Manufacturers could be forced to include repair instructions:
In yet another sign the right-to-repair movement is gaining ground in the United States, manufacturers could be forced to provide fix-it guides and maintenance instructions with certain products.
The FTC this week said it's seeking public comments on this proposed rule change.
Those proposals also include a shakeup of those yellow energy-usage labels equipment makers must attach to certain products: a wider range of goods would need to carry the stickers, and the information on them may have to be posted online too, seeing as fewer of us are going out shopping and seeing appliances in stores – if the proposals are approved.
Updated Energy Star labeling is all well and good, but it's not as big as the possibility that manufacturers could be forced to include repair information, something many have been loathe to do.
FTC chairwoman Lina Khan last week said [PDF] research by the regulator demonstrated that US companies use a variety of tricks to prevent folks from repairing their own products. By doing so, manufacturers "raise costs for consumers, stifle innovation, close off business opportunit[ies] for independent repair shops, create unnecessary electronic waste, delay timely repairs, and undermine resiliency," Khan said.
Much of the proposed changes focus on the energy-usage labels, which the FTC is considering adding to clothes dryers, air purifiers, "miscellaneous refrigerator products," a broader range of light bulbs, home ice makers, humidifiers, "miscellaneous gas products," cooking tops, and electric spas.
That focus makes it a bit less clear which products would be affected by the repair instruction requirements. In a press release about the proposals, the FTC mentioned its 2021 Nixing the Fix report that homed in on the struggles people potentially face repairing their own vehicles and mobile devices.
Despite that, the FTC told us these latest repair instruction proposals so far only apply to appliances and equipment covered by the yellow energy label regulations.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Saturday October 22 2022, @07:52PM (11 children)
If repair is possible (of something with millions of dollars worth of product sold) someone will figure it out and likely post a video tutorial for how to do it, regardless of manufacturer's publications or lack thereof.
The problem is in design for failure: plastic oil pans on $120k cars, glued in batteries in otherwise infinite lifetime electronics, etc.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Opportunist on Sunday October 23 2022, @01:11AM (7 children)
And the general problem of what is a "repairable part" in the first place. A lot of parts are by design or complexity impossible to repair by the average repair man. Could you repair a GPU? Or a mainboard? Sure, you might be able to replace a blown capacitor, but how about that 100 connector BGA chip? Have you ever tried replacing a blown 008004/0201 SMD part? I have. It's not worth the effort in 99% of the cases.
Even without the manufacturer deliberately going out of its way to prevent you from repairing your items, how likely are you going to succeed replacing a part that requires you to have equipment worth a couple thousand bucks and training that you probably can only get by blowing another couple thousands on learning how to do it by fucking up the repair on enough parts?
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Sunday October 23 2022, @05:00PM (6 children)
It's not just about what *you* can accomplish though - it's also about what you can pay your local repair guy to accomplish. The repair guy that's serving the occasional needs of many thousands of customers, making the skills and equipment a profitable investment.
Sure, it probably still won't be worth actually repairing a circuit board, unless the fix is simple and the board expensive - the time of a skilled technician doesn't come cheap, while circuit boards just keep getting more so. But so long as they can easily purchase and swap out the board, the device/appliance/etc. can get a new lease on life at a budget price (especially since it takes a much less skilled technician).
One of the things I would really like to see in right to repair laws is something along the line of a requirement that both expensive and failure prone components must be easily replaced without replacing any other components, preferably by unskilled end users, except where integration with those other components is required for compelling engineering reasons (including dramatically reducing the cost of the finished product). As determined for the court by a "jury" of unaffiliated engineers in the relevant field. Nice vague boundaries that should keep companies on the honest side of the line, or at the very least away from obvious shenanigans. It's not like the engineers designing the thing don't know how to do it "right".
