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Repair Café
- Gys 8y agoIts a pity to hear the International Repair Café Week ended exactly today.
- fredley 8y agoI posted it a few days ago, it only just got reupped unfortunately!
- Gys 8y agoNext year maybe post it in the week before and with a direct link to the repair week (2019) instead of the more general repaircafe.org 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.
- lbriner 8y agoI'm not sure the idea of manufacturers wanting things to fail is as reliable as it sounds (it is a common assumption). Having worked in manufacturing, it was generally a case of not wanting something to cost any more than it needed to when competing with other companies/countries so you didn't spend what you needed to in order to get a better motor/circuit design etc. 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!
- Gys 8y ago> I'm not sure the idea of manufacturers wanting things to fail is as reliable as it sounds 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18154371
- mrzool 8y agoThere are several of these repair cafes around town where I live. My old Braun blender from the 70s that I got from my grandma got repaired in one of these. I sent an email with brand, model and photo when I registered, the guy got some spare parts on eBay just in time for the day and I managed to repair the blender under the guy’s guidance. Paid for the spare part (5 bucks) plus left 10 bucks as small donation. My blender is as good as new. Overall a great experience, would recommend.
- technics256 8y agoWhere abouts do you live? Germany?
- mrzool 8y agoBerlin, Germany.
- LaundroMat 8y agoSame here. I live in a small village near Ghent, Belgium and the monthly repair café consistently gets a reasonable number of visitors.
- stmw 8y agoThere needs to be more of these around! Among other things, it helps for people to keep in touch with how things work.
- zhrvoj 8y agoThis bad as it can be. While everybody charges for everything, for thin air, repairs should be free...yeah..and repairman should donate their money they didn't earn to the other people.
- lavayya 8y agoI go to the local repair cafe about every other month. Almost everything people bring would othersise be thrown out and replaced by a new item, not repaired by a professiinal repairman. The people "working" there do so because repairing is fun for them, they like the puzzles, and they mostly do it for ecological reasons. 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.
- zhrvoj 8y agoDo you still think this repairman shouldn't charge you or receive fair salary for his work? My opinion is that Repair cafe is brought to you by big companies trying to influence on independent service tech. For example, if you have coding problem you cannot solve, you will probably hire some freelancer, and you will be charged of course. Because that's what they do for living. Even if you don't want to mill you own coffe (which should not be problem for 21st century man), you will pay to get ground coffee. I even saw artists statement and it says like this: "I'm an artist, but this doesn't mean I'll work for free." Why nobody expects from them to work for free because it's fun? I don't mean people who decided by their own, to work something or sometimes for free, but public initiative...?
- known 8y agoCompeting with https://www.amazon.com/services https://www.amazon.com/services ?
- adetrest 8y agoHow?
- holidaygoose 8y agoI don't understand how this works, so maybe someone can enlighten me. You pay 50 euro in exchange for some banners/logos to start a repair cafe, but they don't help you repair? I would have thought the starter kit would have supplies or something. What would you do when someone comes in with a toaster to repair? Do you just go on Youtube to figure it out together?
- lbriner 8y agoYou need to already have or find a network of "experts" to staff the cafe but there are loads of people out there. You can schedule different sorts of repairs on different days but a lot of electrical goods only require some basic faulting-finding and then spares from the internet.
- holidaygoose 8y agoI see. So then this Repair Cafe is basically a branding/marketing tool, so that you can some traffic via people who see their website.
- pontifier 8y agoWhen I looked into having some of these events at our Makerspace a few years ago, I found that the branding was very restrictive as well. My takaway was that they demanded that you put their logo on everything you do and every event you put on, even if it has nothing to do with them. There's no way in hell I was going to agree to that.
- fredley 8y agoYou don't get supplies, you do get tools though. I think item owners are expected to pay for parts. And yes, to start out with maybe you are sitting down with YouTube and figuring out, but over time people will get more experienced. > 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/RCK-2017-EN.jpg https://repaircafe.org/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/03...
- justtopost 8y agoHow is this anything but unnessary branding? Am I missing something, the website is all marketing, no message, no repair tech.
- peterwwillis 8y agoThe front page layout sucks, but click the Menu button at top right and you'll find the content.
