disposable products

I was inclined to reflect on the recent repair of my neighbors battery charger, that only turned up on my doorstep after someone else told him it wasn't worth fixing.

It turns out the repair cost (me) only pennies worth of parts (one 1/4W resistor, and replacing some missing hardware to secure the SCRs to the heat sink).  Luckily I am a pack-rat so I was able to find some to-220 shoulder washers that were sitting around in my parts bins untouched for a few decades. So actually it cost me nothing out of pocket, just my time.

I would never consider making such repairs as a serious business activity because frankly nobody would pay me, what I think my time is worth. Once again I asked my neighbor not to tell anyone about my ability to fix stuff.  8)

Since the trend for skilled labor capable of repairing gear without schematics or manufacturer support seems if anything to be getting more pricey, and replacement cost for appliances continues to get cheaper there will probably be more such equipment discarded.

Somebody who has time on their hands and basic understanding of electronics, could probably collect all kinds of discarded treasures... and with the investment of some sweat capital (do brains sweat?) turn these back into serviceable product.

While this battery charger is not my idea of treasure, I'm glad I was able to help my neighbor avoid the expense of replacing it. This is what good neighbors do.

Happy new year all.... 

JR

PS: Don't make any resolutions that you don't plan to keep, with very high certainty. That just programs you for more similar failures of will in the future. Instead pick one easy to keep resolution from you list, and make it... Then after a few months of keeping it when it has become a good habit, pick the next easiest from your list and start it. Program yourself for success with incrementally harder "easy" resolutions that you actually succeed with.

At least there are more E-waste sites around now , But I agree it a real problem that things are not made to
be fixed and with the race towards the bottom , we end up living in our own shit .  there is a limit to how much room can be
being taken up by Attention units and things too good to throw out , not actually garbage but  pieces without an immediate use .
the 3 R's are helpful but I think the root cause cure is consume less , at least that saves money as well .
Not usually a good reason to wait , so don't let New years be an excuse
[ and remember to drink lots of water ]

As a child, I took apart everything that was broken.

I never got them working, but I definitely got an appreciation for what was inside to make things work.
My son and I will continue that tradition. We might even try to get them to work!

By the way -- this issue of not repairing is a very western thing. In poorer cultures (India, China, Vietnam etc) things get fixed until their are unfixable. (just look at the scooters and motorbikes).

One more thought -- linked to my experience of tearing stuff down. Just because an item is no longer usable for it's primary design, doesn't mean it can't be repurposed. I have a crappy DVD player who's video output died. Makes a great S/PDIF audio source now.

Happy new year JR, OKGB and others on the forums!

/R

> disposable products

I *just* came in from untangling the clothes-line from the snow-blower.

No, the 400 pound sno-blow didn't jump 9 feet in the air to chomp the clothes-line.

In a very mild snowstorm (*no* other damage, not even down dead branches), the clothes-line pulley failed. Not a specific manufacturing defect, rather a design stupidity. The arms were just too darn thin. Total cross-section hardly more than the wire it carried. If the arms were iron, that might be acceptable (pulley arm need not be stronger than the wire which pulls it). However the arms are Zinc, cast Zinc, and IMHO dirty chunky under-melted Zinc.

There's several situations a clothes-line fails. If it drops in a summer storm, oh well. If it drops in the dirt with a full load of freshly-washed fine garments, ARGH!! I hadn't thought about it dropping in the snow and hiding so that the sno-blower auger could ingest it.

This pulley came from a reputable simple-living catalog. It was not a lot of money, OTOH I paid a heck of a lot more than cheap under-size Zinc is worth. If I don't get a wonderful reply from them, I may be back to drop the name.

Will probably turn to the Marine Store for reliable pulleys and line. Here the marine market is a split of over-rich boaters and marginal fisherfolk. The fisherfolk can NOT afford a pulley or line that fails 90 miles out to sea with 900 pounds of catch on it.

The cheap battery charger I bought back in 1980 is still working well. AFAIK it has no SCRs.

Yeah , that the reuse part  , of reduce , reuse , recycle    imagine if we couldn't afford things or even the parts for things

Best of the new year to everyone

One big problem might be Liability.

I don't let a non insured person or company work on my house I look at the paper work and call the insurance company to check.

I would think twice before buying something or having something repaired from a company without insurance if the device plugs in the wall or uses higher energy batteries.

okgb said:

At least there are more E-waste sites around now ,

Click to expand...

Not near me... but, I recently put a few decades of accumulated computers, appliances, and obsolete office equipment at my curb for town disposal, and literally 90% of my junk pile, were picked up by scavengers before the town collection, to extract some value from.

But I agree it a real problem that things are not made to
be fixed and with the race towards the bottom ,

Click to expand...

This battery charger using single sided through hole PCB was more repairable than the SMD products I build, but being made by a no-name taiwanese brand, suggested to me that I shouldn't expect to find schematics or a service manual handy.

I suspect from the number of these electric scooter/chairs I see around, somebody closer than Taiwan knows how to repair these.

we end up living in our own sh*t .

Click to expand...