That gives you plenty of leeway to soldering hundreds of cheap components to your circuit board, or integrating a whole system-on-a-chip. And maybe you can make a compelling argument that in some situations high-interconnect chips like RAM and CPU should be soldered to the same board rather than socketed. But it's going to be a lot harder to argue that there's a compelling reason to solder them to the same board as other expensive components like mass storage, quality cameras, displays, etc. that have relatively low interconnect requirements (often only a handful of wires, if that.) To say nothing of failure-prone user buttons, ports, power jacks, etc. - not unless the whole thing is so cheap that even a single breakout board would significantly increase the cost.
I wonder what it would cost in size, price, reliability, and structural integrity to put all a Raspberry Pi's ports on a daughter card? A sizable fraction of the current value? Then a compelling engineering argument for integration is achieved. Providing value is after all the entire point of engineering.
Maybe there are compelling structural reasons to glue a phone's display to the front of the case - but it's going to be a much harder argument for gluing the back on rather than using a whole bunch of screws. Not unless it's such a cheap phone that the cost to install screws significantly increases the price. Cosmetics is a hard thing to argue from an engineering perspective, and becomes even less compelling when 99% of users will immediately put the phone inside an opaque protective cover anyway.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Tuesday October 25 2022, @05:16PM (5 children)
The fun bit is, I could actually accomplish it. I do have the equipment to solder 100 pin BGAs. But do I really want to do it? Heck no. It's tedious, it's complicated, it's incredibly error prone and unsolding an old chip and resoldering, well, good luck. I give you a 30% chance of actually not fucking up either the removal or the resoldering part.
This isn't the 1980s anymore where through-hole mounts are the norm. Today, you are dealing with 0201 SMD parts (that's 008004 for you imperial guys) that you can barely see, let alone replace. You simply and plainly CANNOT fix that. You can replace the whole board including all chips and parts, and all because one fuckin' capacitor blew.
So what would you say constitutes a "replacable" part? That capacitor? Hardly. Impossible to unsolder and replace. The chip? Same deal, if you can work with BGAs where the ball spacing is less than 10 mil, good luck to you (and no, unless you have equipment running in the 6 digits, you cannot, period!). The whole board? At what point is simply replacing the whole damn thing cheaper.
Being allowed to repair means jack shit if the parts that you could repair are pretty much more expensive than the new item. It's like it was with Lego in the 2000s. Lego in the 1980s when I was a kid was a blast. You'd get a bunch of all-purpose parts and could build whatever you want. In the 2000s, you got a handful of parts that only fit together exactly the way these parts were supposed to fit together. And electronics is the same today. You cannot replace single parts. It's simply not feasible. You can only replace pre-built modules. And these modules already cost more than the whole assembly did when you bought it new.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday October 25 2022, @06:47PM (4 children)
I already addressed a lot of that. Notice I never mentioned "replaceable" as a criteria. Replaceable is always a design decision. I said expensive or failure prone, which is more complicated, and perhaps exact guidelines might be advisable, but I'm probably not the man to lay them out.
Maybe on the cost front, rough guidelines could be any non-easily-replaced component must be responsible for either less than 20% or more than 80% of the total cost of it's easily replaced subassembly. I.e. you can integrate a whole bunch of cheap stuff into one expensive assembly, or some incidental cheap stuff with an expensive component - but not an expensive component with another expensive component, nor with an expensive amount of cheap components. Not without a really compelling engineering reason. And a "jury" of engineers should easily spot the fact that you've made one huge $300 circuit board out of what could easily be several separate sub-boards connected with a couple ribbon cables for $1 more. Maybe want an explicit rule about such over-integration as well, but offhand I can't think of a good phrasing.
Yeah, resoldering a BGA chip is rarely going to be worth it - but BGA sockets are a thing. Better have a compelling reason not to use one. And if you do, I'd bet you can't come up with any remotely compelling reason why that circuit board should also contain anything more than the bare minimum of similarly high-interconnect components and whatever incidental capacitors, etc. are needed. Certainly not ports, buttons, speakers, cameras, or anything else that could easily live on a second board connected via edge connector or ribbon cable. Not unless the whole thing was so dirt cheap that the connector significantly increases the cost.
