Repair Café
repaircafe.org
repaircafe.org
* One of the worst things to repair are electric shavers. It feels like horology, but dirty.
* Sewing machines are suprisingly complex. The electrical issues are easy to fix, but the internal mechanical parts are really unfarmiliar.
* Outright hostile designs are rarely found in cheap products. The main problem is usually worn out platic threads or breaking clips.
* People almost never bring in smartphones or computers.
* Many visitors are very interested in what we are doing and often suprised how simple a repair can be.
my neighbors are consistently throwing away perfectly fine electronics where 90% of the problems are a blown electrolytic capacitor
there is a place in our apartment complex where we place electronic rubbish and just two days ago i noticed a tablet with a destroyed screen
i popped it open and everything inside looked pristine so i bought a new screen for some ~20$ and am now waiting on it to arrive
i've fixed a toaster oven with a busted resistor, 50in plasma tv with a blown capacitor i now use as a monitor for my laptop when working at home, a blender with a broken container and blown capacitor.. an older blender model that actually has a standard thread size so i am able to use mason jars as a, what i think is superior, container
i think repair should be taught in schools, a la 'home ec', educationally its a three`for : repair, basic ee, basic applied maths
when i was living in squats in london part of the squat culture was to slowly accrue enough bike parts in the hope that you could one day open your squat doors as a bike repair cafe
i have thought quite often something similar for basic everyday electronics would be great for educational and environmental concerns
there is so much unneccessary eWaste, even if something is beyond simple component swap repair it can itself be used to source parts for other fixable devices
the idea that we toss away a salvageable device, or even its sometimes hundreds of functioning discreet components, because of a single blown capacitor, frayed wire or dislodged headphone jack is upsetting
I've done my own repairs for phone screens/boot loop issues etc. but they were considered super easy because they were popular phones (galaxy/iphone) and as such, guides were plentiful on youtube. I can't imagine similar resources would be available for, say, a random branded tv or a blender.
Screen fixes are super easy for phones as it's usually a take apart and replace the cables and put back in deal. Anything remotely difficult was fixing a bootloop issue on a galaxy s4 which required a multimeter to confirm the issue and a soldering iron but again, a guide on the exact issue told me exactly what to do.
electricity should be treated with respect
but i made a point to emphasise that the majority of problems are blown capacitors
this is a prevalent problem(o) that is easy to diagnose and easy to fix
for the listed examples my only diagnostic tool was my eyes, when a capacitor blows you can tell.. that is it looks like it failed in some way
to replace it you have to desolder two connections and solder in a replacement
the capacitors usually give you all of the information you need right on them: capacitance, rated voltage, positive and negative lead; so without needing to know what those things are or why they are important finding a replacement is straight forward and replacing is plug and play, with a bit of solder, if you keep track of how the original was oriented
but like all things it takes time to get comfortable and you get better with more exposure, which is why i emphasised a desire for basic ee to be a part of early education
first time i worked on a car myself i was driving on the highway and my car just stopped, roadside said it'd take 2 hours to get to me, i was unfamiliar with car mechanics but i thought 'i'll just look at it and see if i can see what's wrong, maybe i can fix it', i popped the hood and looked at the engine, it a took a minute to suss it out but when i found the problem it was glaring, the air intake for the engine had popped off, the screw band had rusted and failed, i just pushed the tubing back on the intake pipe, used a dime to screw the rusted band on enough to get me to a hardware store to replace the screw band
i knew i'd be unable to disassemble the transmission on the side of the highway, the first time i opened a car hood, in less than 2 hours, but those expectations were too exaggerated, all i had to do was push a tube on a pipe
i think repair cafes are less about having an in house solution to all problems and more about having broad solutions to the problems that occur the most, and like a bike cafe it could be a hands on experience where there are people there who can help, showing you how to troubleshoot and repair
Note that taking someone's rubbish without permission is considered theft in the UK (there is precedent). If you sell it it's even worse because it's handling stolen goods.
