Repair Cafe – Fix Your Broken Items

Like others, I love this idea. A related idea I had was a library of 3d models of parts. Like thingiverse, but specifically for repair/replace components and not limited to plastic. My thought was if it's plastic you could 3d print whatever little busted plastic part was going to send your household item to landfill. But also models of things like automotive parts that you could have made by somewhere like xometry. I thought of it as an "international component database."

My ex-partner and I used to have "drink it and fix it" on Sunday evenings where she would bring stuff out for me to fix and we'd slowly get pissed! Some things remained fixed, some things, erm, needed re-fixing!

Love those places! We have a very vibrant one here in town that is open almost every day of the week (with different focuses per day, like textiles, electronics etc.). Sometime ago I've been there to have an old German radio from the 60s repaired and there was actually a guy there who used to work in a radio manufacturing company in the 80s and really knew all about these kinds of devices. I think he was retired and going to these repair cafés just as a pastime and for fun and was super enthusiastic to repair it. I think these places are not only a great way of community-building, but also great for passing on knowledge. And to prevent electronic waste of course. (The repair café actually got some fundings from the federal state government, who were subsidizing these repairing initiatives for a while. Not sure if that's still going on.)

Here is a list of Repair Cafes in Switzerland: https://www.repair-cafe.ch

Supported by the Switzerland Department for the Environment.

I love this idea. A lot of repair knowledge is buried in non-English forums or unsearchable Discord servers (grr Discord). We need to localize it and rebuild community expertise.

Considering that for the average person things, not food, nor housing, nor transport are the main drivers of our negative impact on this world. Repairing instead of throwing away is very undervalued.

See: https://myhiddenimpact.com/nl/en to discover your biggest impact driver and https://thinkbigactnow.org to learn more.

I fixed a lot of stuff over the past couple of years. Recently I put alot of our shellys back to life. They were taking care of our rolling shutters, but died due to a low quality capacitor. I soldered quality ones in it and they now do their job as expected again.

I have been a "repair mentor" at our "repair studio" for 3+ years. It's very rewarding. We did have to set some ground rules: (clean your fan/vac, bring batteries, etc). Collaborated with our local library.

I've been involved for several years. If you don't yet have one in your area, are handy at fixing things and have the inclination - contact them for info on starting one up.

We have a Fixit Clinic join us every other Friday at our maker space open build nights in Berkeley. Next event is 28 August https://eastbaymakersclub.com

It's a lovely event and people happy. If you're into repairing stuff, you might know about some nasty tricks by the manufacturer like plastic gears where past models had metal gears and so on. Modern stuff is really hard to repair. Electronic components are just too small to repair, stuff is controlled by a microchip and debugging and understanding it, is not a project you do within an hour. There are also people who bring stuff from Temu to fix which is almost impossible. Time and necessary effort for repair are one of your biggest enemies in a repair cafe. Sure you can repair a fully automated coffee machine. But that usually takes some hours. So technically you could repair it, but the time just won't let your. It's voluntary work after all. And most people appreciate it and are generous with their donations.

The biggest downside of voluntary working at a repair cafe are a certain type of people. I've heard things like "You should do this more often" (in a way of once a month isn't a good service), people act like it's a free service, where they can bring stuff and come back later to pick it up again.

But really: Most people are really sweet and it's fun to figure out what's wrong and in best case fix it. Some people are already happy to know that they at least tried or what they have to do to fix it later on their own. Sometimes you also get the chance to explain that people have to be more careful about their devices. Once I had a 3 year old vacuum cleaner with so must moisture that the carbon brushes were stuck because the frame oxidized. Or another vacuum cleaner that was probably used outside with very rough dirt. The hose was clogged because of a stick and a mixture of leaves and dirt that pilled up.

It's a fun job and making people smile makes me happy too

We have at least one in Portland, and they do both clothing and electronics repairs. It's great to see a repairability movement!

Would love the idea in Ireland as we are flooded with vape selling and repair shops on every street. Fixed Dyson v11 twice now and I wish there was a place I could come to get someone with experience to help I broke PSP in attempt to fix it and had to rely on repair shop for broken button on steam deck

TIL there are people who throw knives away instead of sharpening them.

I don't think they're related, but there's a Repair Cafe non-profit in NC that does events on a regular basis as well: https://repaircafenc.org/upcoming-events

I blogged about a local one some years back

https://ejectdisc.org/2017/11/05/repair-all-the-things/

We have one in my town, meets once a month at the local community centre. I've only been there once, but It's pretty awesome seeing all the stuff people bring in to get repaired.

Site is broken on my smartphone, won't navigate.

Is it growing? Is anyone in Austin TX starting one up?

I had a washing machine break a couple of weeks ago. 3 years old. Just past warranty. Manufacturer advertised 10 year warranty on the motor. Motor controller burned out: not covered. PCB looked perfect. Had it swapped today: suddenly everything back to working. $240 for the part, $170 labor. As an individual, I can't buy the part.

In theory, our national government has a 'crackdown' on 'bullshit whitegoods warranties' this year. In reality: they're letting it happen.[0]

When it costs $400 and two weeks of screwing around to fix a $900 appliance, you just buy a new one.

I'd happily fix the thing myself, but it's not designed to be fixed, and they refuse to sell the part: the supply chain is designed to make the option impossible.

In vengeance, I kept the old motor controller but haven't yet taken a look at it. Might send it to China to get it reverse engineered if necessary or if simple enough just release an open one as a KiCad file. Frankly I think it's just a large motor controller IC, a cap, a heat sink and one or two other components.

The guy fixing it told me basically they're all bad, and designed to fail after warranty now. He said Samsung has good service, Miele has good value, the rest are meh. I hear good things about Fisher & Paykel, which is an AU/NZ brand. He said don't buy combined washer-dryers, and always buy a larger one than you need: mostly they die from overloading not from under-use. He also said: unplug them when not in use. Sadly, that makes sense. I guess they sometimes design them to 'slow burn'.

[0] https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/rising-contacts-raise-...