As for getting your hands on replacement components at a reasonable price - yeah, that's absolutely another issue that needs to be addressed. Personally I'd be in favor of requiring companies to sell replacement components for not more than twice the manufacturing cost of that component for as long as prominent "service lifetime" label on the box says... defaulting to maybe 20 years in the absence of a sufficiently prominent label. And without exploitative shipping& handling costs.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Wednesday October 26 2022, @08:33AM (3 children)
The main reason for not using a BGA socket is already space. Even ignoring the 0.005 cents it may cost, you throw away at least a millimeter of PCB real estate around the chip and that's usually more than you can spare. Sockets, while generally a great idea, are simply unfeasible in a time when space on the PCB is a premium.
And that's the truth for everything that's socketed and not just soldered and glued. Every socket costs you space. And compared with the current form factor of SMD parts, sockets are huge. HUGE.
Yes, it's a design problem. But yes, I also agree that it could be solved if we're willing to accept the cost. And I don't even talk about price. It talk about bulk. If you want parts to be replacable, your appliances will grow in size while at the same time sacrificing functionality because something will have to make room for the sockets, connectors and cables.
As far as replacability of parts goes, that could very easily be solved if there was a chance for an aftermarket. Which is currently pretty much an impossibility with more and more manufacturers moving away from off the shelf parts because they roll their own chips that they hide behind a patent wall. Break that wall down and you'll see third party parts pop up left and right.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday October 26 2022, @03:52PM (2 children)
Where exactly is PCB space at a premium though? Cell phones? That's just a trade-off with volume available for battery within the phone, and you could make the phone 1mm larger in any direction to free up more volume than the sockets consume - or just slightly reduce the battery capacity - like every smaller phone does.
But yeah, in that particular instance *maybe* there's a compelling reason to have RAM and CPU soldered to the same board. Just not the same board as everything else - especially not the failure-prone components which are often on some long almost-separate finger of circuit board already.
And cell phones are pretty much the only appliance where that is relevant. Your microwave, refrigerator, washing machine, etc. are not going to have to grow to become more modular - they've got acres of unused internal volume.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Friday October 28 2022, @06:42AM (1 child)
I think there's one thing we can easily agree on, that soldering the battery is absolutely unnecessary. Also, the display (along with its controllers, though) can be attached in a non-permanent way.
Everything else, though, is kinda hard to socket without making it very fault prone.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday October 28 2022, @02:27PM
You mean the way desktop PCs constantly break down because of all the failures of their many sockets? Or phone displays constantly stop working because their cable socket fails?
Sockets are very rarely the cause of failures unless they just weren't connected properly in the first place.
Even if a tiny BGA chip socket might be failure prone in something like a phone subjected to flexing, if you can make the display socket reliable, you can do the same to put all the inexpensive failure-prone components on a separate board (basically, everything with mechanical features - electronics very rarely fail).
Yeah, soldered batteries are an especially exploitative move - but is still something easily handled by any repair shop in a couple extra minutes, or anyone else halfway competent with a soldering iron. Unless there's no room for soldering joints mid-wire, and the circuit board puts temperature-sensitive components or other connections right near the soldering pads. A soldered on USB port (especially -C) is dramatically less user-serviceable.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Ingar on Sunday October 23 2022, @07:38AM (2 children)
There are many fine ways in which a manufacturer can screw over their customers.
Two small examples:
I have this small electrical heather (Rowenta) from which the overheating protection was triggering all the time, wanted to clean out the dust to fix it. Just 4 screws to open it up: 2 philipsheads and two torx. Had to buy a special torx screwdriver.
I use these awesome bicycle lights (Lezyne). Metal body, USB rechargeable. The on/off button however is made from some rubbery plastic which slowly dissolves in the rain, rendering the light inoperable after a few years of use.
In both cases, the repair instructions are trivial.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday October 23 2022, @12:35PM
Having to buy a torx bit driver isn't much of an issue, they should have used torx fasteners all around.
The dissolving part on an outdoor use item is an example where a competing product that lasts significantly longer should be somehow rewarded (or the crap design penalized) for the difference in overall utility before ending up in a landfill.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Sunday October 23 2022, @05:13PM
I would say that along with repair instructions (which I would think imply the possibility of repair - you can't give instructions for something that can't be done.) It should also be required that replacement components be made freely available at not much more than cost, for at least the reasonably expected service life for similar products from other manufacturers.
