Repairable Flatpack Toaster
kaseyhou.com
kaseyhou.com
- Toast is toasted on one end, un-toasted at the other.
- Control is just a timer, so the second time you use it twice in succession it will be hot at the start and will need a shorter time, which you have to figure out.
Check out the Sunbeam Radiant Control Toaster (1949-1980), which is still considered the peak of toaster design.[2] It's repairable, too. Now replicating that would be a good project.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKbUNDPXCWk
[2] https://www.theverge.com/22801890/sunbeam-radiant-control-to...
- "And that mechanism doesn’t just wear out after nearly three-quarters of a century of use: there’s a single screw underneath the crumb tray to adjust the tension of the wire, and it alone is enough to bring many aging toasters back to life."
edit: There's other HN threads about it,
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29342936 (232 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38868753 (76 comments)
From the video, the heating elements look to be "flat wire toaster heater elements", maybe from made-in-china.com [0]?
I also see some flat heating elements as Waring replacements on Amazon [1].
[0] https://zgeycom.en.made-in-china.com/product/LOEGudIBnbkz/Ch...
[1] https://amazon.com/Waring-027901-Heating-Element-Toasters/dp...?
This is peak design:
https://www.moose-r-us.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/getoas...
(not my exact my model)
I inhereted it from my grandma and she still go full.
Don't walk away because that toast is burnt FAST.
Cheap toasters only last a few years before dying. Usually because someone jams it up then clumsily unjams it while damaging the element.
After going through a few toasters in quick succession I finally bought an expensive Dualit one. It's still going 25 years later. I changed the timer mechanism once which was a joy, and you can easily buy spare parts.
The Dualit cost over 10 times more than the cheap toasters though. I don't regret that purchase though and it has actually saved me money over the years and made much less landfill.
Funnily enough the toaster in this article looks quite like the Dualit. I don't suppose that is a coincidence!
It seems slightly disingenuous to use the repair parts from a toaster on the market without crediting them.
Not even a bagel mode (which is also useful for baguette-style bread)!
I'll list the fatal flaws with it in descending order of importance:
1) Unlike basically every single other toaster on the market, it does not have a cage or other mechanism that closes on to the bread slices and keeps them an equal distance from the heating element. This results in at least one part of every single slice of bread getting burned to a crisp, and at least one part of every single slice not being toasted at all. After using this toaster for a week, I couldn't believe how any engineer at Dualit could release this. Do they even use their product? It is a catastrophic oversight.
2) The timer is an analogue mechanism, much like an egg timer. I found that there was an extremely thin margin in which the toast is toasted. Anything under that and it's not, anything over that and it's burned beyond recognition. I cannot even count the number of times the smoke alarm in my house went off because my toaster burned my bread to a crisp. Another catastrophic oversight.
3) Because the timer is analogue, when you turn it it makes a clicking noise as an egg timer does. This means it's very easy to mistake the toaster for being on, when in fact it's not. The number of times I went to make toast, only to realise a few minutes later that the toaster was unplugged for some reason and my bread was still bread is unreal. I'd then end up ruining my scrambled eggs by waiting another few mins for toast.
4) The toaster allows you to spin a dial to choose how many heating elements to use. This is a pain in the ass. It's so easy to forget about, until you go to pick up your toast and find out that only 1 and a half slices have been toasted of the 4 you put in there.
The sad thing is, the toaster looked awesome. We also have a Dualit kettle (which is great) and it matched. Unfortunately they prioritised aesthetics over function, and it shows. If you want a toaster that requires you to go through a checklist of switches to check before operating, then requires constant supervision to avoid burning your toast, and will still give you burnt sections of toast anyway despite all of that, I could not recommend a better candidate.
Not that that takes away from the article at all. This project has many merits, and although cost may not be one of them, it’s still interesting!
Great website, love the video demo of using the siet.
Perhaps more interesting to the audience here is that Caleb Chamberlain, the CEO (and a college acquaintance of mine), writes a series of articles about running the business for the trade publication The Fabricator. You can find them here: https://www.thefabricator.com/author/caleb-chamberlain. He covers both business (operations, strategy) and technical aspects of running a highly automated small job metal fabrication shop.