I cringe when I see that TV show Hoarders, but I am nowhere near that level of clutter, and have made good progress this year at reducing my accumulation from decades of pack-ratism. 

there is a limit to how much room can be
being taken up by Attention units and things too good to throw out , not actually garbage but  pieces without an immediate use .

Click to expand...

I had one room full, now barely one corner of that room, and half of that remaining could be sorted and thrown out. But then I might not be able to find some part I need for a repair.

the 3 R's are helpful but I think the root cause cure is consume less , at least that saves money as well .
Not usually a good reason to wait , so don't let New years be an excuse
[ and remember to drink lots of water ]

Click to expand...

Allow me to add some nuance... "waste less"... I don't feel bad about consumption per se, but waste that can be avoided, should be avoided.

(deleted long rant about consumption based on borrowed money).

JR

JohnRoberts said:

(deleted long rant about consumption based on borrowed money).

Click to expand...

I have one of these too... I developed it after I movedto the US and saw how much shite is purchased on the never-never.

The phrase that gets me for personal junk & parts is , I haven't touched that in 3 years , but
if I had to find another I might not be able to .  I have piles of schematics when I was looking for the pultec
so Now I'm a keeper of paper , slowly throwing out when I find versions on line

Gus said:

One big problem might be Liability.

I don't let a non insured person or company work on my house I look at the paper work and call the insurance company to check.

I would think twice before buying something or having something repaired from a company without insurance if the device plugs in the wall or uses higher energy batteries.

Click to expand...

Surely less of a problem if you don't kill or maim anybody.

I recall hearing about one poor preacher who was electrocuted during a baptism by a microphone connected to a powered mixer with a disconnected line cord safety ground lead, inside the unit. Story I heard was that the unit was serviced to deal with a hum problem, and some mental defect fixed it by lifting the internal safety ground. I don't even recall which company made this powered mixer (not Peavey), and I would further speculate that it was not serviced by an authorized factory repair tech who would surely know better. 

So I repeat, if you make repairs for free or for payment, do not kill anybody. Apparently it can and does happen. Note: when I was probing around inside that welder with a 480V output voltage tap, I was also careful to not kill myself.  8)

JR

JohnRoberts said:

I recall hearing about one poor preacher who was electrocuted during a baptism by a microphone connected to a powered mixer with a disconnected line cord safety ground lead, inside the unit.

Click to expand...

I remember this. Initial speculation (by people who don't know what the hell they were talking about) was that the death was caused by phantom power.

-a

Andy Peters said:

JohnRoberts said:

I recall hearing about one poor preacher who was electrocuted during a baptism by a microphone connected to a powered mixer with a disconnected line cord safety ground lead, inside the unit.

Click to expand...

I remember this. Initial speculation (by people who don't know what the hell they were talking about) was that the death was caused by phantom power.

-a

Click to expand...

Becoming the shortest path from a regulator sure would suck. But is it enough to kill you? Not willing to test that one. Sorry. One hand in pocket always.

I would hazard a guess that one reason for low cost of certain goods is the increased level of automation in the assembly process--can you imagine how much a dvd player would cost if all the components were placed and soldered by hand?

Of course, there's no equivalent automation of the repair process, so the time and labor of repair hasn't changed much over the last half century or so.  Repair will continue to be impractical as long as the initial cost of an item is so low compared to repair cost. 

Obviously, there are and will continue to be things worth fixing, but for a lot of stuff the cost of repair will exceed the used value of an item or even the cost of a new replacement.  And thus the landfills get ever fuller. 

You know who did that  ..............

PRR said:

> disposable products

I *just* came in from untangling the clothes-line from the snow-blower.

No, the 400 pound sno-blow didn't jump 9 feet in the air to chomp the clothes-line.

In a very mild snowstorm (*no* other damage, not even down dead branches), the clothes-line pulley failed. Not a specific manufacturing defect, rather a design stupidity. The arms were just too darn thin. Total cross-section hardly more than the wire it carried. If the arms were iron, that might be acceptable (pulley arm need not be stronger than the wire which pulls it). However the arms are Zinc, cast Zinc, and IMHO dirty chunky under-melted Zinc.

There's several situations a clothes-line fails. If it drops in a summer storm, oh well. If it drops in the dirt with a full load of freshly-washed fine garments, ARGH!! I hadn't thought about it dropping in the snow and hiding so that the sno-blower auger could ingest it.

This pulley came from a reputable simple-living catalog. It was not a lot of money, OTOH I paid a heck of a lot more than cheap under-size Zinc is worth. If I don't get a wonderful reply from them, I may be back to drop the name.

Will probably turn to the Marine Store for reliable pulleys and line. Here the marine market is a split of over-rich boaters and marginal fisherfolk. The fisherfolk can NOT afford a pulley or line that fails 90 miles out to sea with 900 pounds of catch on it.

Click to expand...

I recently bought a steel pulley for my weight machine to replace one plastic/composite pulley that would break where the ball end on the steel cable was hitting it. I had long ago replaced the original cheesy plastic pulleys that came on the made in China weight machine. I bought the pulley from McMaster-Carr and while not cheap it seems adequately robust. Perhaps overkill for a laundry line, since it's over kill for my weight machine, but over kill is good.