I say not much more than cost specifically to avoid the situation where manufacturers charge you so much for trivial pieces that it makes more sense to buy a whole new item, while still leaving room for it to make more sense to buy the complete product than build it from pieces.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Snotnose on Saturday October 22 2022, @09:49PM (4 children)
The battery, because it wore out after 2-3 years, or the screen, because you dropped your phone.
Make these 2 items easy to repair and most consumers will be happy. I know that takes care of 100% of the reasons I've bought a new phone in the last 10-15 years.
Then again, make these 2 items easy to repair and you sell 50% fewer phones year over year.....
I just passed a drug test. My dealer has some explaining to do.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Sunday October 23 2022, @01:14AM (3 children)
You can even make a solid profit on it by selling those items at a considerable markup.
Considering that being able to repair it going to become a selling point, not only because people want to be "green" but also because money is going to be pretty tight for a lot of people pretty soon, this could well mean the difference between selling a unit in the first place or not. "Buy our stuff, you can repair it" may well become a selling slogan.
Even though you omit the part where the display costs about half the price of the new item, and the battery the other half.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday October 25 2022, @06:59PM (2 children)
Though there should be some limits on that "considerable markup" from generic competitors. E.g. if the brand-name battery costs $400 while the same thing from a reputable off-brand costs $100, you're not going to sell a whole lot of $400 batteries.
And companies absolutely should not be allowed to include gratuitous "genuine component" checks. That practice needs to die hard - like mandatory minimum jail time for the CEO of any company that does such a thing hard. Be it Canon's printer ink cartridges or a hydraulic actuator on a John Deer combine. Warranty doesn't cover failures due to non-genuine parts? That's fine. But you can't try to lock out aftermarket competition.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Wednesday October 26 2022, @08:24AM (1 child)
You could at least make it legal to thwart such vendor lock-in practices and the aftermarket will sort that shit out pretty fucking quickly, since it's usually cheaper to kick that bullshit to the curb than it is to implement it. Plus, it would give people an incentive to dig into hard hacking again. :)
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday October 26 2022, @04:03PM
Count me in.
I think a two-prong approach would be best though - ban the practice, *and* explicitly allow circumvention to discourage anyone trying to sneak shit through.
We've already seen how effective bypassing is with software and electronic media - it becomes a cat and mouse game with companies spending ever more money chasing "uncrackable" copy restriction technology, which takes ever more effort to circumvent. It's a huge vortex of wasted time, money. and effort, where everybody loses except the companies selling the copy restriction and bypassing tech. Best to fight that shit spreading into the physical world in every way possible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 22 2022, @10:55PM
Isn't the print tiny enough already? And will the parts department be open to the public now?
(Score: 2, Funny) by c0lo on Sunday October 23 2022, @12:03AM (2 children)
If you cunt [boredpanda.com] read chinese, you better have a good understanding of engrish, otherwise you lie into a state of finished [imgur.com] by fucking the poor thing until exploded [boredpanda.com]
And don't get me started on safety, be careful not to fall on the ground, so not only your baby will fall, careless will hurt your loving foot yo! [i.redd.it]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Opportunist on Sunday October 23 2022, @01:16AM (1 child)
Can't find a pic for it, but I had an instruction manual read as a required step for installation "Smile for good success".
I smiled. No success though. I probably grinned it wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 23 2022, @02:17AM
Lucky only your baby didn't fall, yo!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Booga1 on Sunday October 23 2022, @02:48AM (5 children)
I just want them to sell me the parts that wear out/short out on stuff. Things like the compressor on a fridge, the motor and belts on a washing machine, the motor and water pump in the dish washer, etc... I am more than happy to take on the responsibility of a failed repair, but half the time you can't even get parts unless you're the authorized repair shop for the brand in question. As it is, if the product costs as much to repair as it is to replace, I sure as heck won't be buying another of that brand.