Are far as low volume prototyping goes, sheet metal is as cost efficient as it gets for large metal parts. If you're sourcing from China, I'd estimate 500 bucks per prototype (with two sets in case one breaks).
Cheap and easy "factory" quality is probably PCBWAY or similar in China - they do more than PCBs these days. Call it "prototype" budget - several hundred dollars of parts instead of thousands.
sending her designs out
(Edit: er, I mean s/ his/ her/. The thises are all intact.)
This project seems to take its heating elements, clockwork timer and knob from a classic Dualit 2 Slice toaster - so those parts are all available off-the-shelf.
Other than that, this design needs some laser cut and bent metal, and some wooden feet. If you're able to bend the metal yourself and find some off-the-shelf feet, you could probably get the flat sheets of stainless steel laser cut and shipped for less than $100.
On the other hand, if one wanted a factory to do more demanding production processes, with more worker time or more machine setup - you're right that it would cost a good deal more.
I will say the OP’s design looks cool, it’s certainly an interesting exercise and portfolio item.
People usually do that to specifically indicate that it has a problem of some sort, so someone else doesn't assume it's working. Although with a toaster, just the act of flipping it around to cut the cord might dislodge whatever toast bits were causing it to smoke and such in the first place.
A label of "Broken" or "Works" or "Missing X" is so much more helpful for appliances left out.
People claim they break, but I’m yet to find one that wasn’t fixed fairly easily. With the intention of selling, I sand and paint them. But then they are so beautiful I can’t.
Best are the models ‘Major’ and above. The air vents look so good. Who needs to grind 20kgs of beans per day? Not me, but I can do this 5 or 6 times over.
This is a hobby project and there's nothing to suggest that the author wants to get in the business of selling toasters for a living... or that it would be wise for them to do so.
My parents literally have a toaster from the 70s that they still use. I have a toaster I bought 20 years ago. Toasters (usually) don't have e-waste. They are incredibly simple machines that are easy to buy without so much as a single diode. That's because they are really simply just a box with heating elements.
If you want to battle e-waste like the article suggests, maybe pick a product that doesn't already have a 50-year service life without the need for repairs.
Still, I think this is a great portfolio piece. The designer should keep going, and amass a little collection of simple repairable appliances.
I haven't seen a toaster oven big enough for my family, and we otherwise have an excellent oven with convection features.
It wouldn't replace the toaster, because that fits on the windowsill and an air fryer would not.
Tiny kitchen here. I'd like to try an air-fryer, but for now my one table-top appliance is a instant pot. It is used daily.
I suppose it's that for some people but everyone I know with one also has a fullsized oven. They are used for different purposes and often you don't want to heat up your whole oven to warm up some fries for 10 minutes.
A toaster does only one thing and takes up space.
An air fryer or toaster oven does lots of things, and also makes toast.
That's why toaster oven makes very little sense for anyone except if they have a "big American kitchen" and want to fill their countertop.
I'm due to buy a new one, because the supposedly decent one I bought less than 5 years ago isn't toasting properly, and either burns the toast or does nothing despite adjusting the dial.
If you have one of those, they (can) replace your toaster.
More houses probably have toasters than all the others combined, but toasters don't really wear out all that often. You buy one for $10 when you setup your household and it lasts a decade or more.
On the flip side, modern toasters cost $10 and last nearly as long. Not everything needs to last forever, but I've never had a modern toaster wear out. You only think the old ones were reliable because they cost enough that people would pay to have them repaired. That and a huge helping of survivorship bias.
This claim can only be meaningfully examined in like 60 years, minimum, and I have my doubts. I've yet to see a 70s era toaster die, and have personally watched four modern toasters go into a dumpster in the last 25 years. Old toasters were reliable because consumers of the day wouldn't tolerate disposable crap which informed every aspect of material selection and design.
I was thinking about an electronic toothbrush, or a kettle?
An electric toothbrush would be good. There are a few parts that could fall, the battery in particular.
