Right to Repair

[Hans Tucker]

Ongoing problem in the Military and with the evolution of consumer products now a problem for consumers.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a36903122/right-to-repair-fair-repair-act-2021/

[multiweb]

So do agree with that. I have a very expensive UPS that I wanted to repair last year. The supplier was less than helpful and basically said buy a new one or go away. Too much legal red tape and IP with electronics in general. They don't have service centers anymore because they don't even provide blueprints or schematics to anybody. So if it fails, even for a minor component that could be very easily fixed or replaced, you're on your own. Sign of the times and consumerism gone haywire. But I have a feeling a lot of things are going to wind back and go backwards very fast in the near future and we'll make do with what we have.

[muletopia]

Like Marc I had problems with my UPS. The cooling fan died. The supplier was not
interested in fixing it.
So I broke some plastic locks and took the fan out, hunted on the web for a replacement. Found the right fan , it cost $5 and only took a week to arrive from the USA.
Put in the new fan and re-assembled the UPS. The broken latches are replaced by two circles of duct tape.
Simple and cheap but as noted no support from the supplier.
Chris

[FlashDrive]

About time for this .....I love pulling things to bits if it's broken and have a go at finding the problem and sorting things out.

As long as it is out of Warranty also.

Col....

[iborg]

Hi


In Melbourne, there is a company called Module Repair Service that I have used. When I have spoken to them, they appear to be happy to look at pretty much anything. Maybe there is something similar in Sydney.


Philip

[multiweb]

There are a few repair shops but they're usually tied up as an "authorized service center" for a particular group of brands and usually replace the whole thing. I has a SONY TV under warranty that they're repaired in front of me. Took the plastic frame off the screen and replaced everything else. :lol:. So basically it was a new TV with my old plastic frame. Back in the day there were a few small operators but most are long dead now. I had a German bloke around the corner who was very busy. I dropped CRT screens, TVs, DVD players to him over the years and he was old school. Get the oscilloscope, test components, find the fault, order the part, replace and test. A dying breed.

[JA]

There's a saying that I love and fits in to this thread.....

"If you can't fix it, you don't own it !" :D:D:D

Best
JA

[muletopia]

Our son ran an electronic repair shop in Kalgoorlie for sixteen years.Towards the end of that time the flow of smaller items for repair diminished as people just bought cheap

replacements. He enjoyed problem tracing and using his diagnostic tools.


But in the end he was offered a job a the electronic engineer for a radio broadcast
organisation and so another local electronic fixit shop vanished


Chris

[AdamJL]

Interestingly, I was reading this article in the morning about Microsoft agreeing to some demands for Right to Repair

https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-agrees-to-expand-right-to-repair-options-following-shareholder-pressure/

One of my laptops is a Surface Book 2. I bought it in November 2017 so the battery life is starting to deteriorate. I can't easily replace the batteries (one in the base, one in the detachable tablet) which is disappointing. I'd love to keep this thing going because it's such a beautiful and still very powerful machine.

[Top_oz]

I repair all of my stuff. More due to principle than anything else.

Realistically it's hard to see widespread repairs of consumer goods being cost effective because our labour costs are so high in comparison to the cost of the goods.

Eg, replacing the bearings in my washing machine took pretty much a whole day because the entire machine required disassembly. And on top of that there was the time to identify and buy the parts. I'd imagine a repair guy would charge $1000. Hard to justify.

Same scenario with the control board. New board is $600 and easily swapped out. A repairer is going to charge north of $700. Luckily I stumbled across an enthusiast who had diagnosed the issue at a component level and it was a $20 fix but if I put any sort of value on my time researching and then doing the actual fix it looks whole lot less attractive.

BTW washing machine is north of 15 years old so it's allowed to have a few issues!

[alpal]

I have been involved with electronic repairs for over 35 years.
I can tell everyone that even when you are an employee of a company
that sells and "repairs" their own products it is not easy to get parts
and service information.
Sometimes parts are not available after 7 years for a new product.
Service information is often incomplete and it
requires considerable hands on experience to repair products.


Many things are often obsolete before you buy them.
Anyone who bought a mobile phone in the last few years
probably bought one that wasn't 5G capable.
Really - they wasted their money and should have waited to get a 5G phone.


Computers are shocking in that respect.
How many people upgraded or bought a Win 10 computer only to
find that their printer no longer worked? -
and when they upgraded the printer drivers to Win10 -
that didn't help either?
Are there 1 billion printers that ended up in the rubbish tip
due to Win 10?
The printer manufacturers must have loved it.
I wonder if they paid Microsoft to help them out? -
nudge nudge wink wink.
It's all about draining your money as you're sucked into the next big thing.



I'm still running an 11 year old i7 quad core on Win7 and
it works just fine.


cheers
Allan

[Sunfish]

A friend gave myself and the kids a very expensive Mac to salvage as it was too expensive to even send out for a quote . I replaced a bulging capacitor on the graphics card with a similar part and it worked fine and I am a complete novice .

Looking on the web there are many groups of young enthusiasts with listings of which parts need replacement in which devices and the best quality components. Gotta love the web and the driver of lack of funds for assessing quality and repair. Some people are not paid so much that they don’t bother.