The cheap battery charger I bought back in 1980 is still working well. AFAIK it has no SCRs.

Click to expand...

I got the follow-up report from my neighbor this morning and the repaired charger fully charged up his scooter batteries and the two colored LEDs stopped blinking to indicate full charge. It looks like the repair took (for now).

JR

@Hodad.. I am painfully aware of the labor cost savings associated with automation, that screwed up my old kit business model back in the '80s.  The thing with DIY repairs is not how much you value your time, but how much you charge yourself for your time, and would you use that time more productively if you didn't spend it that way.  I mow my own lawn, but would never cut somebody else's for money.

I recall back in the '70s, bringing my car to the local garage to replace the water pump, even though I had already bought the replacement pump and could easily do it myself. I just figured paying them <$50 or whatever freed me up to do more profitable work my time. Of course as so often happens, they gave me my car back without filling up the cooling system so I overheated a few miles away. After I cooled down and returned to the gas station they sheepishly topped it off with the anti-freeze that I also bought for the repair and provided them with. Arghhh more evidence that if you want something done right, do it yourself. 

buildafriend said:

Andy Peters said:

JohnRoberts said:

I recall hearing about one poor preacher who was electrocuted during a baptism by a microphone connected to a powered mixer with a disconnected line cord safety ground lead, inside the unit.

Click to expand...

I remember this. Initial speculation (by people who don't know what the hell they were talking about) was that the death was caused by phantom power.

-a

Click to expand...

Becoming the shortest path from a regulator sure would suck. But is it enough to kill you? Not willing to test that one. Sorry. One hand in pocket always.

Click to expand...

Phantom power is current limited. And many performers use phantom-powered handheld microphones. 

-a

It is perhaps ironic that baptismal services sometimes end badly precisely because the wired microphone has a good solid ground. A rouge mains voltage fault elsewhere around the water will generally find a short ground path through metal plumbing, but the amount of plastic piping used these days means it is more likely that underwater lighting or heaters and pumps can dangerously energize the pool of water.

Anybody reading this that has anything to do with sound in a church, please suggest that they use a wireless mic... much safer around water, and these days cheap insurance. Especially considering that the electrical work in the church may have been done by another church member for free. 

=====

Regarding phantom danger, I am not aware of a single injury related to that. Perhaps if you drove a phantom powered mic into the user's  heart, then powered it on, but he'd already be dead from the trauma.

JR

Buying from a second hand shop can be a good way to find something that has at least survived 1 life time, and hopefully will be good for a second.

> Buying from a second hand shop can be a good way to find something that has at least survived 1 life time, and hopefully will be good for a second.

$200 heater for $5, *with* a bunch of other doodads.

BUT "survived"?

Ugh. The cord had been adapted VERY ugly. No way was I gonna plug it in.

This is a BIG heater, 5,600 Watts, 240V 23A. Goes in a dryer outlet. It had a dryer plug. But adapted with too-little too-old duct-tape. And it was the old-style 3-pin dryer plug, which puts the case at Neutral instead of Ground (they are not the same, especially in my garage).

The modern dryer plug is 4-pin with honest ground. And to his surprise my neighbor had a 3-pin box with a 4-pin outlet in it, so that end was free. The plug is $15 at H-D but you have to hunt (they'd rather sell you a cordset for $22). And at another sale last year I grabbed 30 feet of 8-3/G padded rubber extra-flex cord. And I had a 30A 2P breaker and found my last 3/4" bushing.

$5+$15+$20= $40 invested, for a much better heater than was sold for $200 new (26' extra-good cord and 21st century grounding).

Any old heater gets two kinds of dust. Dust blown through, and dust from just sitting. I took it to bits and brushed a lot of dust out. You never get the last dust-film off so they stink when powered up. This was really not as bad as I feared. It is VERY quiet for its power. It does shimmy a little, a gram more dust on one blade than the other.

It's a GE motor and most likely a GE heating element. Not GE industrial but good commercial product. The motor and element will probably out-live the tin box.

It's nearly a dollar an hour to run. It's to take the chill off the garage for a few hours so I can handle a water-pump. (Except two of my cars, you must lift the engine to get the pump, so...)

I have resistance heat in my house and it only smells funny the first time it turns on after sitting over the winter collecting dust. Clean (mostly) and quiet (mostly), but not completely either. While very subtle decades ago I was messing with an air ionizer that was placed near a resistance heater. Over a season the ions caused soot from the heater to precipitate on my light colored wall above the heater, so dust is burning all year round, just in such small amounts we only notice the smell the first time of the season. 

That said my in-wall heat pump is noisier but cheaper heat***, and I guess no soot. 

5,600W should be enough heat to get your garage comfortable.  8)

We used to use a kerosene space heater to get the garage warm enough to work without heavy gloves.

JR

*** heat pump makes more sense in MS than ME due to higher outdoor temps, down at ME temps there is probably little benefit from air based heat pump over cheaper resistance heat. (Poke a hole in the ground, you'll probably find natural gas  8) )