Cheap temu-junk doesn't end up in thrift stores. Or, if it does, is easily filtered out. If I see a toaster that looks well used and/or aged, I can be certain it has at least proven to last a while and actual use.
It's also why I buy refurbished washing machine, refridgerators, etc: a refurbisher commonly won't refurbish stuff that's hard to repair: their economics prefer stuff that's sturdy, easy and cheap to repair. Win win win.
My experience with diy electronics is that most kit designers are super wary of even giving instruction on mains anything...so as not to be held liable.
What could possibly go wrong?
[0] https://hackaday.com/2022/12/01/throwback-usb-hotplate-used-...
Not sure what changed, as I understand it they don't really do that anymore.
I didn't realize they sold them that way intentionally!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zH0Kxjx0sEM
Britain had two common standards for electrical outlets (BS 1363 and the older BS 546) plus a few less-common proprietary types. BS 1363 became the preferred standard for new installations in 1947, but the other types remained fairly common for decades. Appliances were not required to be supplied with a fitted plug until 1994, by which time BS 1363 had become dominant (if not quite ubiquitous).
I'm having flashbacks to moving back to the US from the UK-o-sphere, and re-splicing plugs for appliances that supported both voltages.
It is actually quite difficult to wire up a UK mains plug really well!
I try to be a BIFL type of person and am willing to pay a premium for items that will last. Occasionally I hit up against something like this toaster, though, which runs completely counter to my expectations of what makes an indestructible kitchen appliance.
(Often "open the thing" and "close the thing" are the hardest - modern devices with plastic clipped on plastic and needing delicate shimming to pry stuff open)
Depending on the level of fix you're going for and where the break is, it can be anywhere from very simple and a few minutes, to much more involved.
If the break is actually at the plug end, you can often pop off the plug housing, trim the wire back, and do basically the same as above.
If the break is in the middle of the cord and you're not squeamish about the final fix having electrical tape on bare wire, then cut, strip, twist, tape, and ... don't fuck it up?
A new toaster is cheap. House fires are not.
I haven't seen a plug that can be opened in ages.
I think it’s better to harvest a whole new cord with moulded plug from some other dead appliance. Just make sure it’s a 15A one from a microwave or air conditioner or something— not just a lamp cord.
Without experience, it is harder. Removing the strain release requires mechanical sympathy; desoldering/soldering requires soldering skill; etc.
If it was your job, you’d pick it up in a day or few. If it is not your job, the learning curve is spread across the time between jobs and there’s relearning if the jobs are infrequent.
I know so many people in my life that can afford the better quality version of something, but instead opt for the cheaper, shittier version. When the shitty one dies, they get a new shitty one. I think it comes down to the short term impact of cost,which is a valid choice if the cost is the main constraint currently, but I repeatedly see this even in cases where the additional cost isn't an issue.
My ranting aside, this is an incredibly cool project and I'd love things like this in my life. Partially for the fact it's repairable and better for the environment, but partially because it's just neat to have a modular version of your household appliances.
Where I once lived in the midwest this was called the 'Kame-apart mentality'.
But I don't why this toaster can't cost more or less the same, and it comes with that non-purchasable accessory, bragging rights.
Toasters are so cheap that I can't imagine repairing them could be cost effective (ie "financially optimal") unless you assign no value to your time. A new, good-enough toaster costs in the ballpark of $30. I love taking things apart and fixing them, but if the repair involves figuring out the part I have to order or soldering anything, it will take far more than $30 of my time.
This kind of project is for people who love to tinker. The economics do not make sense.
Tangentially related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory
That’s where I’d love to see more experimentation.
There’s a maker space in my old town where you can just take stuff and they’ll nerd out over helping you fix it. I wish there was that, but in a store format.
I want to live in a world where it’s just common parlance to say, “my toaster broke so I have to stop at the FixIt on my way home.
Yes yes, fixing it is too expensive to support this business model. I want to dream, okay?! Maybe a toaster like this makes it much more reasonable for cheaper appliances to be fixed by the summer student from high school who will learn invaluable skills for $15/hr. I would have killed to make min wage taking apart and doing basic repairs on stuff.