My understanding is that in almost all jurisdictions in USA possession end when the trash is moved to the curb, put in public space. I remember reading at some point that at least in some part of Texas possession is transferred from the individual to the trash collection agency. This was interesting to me from privacy/search warrant perspective.
though i doubt the people i was living with who would break into abandoned buildings to establish residence are all that too concerned with your rubbish 'theft' precedent
the tablet salvage was in the states and unfortunately i'd be unsurprised if there are equally uncharitable precedent here as well
.. as an aside, i would be interested in reading your referenced precedent, i agree going through someone's bin to get personal info or to file false credit card offers on their behalf should be illegal, but i'd be interested to read the ruling if it is literally a broken electronics salvage
you linked to an article pretrial
the person in the article took food from a bin stead ewaste
i tried to find a followup article or court decision but was unable
i did find a similar article from iceland where people were charged under an 1824 vagrancy act which was ruled unworthy of prosecution(o)
your linked case reads like a power tripping manager to me
this practice was part of the squat culture as well: every few days we would do a 'skip hop'.. skip being the term for a large trash bin.. we'd go to grocery stores who were legally bound to throw away food that expired that day at the end of the day as well as forbidden from giving away 'rotten' food, so the employees would stack the food items carefully in separate trash bags from the 'actual' rubbish and put these bags next to the bins
pageantry of plausible deniability is a hilarious thing
(o) https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2014/jan/...
> One precedent-setting example from 1877 was the case of a diseased buried pig. According to legal text Archbold's Pleading, Evidence, and Practice in Criminal Cases, even if someone discards something and does not intend to use it again, they can retain ownership of it.
> this practice was part of the squat culture as well
Not sure this would work as a defence, to be honest.
The first case. The owner of a sick pig buried on his land, then another person dig it and sold the carcass, in the 19th century. It's hard to tell if he was prosecuted for digging the land, or selling a diseased carcass, or theft.
The tesco case is equally poor. It doesn't say what is the result of the trial. Most likely because there wasn't one or it didn't go the way the article wished.
If a third party bin company you had no relationship with took it it would also be theft.
Last two weeks worth of projects: vintage synth, an 'unrepairable' mountain bike, a bed (that had been cut in half by someone to move it), a couch (that had lost its legs).
https://jacquesmattheij.com/dx7_repaired.jpg
Unfortunately no 'before' picture, it was in pretty rough shape, had been dropped from the back of a truck by a roadie after a performance and sat in an attic for the last decades. It took a lot of work to get this back to the state it is in but I had fun doing it and I'm super happy with how it turned out. Lots of keys were broken, quite a few of the contacts underneat the keys had bent as well because even the strike plate was deformed. I have never seen that happen before on a DX7, even when you drop them you are more likely to damage the floor than the instrument, they are built like tanks.
> send you a unique code with which you can order the highly ingenious Repair Café toolkit[1] from iFixit Europe for free, only paying shipping costs (normal price: € 74,95 + shipping costs)
The €50 is buying you (apart from your €75 toolkit) membership, so you get a head start on connections and visibility compared to going it alone.
1: https://repaircafe.org/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03...
There's no way in hell I was going to agree to that.
I go with my son, who loves seeing what electronics look like on the inside and how they work. We always bring a large cake as a thank you.
the film addresses ewaste issues like the fact that a lot of electronics rely on toxic elements, but there is also the shear vastness of dumpsites
there is shot of a dump of motor armatures which could be argued to be one of the least likely failure points in consumer goods that use motors like washing machines, blenders, drills, et al
the film was even released in 2006, one year before smartphones become a cultural ubiquity
it is also wild to think that most of what is being documented is a result of manufacture happening only over the previous 50 or so years.. which is only 0.00025% of the hypothesised almost 200k year human history
it is a film 'documenting a photographer's technique' so retains an air of lacking bias but the subject matter is just so affecting that audience bias becomes seemingly inevitable
you could just as easily goog 'ewaste concerns' and find a myriad of issues but i highly recommend this film.. i was in awe from the opening sequence
The only positive thing was seeing women welding and operating heavy machinery. I've only seen women like that in ads and posters so it was refreshing to see badass women.
If anyone wants to check it out this documentary is available to watch for free on Amazon Prime.
Less waste less pollution Less bought stuff less co2 emissions and global warming.
Would love to have more modular devices more repairable devices
Do not want a wall-e future but a green one. Thanks to the repair cafes good movement!
So while the audio cable is transmitting electricity into the headphones, it's just wrapped around a magnet instead of having other electric components.
This is a good graphic on them: https://animagraffs.com/loudspeaker/
A microphone is just the reverse: vibrations in the air move the cone and its attached magnet, which induces electrical current in the wire.
It seems there is growing sentiment for keeping hardware repairable (while manufacturers more and more want to prevent that). Part of HN will certainly appreciate this initiative.
People like Miele on the other hand, spend a great deal on reliable design but then their goods can cost 3x more than others and lots of people don't want their goods to last forver, they want to upgrade to something that looks modern and trendy.
Different business models!
I was refering to a trend where manufacturers actively prevent any other party (user or otherwise) from doing repairs. See for example this discussion about Apple: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18154371