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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: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday January 24 2017, @05:20PM
Odd shaped bit of plastic -> 3D printer (yes, yes, I know the structural limitations...)
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by jcross on Wednesday January 25 2017, @05:29PM
It's not just the structural limitations. Someone will need to reverse-engineer that part and create a CAD model of it, which unless it's a very very simple part is going to be time consuming. I guess it could be laser-scanned, but for anything with specific mechanical functions or tight tolerances my guess is that scan data will be too dirty and/or inaccurate to be used directly.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday January 25 2017, @08:13PM
All depends on how important the widget is to you. Start with a laser scan, print a prototype, identify the problems (too big here, too small there, maybe needs to be thicker somewhere for strength), then refine the 3D model and do it again. Time consuming, but not impossible, or resource intensive. Decent 3D printers are under $1000, and you can use them to print out a rotary table that enables a cellphone to become a 3D scanner, small parts are usually pennies worth of plastic, it's all in the time cost.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by jcross on Wednesday January 25 2017, @08:28PM
Yeah I guess the cost of the time depends on the other possible ways you might like to spend it.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday January 25 2017, @08:47PM
I'm not suggesting that this in any way makes repair a cost-attractive option. People with 3D modeling skills are in demand and can earn enough per hour that the time spent futzing around with a part-model could easily amount to enough lost income to just buy a new whatever-it-came-from and send the old one to the landfill.
On the other hand, if you have free time that you don't want to spend "working" and your 1967 blender that has served you faithfully for 50 years just needs a simple plastic piece to get it functional again, maybe spending 20 hours repairing it isn't about the money, but more about doing it because you can.
I think that's pretty much the capstone statement on thingiverse.com : because we can.
🌻🌻 [google.com]