I mentor high school students who can CAD and fabricate plastic and metal parts. Surely we could fabricate more young people like that too.
I even think that repairing items at a loss could work out, because you'd get valuable customer data on what items they used enough to break, and what parts broke, giving you an insight to make your own product lines that didn't break in that way.
I know the toaster is not explicitly open source but I've been lamenting the fact that such an incredible amount of energy is spent making things more accessible but most of those things are not what 'normal people' actually need.
For example I think there is a greater need for more open source couches, bikes, houses, clothing, etc than the need for, say, software that helps us coordinate containerized web infrastructure (from a social good perspective)
The social good of open source software is at an inflection point. Stallman has always been right, but for decades it's been an 'yeah, but so what' situation. In today's consumer tech, surveillance is pervasive and manipulation getting more effective. Of course, that's only a problem if we lived in a fascist state where the government could force companies to work against our interests. Or lived in a network state run by a software company.
The only prudent options are moving to open source SW infrastructure running on personally controlled HW, or moving to an off-grid cabin in the woods. I'm incredibly grateful to the folks that create software like immich and jellyfin that allow me to degoogle w/o losing capabilities that I've come to rely on.
How many different models/brands are on the market?
I estimate many hundreds, if not thousands.
Each model/brand comes with some degree of custom design and engineering, documentation, etc, etc. All for fragmented production runs, all to try to gain proprietary advantage.
Why do we need so many? We really don't actually, maybe just a dozen or two to address various niches.
If companies just picked up an open source design (which would be constantly improving, just as with software), they could save many of those costs, and potentially even more by scaling up volume of production.
So imagine you make the depth of the toaster greater than the height (easy with those feet). You put a quarter inch radius on the top plate, make the front and back plate a half an inch shorter so they nest inside the top plate in the box. And in fact if you put locking tabs on the two plates to keep the front from oil canning, those would also fit in if you flip the plates the right way 'round in the box.
You can tell from the bolts in the picture that there are already right angle bends in the sheet metal. So they're already using the third dimension just not with as much flair.
Sharp edges on appliances aren't that good either.
But look at the lid on a metal tin. The lip around the edge is often not a perfectly sharp bend. There's a small radius to it. So imagine the 'lid' was a single piece and the other sides were flat pieces that bolt together. If you size the pieces right they should fit into the 'lid'.
The main downside is that the slots are usually to narrow for bagels.
There aren't any infinite number of old toasters out there, but there's enough out there for everyone who wants to do the above.
The simpler a toaster is, the more likely it is to have eternal life. If you can buy a modern toaster that's just the knob and levers (no digital controls or whatever) then there's really no reason it won't last decades.
Back when I was a kid in the 80s toasters would break because we shoved in hacked up pieces of bread or bagels where the food touched the elements and caught fire. And knives were poked inside to extract burnt remains from the heating elements.
I was shocked to see there are toasters with motorized lifting mechanisms. Is there any practical reason why this is better than a spring?
People are propagandized to pay more money for them, then do it again when they break.
Motorized mechanisms... hmm. Well, sometimes toasters pop up toasts too hard making them land on the floor.
This isn't really true. The heating elements are pretty much entirely a resistive load, which do not cause arcing when switched off. What desoldered your PCB might be the heat itself.
Here's a pic BTW: https://imgur.com/tZadj6N
Depends what you mean by “practical”. Motorised avoid the jump scare and don’t risk launching light pieces out of the toaster.
I’d also assume (but don’t know as I’ve never been much of a toaster person) they can have a longer movement range and limit crumbing through lower acceleration stress.
Shop around? eBay had at least five automatic ones for sale for less than $250 CAD:
https://www.ebay.ca/sch/i.html?_nkw=sunbeam+automatic+toaste...
Kijiji had one for $35 CAD:
https://www.kijiji.ca/v-toasters-toaster-oven/winnipeg/sunbe...
Shopping for vintage automatic Sunbeams lists dozens more, well below $250 USD:
https://www.google.com/search?num=10&q=sunbeam+automatic+toa...
