DIY and Repairability

[Deke609]

Rod Elliott has a published a longish criticism of the non-repairability of things that's an interesting read: http://sound-au.com/articles/sustainability.htm

Reading it reminded me of the first time I was truly blown away by a thing having been deliberately made to be non-repairable.  About 20 years ago, a relative complained that the pull cord on his new gas mower wouldn't retract, making the mower impossible to start. I offered to take a look, explaining that my first real summer job as a teenager was doing basic maintenance and repair at a tool rental business and that I had fixed tons of these things. I think I even made the mistake of promising that I could fix it. A pull cord assembly is a really simple mechanism and only two things go wrong with it: either the cord breaks (or, more often, detaches from the pull-handle) and retracts into the assembly (releasing all the spring tension in the process), or the coil spring loses some tension after repeated use. The assemblies on the commercial grade chainsaws, mowers etc. that I worked on were made to be repaired. They were easily dis- and re-assembled, and the parts (coil spring and housing) were built to last.  That was not the case with this pull cord assembly. It removed easily enough, but that was all that could be done with it.  It was hermetically sealed in a plastic housing that was fused or glued together. To open it was to break it. I explained the situation to my relative and got permission to open it up in the hopes of being able to jerry-rig some way of re-closing it after re-tensioning the spring. No dice. And what really blew my mind was that most of the internal housing for the spring was plastic too, with the ends of the spring slotting into some really flimsy plastic. It was guaranteed to fail.  If the cord didn't break, or the spring lose tension, that plastic retaining hook was bound to snap or deform.  And whoever designed it must have known that.  Crazy.

Anyway ... here's to point-to-point wiring and building and fixing stuff yourself (where still possible).

cheers, Derek

[EricS]

I do agree with DIY being a way to move beyond the "made to fail" philosophy!  I get incredibly frustrated with commercial products that are "made to fail" or made with no possible hope of being repaired.  Like most of you, my basement if full of old stuff because, while these items may not work, they contain lots "useful parts."  Cue my wife rolling here eyes at me...

Having said that, DIY still requires a bit of planning and forethought for ease of maintenance in the future.  I really wish I had taken this into account when I built my first set of DIY amps about a decade and a half ago.  I've recently run into a problem that requires some poking around, isolating, and testing various points and I'm discovering that there are LOTS of design choices that I should have made that would have greatly simplified future maintenance.  I'm probably still no where near as good at this as I need to be, but I am getting better at it.