I fixed a few things by replacing one cent Chinese copy parts with 10 cent parts from a friends stash of German electronics. Corporations do not care if it works , or works for long, as long as it sells.

[lazjen]

This right to repair is going to have to come back in a big way, not only for what people have said here and in the article, but just for changing consumerism in general and this particular impact on the environment. It's got to become easier and more feasible to do repairs.

[Peter Ward]

Indeed I have been a SBIG dealer for the same time, and occasionally get calls from customers who have 17 year old cameras that have served them faithfully for that time but are now kaput.

Parts are no longer available hence repairs are not an option. Often the chips themselves are simply not being made anymore.

Curiously...one can still get parts for Model-T ford cars.... :shrug:

However, often the sensors themselves are still good and kudos to SBIG for having an albeit not inexpensive "sensor transplant" service which allows them to be re-used in a current model camera head.

Given that many CCD lines have ceased production (perversely not due to a lack of performance) it's comforting to know some re-use is still possible.

[astroron]

I took a watch to one of those shopping center repairers to change the battery.
It has two batteries to to run both an analogue and a digital time system.
Left it with him while I shopped.
Upon returning,just in time to see him screwing on the back again.
He informed me that he had to just about to totally dismantle the watch to get at the battery that was dead.
Said it would cost more than the watch and not worth the time or money required.
I went and bought a new Casio for $20:00 more than the repair of the 2 year old watch.
One half of the old watch is still working and the other is "Dead Jim"
Cheers:thumbsup:

[Sunfish]

I saw the SBIG transplant offer and was impressed. I wonder how many take up the offer.

Interesting that electronics parts can have long useful lives if they are of a high quality .

Also that many manufacturers still use legacy parts decades after their first design. Possibly small specialist manufacturers find that availability and known performance are more important in a particular model class than the latest thing at a cheap price.

[The_bluester]

Seems one of the biggest users of legacy parts is the car industry. One of the bigger issues related to the "Chip shortage" is apparently the test and validation requirement for anything new in vehicles (E.G. chips used in safety critical systems, which in cars is a lot of them. Even just a stardard old opamp is suddenly safety critical if it happens to be hanging off the analog input of a drive by wire sensor) The upshot of that is the semiconductor industry want people to use their new designs which tend to produce higher yields (More chips on a wafer because they are smaller, or if they are the same size, a better proportion of chips on a given wafer which pass QC) but the car industry want to use the old, proven designs for as long as possible, and they don't want to be stampeded into using a design "off the plan" as the testing and validation can literally take years. They want it out there and proven first. So you have semiconductor makers not all that interested in ramping up production of stuff from ten years ago, and car makers not wanting to risk anything unproven.

With the semiconductor industry churning out 7nm process chips and moving to 5 and even 3nm, a lot of the car industry equipment is apparently still using 45 and 90nm process stuff, literally two decade old tech!

[alpal]

That's great if they can swap the sensor at a reasonable price -
however the sensors are very delicate and there would be
some sensors lost due to damage in that process.

[Hans Tucker]

And SBIG makes this clear in their 'Are There Any Risk' section.

https://diffractionlimited.com/sensor-transplant-service/

Must admit that I have been contemplating this 'Sensor Transplant' for a ST-8300M.

[alpal]

Yes many risks and also -

there are new tricks that can be used now such as low melting point solder
especially designed to remove chips at much safer lower temperatures.
However in this video Dave still managed to dislodge some pads
although that wouldn't matter if the chip was being used on another PCB.

see here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmD7F0--7Lc

[Hans Tucker]

During my time in the RAAF and my posting to 481SQN Workshop, at a time when the Military was self sufficient .. to a degree and maintenance was not overly contracted out, I was lucky enough to get on a Micro-Miniature Component Repair (MMCR) Course. It involved 2 weeks practical training in the repair of Multi-Layered Circuit Boards under a Microscope. Excavating down layers to repair a broken track. The most technically challenging course I had ever completed. It gave me an appreciation of the challenges of electronic repair. Eventually that method of repair was discarded as being too labour intensive for the gains. So they simply got a new board and repopulated.

[alpal]

I've done courses like that.
A lot of chips now are BGA type. Ball Grid Array.
They are difficult to replace and you really need a heat chamber
where you can ramp up the temperature
in a controlled fashion for manufacturing but
for repair you take your chances.
You need an X-Ray machine to check it all afterwards but
even then the warranty returns can be too high to make it viable.
A lot of stuff was not made to be repaired.


see here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdvvk0NdAy0

[RAJAH235]

Take a look at the latest iPhone 13? & all the little "snags" that "they"
have included to stop anyone from repairing them.

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8s7NmMl_-yg

I believe "they" even "tagged" the ribbon/sensor cables or plugs....?
(See around 13 Mins or so...)

[alpal]

Thanks for that video.
It's almost criminal that Apple have deliberately made
it impossible for anyone except them to replace the main parts.
I hope the European Union fines them.
Australia won't and neither will the USA -
we allow them to get away with this behaviour.