It had two spring-loaded fold-up doors on each side which you put the toast on. Then they folder vertically to put the toast near the elements. Half way through you pulled down the doors, flipped the slices over and toasted the other half.
https://www.ronebergcairns.com/2006onwards/home06_026.html
Probably easier to construct that a pop-up
edit: I'd buy one of these.
(I bought a Dualit after using one at a B&B many years ago -- I absolutely love it, though it really is a little overkill for making a few slices of toast each day. But it's a pleasure to use.)
We really do need to acknowledge that spending time taking things apart is a critical life skill. If you don't do it, you're forever a slave to buying new things.
But also once it's apart to see how it functions, what good design choices were made vs what was a bad choice because it broke. How could it be improved? Are all the design choices for the consumer? etc etc
Aside: I have a lot of HDD platters sitting around.
The AirFryer is essentially still an oven (at least mine is) with the heat coming predominantly from the top, leading to some form of "double baked" bread, which IMHO isn't the same as toasted (where the bread can be crisp on the outside but still soft in the middle)
A toaster blasts the outside of the bread with massive radiation, with thin wire element that goes from dead cold off to 100% instantly, so that the outside gets toasted before the inside gets dry.
Air fryer is way too slow and the moving air makes it even worse.
Larger toaster-oven air fryers are even worse. Way too slow to heat up and way too much of the wattage wasted radiating away in other directions being just 2 or 4 quarts tubes inches away from the bread, and with splatter shields covering them besides, instead of a veritable cage of thin wire filaments all around the bread and right next to it.
I wonder if this is a case where spending more money results in a worse product because the cheapest versions are essentially a solved design without any gimmicks or unproven design changes made to try justify a higher price/markup.
Another is that being cheap, there’s probably quite variable quality.
So it’s not that surprising that experiences vary.
(That said we have a basic model secondhand toaster that gets used multiple times a week for the past six years and it's still fine... although some of the glow wires don't work).
How much work actually goes into the cheapest toaster the chap works to make every element from scratch into a toaster.
https://haleystrategic.com/flatpack
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatpack_(electronics)
I'm clueless.
This is the relevant wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ready-to-assemble_furniture
(First sense.)
It's a fairly common word in English.
Fun project, nice write-up, but not solving a problem that needs to be solved.
That being said I would have started a project like this with researching why toasters end up in the trash. Is it because they break? (and if so which part?) Or is it because people get bored with the old design and want something new which fits their kitchen decoration better?
My suspicion is that there are garbage toasters not built to last. And then there are good quality toasters where the toaster probably could serve for decades. Maybe even hundreds of years with part replacements. But changes of taste, and design is what limits the lifetime of the second kind of toasters in reality not breakage.
Apparently most grocery store bread is significantly more wide now than in the past! Most bread won't fit!
If the inputs to a device change, that can also cause obsolescence.
I think the author has done something wonderful and thoughtful here.
However, I think a toaster is probably the least complex and least risky kitchen appliance. There are quite a few kitchen appliances that I would not feel comfortable using if I had assembled them myself. Anything with spinning blades for example. Also I don't think anyone should be assembling a flat pack microwave, where doing it wrong could end in radiation leakage.
But still, it's a great idea for less risky things. I look forward to open source hair dryers. Those things burn out in no time
I think if I was making a toaster I'd be looking to this model rather than the slot model, simply because its simpler. Or, placing toast on a flat bed with a reflecting heat plate behind the element. That would work for far thicker toastable objects, and also refreshing pita &c.
So many ways to die. Very cool project btw.
Can it run doom by toasting a new frame per slice?
https://www.thomasthwaites.com/the-toaster-project/
https://gizmodo.com/one-mans-nearly-impossible-quest-to-make...
He is by training an industrial designer.
But also, there is no clear boundary between being an artist and being an engineer. There are artist who show great mastery of engineering in their art work. Either because they studied engineering, or because they picked up enough relevant skills practically to achieve what they want to achieve.
