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This morning I was making toast in my cheapo toaster and was reminded of the Dualit a customer brought in last year for me to repair. The date code was 1997 and

This morning I was making toast in my cheapo toaster and was reminded of the Dualit a customer brought in last year for me to repair. The date code was 1997 and it sounded like it was the first heating element replacement it had needed in that time. I thought the one side/two side heating element switch was particularly clever. Honestly I was just impressed that the parts were available. Most consumer-grade toasters use nearly-identical mechanisms, with zero available replacement parts (maybe a crumb tray if you're lucky).

jandrese 4y ago
Conventional toasters are so cheap it makes no sense to try to repair them. Plus they aren't built to be repaired at all. When my last one died I tried taking it apart to see what went wrong (element burned through as it turned out) and see if I could fix it, but the whole mechanism was basically as single piece put together with spot welds and rivets, and with part markup being at least 2x or 3x initial cost there would be no way repairing it would make sense. I could gripe about it being cheap junk designed to fail, but it lasted over 20 years and browned thousands of slices of bread. If some well built toaster that won't fail costs more than 4 times what the cheap toaster does, then it probably doesn't make sense to buy it. Especially if you can't guarantee that the well built toaster will actually last a lifetime.
- imtringued 4y ago
  In theory you want anything with a finite lifespan to not need any repairs or maintenance during its lifespan and only fail once its lifespan has been exceeded. Repairing isn't supposed to make sense, you get the next, better iteration of the product. In practice, products fail way too early and for easily avoidable reasons justifying the need for repairs.
- drewzero1 4y ago
  If it cost only 4 times as much I'd probably consider it, but 10+ is just a really hard sell unfortunately. I had to scrap a perfectly good toaster because I couldn't find a replacement for a cracked plastic part that is supposed to make or break contact in a switch and engage the electromagnet. It would still toast fine if you held down the lever, and it pained me to toss it, but I couldn't source or fabricate a safe replacement part. I'm sure the manufacturer(s) don't want to worry about self-service causing house fires though, and it costs a lot to create, maintain, and distribute a stock of replacement parts for what ultimately is a disposable appliance. I just wish I could find a solid basic consumer/prosumer toaster in the sub-$100 range.
  - jandrese 4y ago
    Replacing tiny broken plastic parts is the main reason I now own a 3D printer. Granted, a toaster is one of those places where the relatively low melting point of PLA or PETG might be an issue, but it is still very useful to be able to fabricate replacement parts that are otherwise impossible to find. Even better is how I can redesign the replacement part so it doesn't fail in the same way next time.
corrral 4y ago
Considering their two-slice toaster I just looked up is $300, it better have repair parts available for the next, IDK, 50 years at least, not to be a complete rip-off. I expect I'll go through a half-dozen toasters in my life, and probably won't spend that much total (inflation adjusted).
- drewzero1 4y ago
  That was the same conclusion I came to. I replaced my $20 toaster from 2015 with nearly-identical $30 toaster in 2020. I had looked into a lot of options to avoid the unified toaster box mechanism, including building my own, and eventually decided that the value proposition just wasn't there (especially considering how infrequently I make toast).
  - corrral 4y ago
    Right, I'm sure it's worth it for someone who's really into toast, and I get the whole buy-it-for-life thing, but I try to be a little selective about what I go that hardcore with, and a toaster doesn't pass that test for me. Shit, that's almost a quarter of what I recently paid for an entire stove, or about half the price of the cheapest stove that store had.

jandrese 4y ago

Conventional toasters are so cheap it makes no sense to try to repair them. Plus they aren't built to be repaired at all. When my last one died I tried taking it apart to see what went wrong (element burned through as it turned out) and see if I could fix it, but the whole mechanism was basically as single piece put together with spot welds and rivets, and with part markup being at least 2x or 3x initial cost there would be no way repairing it would make sense. I could gripe about it being cheap junk designed to fail, but it lasted over 20 years and browned thousands of slices of bread. If some well built toaster that won't fail costs more than 4 times what the cheap toaster does, then it probably doesn't make sense to buy it. Especially if you can't guarantee that the well built toaster will actually last a lifetime.

imtringued 4y ago
In theory you want anything with a finite lifespan to not need any repairs or maintenance during its lifespan and only fail once its lifespan has been exceeded. Repairing isn't supposed to make sense, you get the next, better iteration of the product. In practice, products fail way too early and for easily avoidable reasons justifying the need for repairs.
drewzero1 4y ago
If it cost only 4 times as much I'd probably consider it, but 10+ is just a really hard sell unfortunately. I had to scrap a perfectly good toaster because I couldn't find a replacement for a cracked plastic part that is supposed to make or break contact in a switch and engage the electromagnet. It would still toast fine if you held down the lever, and it pained me to toss it, but I couldn't source or fabricate a safe replacement part. I'm sure the manufacturer(s) don't want to worry about self-service causing house fires though, and it costs a lot to create, maintain, and distribute a stock of replacement parts for what ultimately is a disposable appliance. I just wish I could find a solid basic consumer/prosumer toaster in the sub-$100 range.
- jandrese 4y ago
  Replacing tiny broken plastic parts is the main reason I now own a 3D printer. Granted, a toaster is one of those places where the relatively low melting point of PLA or PETG might be an issue, but it is still very useful to be able to fabricate replacement parts that are otherwise impossible to find. Even better is how I can redesign the replacement part so it doesn't fail in the same way next time.

corrral 4y ago

Considering their two-slice toaster I just looked up is $300, it better have repair parts available for the next, IDK, 50 years at least, not to be a complete rip-off. I expect I'll go through a half-dozen toasters in my life, and probably won't spend that much total (inflation adjusted).

drewzero1 4y ago
That was the same conclusion I came to. I replaced my $20 toaster from 2015 with nearly-identical $30 toaster in 2020. I had looked into a lot of options to avoid the unified toaster box mechanism, including building my own, and eventually decided that the value proposition just wasn't there (especially considering how infrequently I make toast).
- corrral 4y ago
  Right, I'm sure it's worth it for someone who's really into toast, and I get the whole buy-it-for-life thing, but I try to be a little selective about what I go that hardcore with, and a toaster doesn't pass that test for me. Shit, that's almost a quarter of what I recently paid for an entire stove, or about half the price of the cheapest stove that store had.