Many of these things are replaceable without needing a degree in electrical engineering. Heck, I don't even mind paying them enough to make it worthwhile. Nothing wrong with selling me the parts at a reasonable markup. Heck, they might even make more money on them since they could sell directly to the customer instead of repair shops.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 23 2022, @07:13AM (1 child)
Problem here is just that: parts often cost so much and the repair callout even more than it is worth.
My unit came with a smeg dishwasher. The board around 2.5 years of life. They did replace it for free, even though 1 year is the minimal warranty here, and it was covered for 2 years. A quick check online shows that the board is the most frequent part to fail, and can easily be replaced if there is a spare. I will seriously consider getting a Smeg next time I buy a dishwasher.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Sunday October 23 2022, @09:22PM
If you're fixing it yourself there's no repair callout.
And the parts never *cost* more than the repair is worth - if they did the company could never afford to sell the product in the first pace. The parts are only *priced* ridiculously when being sold on to you - a practice which I strongly believe should be banned.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Sunday October 23 2022, @12:10PM
So I will say, there's more out there than you might think if you do some digging online.
For instance, I successfully repaired my electric stove once, because it turned out the bad part was basically a $15 rheostat, clearly marked with a name and part number, and while that wasn't the sort of thing you can pick up at a hardware store it is the sort of thing you can order from a repair-guy supply shop. So I did, unplugged the broken part, plugged in the replacement, and it's been working well for me ever since.
So if you're dealing with broken appliances and such, I recommend getting as far as taking it apart a bit before completely giving up on it. After all, it's already broken, so your spouse will probably let you try to tinker with it.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by MrGuy on Sunday October 23 2022, @12:13PM (1 child)
The trend I foresee here, should manufacturers be required to provide parts, is to have most common cheap parts be bundled as part of expensive “assemblies”
My former dishwasher had why should have been a cheap and easy fix - the door that held the soap until needed had little “ear” that the mechanics latch held break off. This was a 2”x3” piece of plastic, and could have easily been snapped out and replaced.
My manufacturer did sell replacement parts to the public. However, they didn’t sell the door stand-alone, even though this was a dead simple part and by its (poor, imo) design would break frequently. I had to buy the “soap dispensing assembly,” including a replacement latch motor, 2 relays, and multiple seals because installing it meant taking the washer door to bits, connecting to the main board, etc. I don’t hate selling this assembly - I’m sure others might have the latch fail mechanically or electrically. But not in lieu of selling the obvious standalone piece by itself. It was disappointing to have to pay $70 (plus shipping) for a $0.50 part.
If manufacturers want to protect the revenue stream after being required by law to provide service parts, I suspect this is the route they’ll go down. Sell parts as part of bundled “assemblies” to everyone (possibly making even authorized repairs more expensive by making getting specific individual parts more expensive).
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 23 2022, @12:26PM
Do yerself a service, buy a 3D printer and learn a CAD. If only to tell your missus you're busy repairing something and it worth it.
(Score: 1) by ShovelOperator1 on Sunday October 23 2022, @09:18PM
When the law will force it, manufacturers will introduce even more irreplaceable components, like Apple's power-driving microcontroller. Unfortunately the only way to fix it is to minimize the delusion of "intellectual property" by shortening all copyrights to reasonable time dynamically adjusted to manufacturer's support. Device gets EOL-ed in 2 years? Schematics, sources and matrices go open. Manufacturer ceases to make info accessible? Their servers are seized and their shares are used to keep the needed information online. Employees will vote with legs and go to another company, maybe in Russia, maybe in China, but US and EU corporations will feel the breath on their necks. With these corporations it has to be serious, if not, they will steal more and more.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday October 24 2022, @03:59PM (1 child)
Without legal mandate to reduce broken by design kinds of things. The problem will always be there. Electronics that are 100% no good, because of a mangled port, dead battery, or broken screen are just a few examples.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday October 24 2022, @04:02PM
Then again, without trying to legislate the problem away. We could provide incentive for better, more repair friendly product design. Financial incentives are generally very ripe for abuse, though. So, either way it's damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"