I have a particular taste and not everyone will agree what is and isn’t art. But i consider for example David C. Roy‘s wooden kinetic sculptures both art and engineering. Similarly Jacob Tonski’s Balance from Within (a victorian sofa balancing on a single leg) incorporates both art and excelent engineering. Or Thea Ulrich’s aerial moon sculpture. Where the physical manufacturing of the sculpture is the engineering component, while the aerial dance performed on it is the art component. In each of these they could have said “hey I’m just an artist, you can’t possibly expect my thing to work” or “hey i’m an engineer, you can’t possibly expect my thing to have artistic value”. But they were not satisfied with either of those, and pushed themselves, their art and their craft until they got something wonderfull.
Where there is a will there is a way. And where the will is to make the object look shitty, you will get that result. Which is fine. But i have heard people draw the conclusion from his work that somehow this is the best anyone can do. And that is not fine with me.
I would doubly do so if the design were open-source.
I would triply do so if I could have all my new home appliances this way. I tossed my last fridge and my last washing machine over parts which would have been in the single-digit dollars to manufacture.
If the author is not commercializing this, the design and instructions should be open-sourced (and, ideally, advertised to a Chinese discount company).
Do you need to provide the documentation to the discount company? I was always under the impression the best way to get a product made was
a) make a compelling video
b) post to a crowdfunding site and make a lot of PR noise elsewhere
c) wait for the knock offs, if it takes a while, write up some posts about how you're having trouble finding production partners
d) if the knocks offs are decent, send a good knock off to the backers, otherwise refund their pledges.
No idea what it is about toasters, other than their simplicity, but I really love the effort with the flatpack version.
Most current site: https://www.thomasthwaites.com/the-toaster-project/
Older site: http://www.thetoasterproject.org/page2.htm
Some videos: https://vimeo.com/3162229 https://vimeo.com/3186135 https://vimeo.com/3186840
They also did a TED talk on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ODzO7Lz_pw
I frequently dream of openly licensed appliances that are repairable!
Having the thing be held together by screws is not necessarily the problem, it's having so many instead of having interlocking pieces that need only a couple screws, or maybe none.
The alternative doesn't have to be glue or rivets or welding, just folds and tabs and slots.
And some amount of welding or rivets isn't necessarily anti-repair either, it just depends what, where, & why.
This is the much more commonplace "packs flat for shipping, assembly required by end user" meaning.
A toaster is a great test case for learning about repairable design, but I can only imagine most people will only buy on average 1 or 2 toasters in their life.
Framework seems like they're tackling laptops, which to my gut feel like they're largely responsible for consumer waste.
In my limited experience, things that get hot and or wet as part of their function tends to break more often than those that don't. So basically anything in your kitchen or laundry.
Usually a heating element dies or similar. If it were easier to replace the heating elements I'd think it'd help reduce waste, but as you and others have noted, that wasn't the point of the article.
The first was a two-slice Kenmore (RIP Sears) which still works. It cost $20 and was purchased close to 25 years ago. I only used this a couple times a week and now the usage is very sporadic, but it always works when I need it to.
The second was a Cuisinart toaster oven, which is not exactly a toaster but has ended up being our primary toaster. I have no idea how old it is since we bought it at a garage sale for $5 about 5 years ago. This is used almost daily, sometimes multiple times a day, and for a lot more than just toast.
I can see buying one more toaster, meaning a toaster oven, in my life, but it will probably be to get new functionality (e.g., air fryer, larger capacity, etc) instead of replacing something broken.
But I see your point, we've had multiple other toasters, some toasted themselves to death by melting their own plastic casing.
The saddest failure was a Krupp coffee maker, that thing was amazing, made the best coffee. Sadly I melted the power cord on a stove top. This was before I had a proper set of tools, so I gave up trying to remove the "security" screws, that would have let me open it and replace the cord.
By weight there is probably a lot of large appliances, since their PCBs and chips are so unreliable, usually only lasting a couple of years, and people feel like suckers spending the ~$500-700 of labor and parts (mostly labor) that every repair costs on these, both because they feel like 'this one must be an especially bad design, so maybe I should buy a new one / a different brand' and because it seems insane to spend like 70-100% of the purchase price on a repair. So the whole thing is chucked in the landfill. Of course, the replacement will be a P.O.S. too, but what choice do we have?