- andyidsinga 8y agoapropos: the "will it run?" videos on the "mustie1" YouTube channel
- justifier 8y agoi've fantasised about something like this before 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
- chrisseaton 8y ago> 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 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.
- mannanj 8y agoSo it's theft unless the trash companies do it? Essentially sounds like unless you're a company, i.e. you're doing this personally, you are stealing (unless of course people pay you as a company to steal their stuff).
- Jenz 8y agoShame it’s over D:
- jacquesm 8y agoI have a little hobby: I will fix anything as long as whoever wants it fixed isn't going to push me on a delivery date, is willing to drop it off (or it is easily accessible without moving) and pick it up again when it is done. I only take in a small number of items at the time. It gives me a great excuse to keep tools around. 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).
- codezero 8y agoDo you ever post your before and after projects with maybe some tips? I’d love to see that.
- jacquesm 8y agoHm, no, but I could. That's an interesting idea, thank you, I will use that.
- newnewpdro 8y agoYou have a youtube channel in the making right there...
- briandear 8y agoI’d love to see the vintage synth!
- jacquesm 8y agoHere you go: https://jacquesmattheij.com/dx7_repaired.jpg 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.
- selimthegrim 8y agoWonder if the CBC should have found any of them for their story: https://www.cbc.ca/news/thenational/complete-control-apple-accused-of-overpricing-restricting-device-repairs-1.4859099 https://www.cbc.ca/news/thenational/complete-control-apple-a...
- mcshicks 8y agoI haven't been to one but (there was one yesterday close to where I live) but fixitclinic another option if there is no repair cafe close to you. I can't remember how I found it, but I was planning on try and check one out. It seems like pretty similar thing. http://fixitclinic.blogspot.com/ http://fixitclinic.blogspot.com/
- bad_alloc 8y agoI live in a small town in Germany and we have five of these in one year, with 20-30 devices coming in each time. We can fix most of them, even with fairly basic tools. Some observations: * 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.
- Pica_soO 8y agoI think, this is actually a missed business opportunity - companys that remove planned obsolescence from a product. Take the razors of electrical shaver- imagine if you could order something and put it through a up-value pipe- basically add a re-sharper to the docking station, replace cheap plastic connections to the e-motor.
- baddash 8y agoDoes anyone have a good idea of the environmental effects of reducing waste that this would cause? Or maybe just more generally the environmental effects?
- justifier 8y agoa film called manufactured landscapes(o) completely shook me when i saw it in theatres when it was first released 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 (o) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufactured_Landscapes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufactured_Landscapes
- Regardsyjc 8y agoThank you for recommending this documentary. It was horrifying because the photography looked like a breathtaking scifi dystopia but it was real life. The woman who makes 400 gadgets at a factory a day, the laborer who makes 20-30 yuan ($3-4) a day... 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.
- baddash 8y agothanks bud :D
- acd 8y agoI am starting to shift my perspective when buying things. New perspective, instead of the thing looking to buy should last approx 3 years I have the outlook it should last 10-40 years. Sometime that means buying a more initially expensive thing but since it will last longer it will be cheaper overall over its lifetime and have better build quality. What is good in the long run is also good for the environment. When having a repairability mindset when buying things that also sometime mean buying simpler things, I buy headphones without built in electronics since the electronics inside will fast become obsolete more than speaker elements. 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!
- oarfish 8y agoHow can headphones not have electronics inside them?
- walrus01 8y agoIf you disassemble a basic set of wired headphones it is literally just a set of wires from the TRS or TRRS plug to a set of speakers.
- subraizada3 8y agoA speaker/headphone can produce sound with only the wire coming from your computer/phone, a magnet, and the cone. The electricity from the audio cable manipulates the magnetic field in the speaker, causing the cone to vibrate. 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/ 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.
- fernly 8y agoAt the linked site, click "Find a repair cafe" for a map of the many local ones. In particular for the SF Bay Area note Palo Alto and Mountain View ones. The Palo Alto cafe[1] is particularly active with quarterly events that are very well attended, processing over 100 repairs each time. The video on that page gives a good feel for a typical event. I've been a volunteer "fixer" there a couple of times and it's great fun if you have some basic repair skills. [1] http://www.repaircafe-paloalto.org/ http://www.repaircafe-paloalto.org/
- KiDD 8y agoWhile I love the idea/concept, the logo is horrible...