Whirlpool/Maytag crap.
Your post is great, and should be modded up instead of the "new stuff all sucks! you can't fix anything any more!" old-fart drivel you replied to. You're exactly right: the internet has made it much easier for DIYers to fix stuff: it's so much easier to find parts (thanks Ebay!), and you can find Youtube videos showing how to fix many things. Forums for specific things (like car brands) are also invaluable. And much of this stuff is Googlable, and failure modes are usually common to a certain product, so if yours failed, it's quite likely a bunch of other people have had the exact same problem, and you can learn from them what the problem is and how to fix it. You couldn't do this 30+ years ago.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2017, @06:14PM
A great way to build competence is to take your broken stuff apart and see how it works. It's an easy decision if you are already planning on buying a replacement appliance or whatever. After a while you begin to know what sorts of things commonly go wrong.
Yes. By the third time I had to dismantle a leaf shredder that kept breaking down I discovered a design flaw, namely that the power switch had a rubber cover on the outside to keep out dust but there were holes in the back of it inside the unit and that is where dust kept getting blown in where it would coat the contacts and jam the mechanism. Some silicone caulk over those damn holes and the thing never malfunctioned again. I wonder how many other people simply got fed up with theirs and threw it away.