Admittedly, I eat toast for breakfast at least 340 days a year, but I do sort of wish someone would sell a toaster that lasts so I could quit putting crappy ones in the landfill.
Tech thats not getting properly recycled is LCD Monitors, was CRT's but they became profitable to mine for copper and gold.
People are too sensitive to scratches on their screen and just throw it out. Once a monitor hits an eWaste bin that only gets worse.
But the much larger problem with eWaste is packaging. Theres more packaging, with different grades of plastic, than there is shit inside of it that can be repaired or recycled.
Phones are collected and recycled. Batteries are collected, sorted and recycled. Ancient Desktop computers are often marked as scrap, "recycled" to a developing country where they are suddenly reborn as... desktop computers and live a third or fourth life. Otherwise desktops are fairly recoverable, they go straight to "ex government" style stores, ebay, what have you.
Laptops are pretty bad too, because of the integrated screen.
Hard drives, some people like to destroy instead of wipe for security reasons. But the metals are fairly recoverable.
Networking gear tends to live on in someones home or study lab, or it goes to developing nations.
I actually find that appliances were quite unlikely to even hit an ewaste bin, likely going to landfill instead.
But then again, toasters aren't exactly idiot proof (neither are most things in the kitchen) so I guess as long as that case has a low impedance path to the earth pin, and there aren't any exposed single insulated wires, I'd also be happy.
Then I saw the PAT, looked that up, and it is not near equivalent. Here is a 20 year old version of UL 1026 Electric Household Cooking and Food Serving Appliances for comparison.
I want to buy one for my lifetime
That's what is so infuriating when my products get copied by sellers from China or similar - they are taking all of the hundreds of hours of work that I put into a design and skipping that, going straight to the easy part of producing the finalized part.
Making the thing is the easy part - making up the thing is the hard part!
Getting some manufacturers to use standardized control boards and power supplies, and listing them in the spec sheet, would do a lot more than any ease of access.
Products of the past did last longer because they weren't as cost-optimised yet. It seems similar to the story of the vastly over-build Volvo red block engines.
Yet, we don't live in a (global) society that cares about living consciously, to build things that last. If something lasts, we don't consume. And that's our true purpose. To consume the things that are produced.
Do we need 20+ brands of peanut butter? Why do brands even exist? Why can't we just but 'peanut butter'?
The word and our society is actually so strange, if you really think about this. By the way, did I mentioned yet, I really miss David Graeber?
Products of the past for the same price point as today (adj for inflation) especially did not last longer, if they even existed at that price point.
One interesting thing was a gimmick about heating soup with the blender using solely friction.
I eventually bought a modern plastic refurb which has been a dream. I do think it is a shame that it won't last 50 years.
Furthermore, you probably can buy a mixer for $1000 that has a similar chance of surviving 60 years for $1000.
Why don't you provide an example then? Findig one for $1000+ is the easy part, knowing if it's actually better is not something most people can do.
It was never clear to me (at least I don't recall it being clear) why the heating elements failed. It could be from someone sticking a hard tool into the toaster when trying to remove a small item (and breaking the element). It might be that a piece of bread gets stuck to a portion of the element and catches fire at that point -- maybe that weakens the element at that point. This was, of course, long before toasters got electronics in them!
Good bad so-so
I know a good recipe for toast.
As someone without all the answers, it seems like only a heavyhanded degree of regulation could have any chance (e.g. high taxes on whole categories of devices with low/no repairability). Though perhaps in a trade apocalypse situation that may happen sooner than we think (such as total breakdown of trade with China) perhaps repair will suddenly be relevant. This is why, as I understand it, basically every car owner in Cuba is also a mechanic.
Of course, they had the benefit of having 1950s cars when trade barriers went up. We've got houses full of devices built and purchased with the understanding that you throw away anything with a plug or a battery within 5 years max!
Fortunately, these sites often work fine with only CSS and images allowed. No JS required.