Although full time job, sometimes been asked to repair (like everyone else on this site) electrical /mechanical equipment big or small up to the not so easy washing machines and mig welders. Down to a few items nowadays due to the throw-away attitudes that people have, as items do not cost as much as the older items once did.
The skip sites were valuable to me to hunt for parts as I repaired items for no cost whenever I could. Due to H&S you are not allowed now this past few years to remove anything from a skip site.
The big winner of this new law. "The right to repair " will be of course that big rich company where you can get anything even a small £1 switch in a big cardboard box (and I use them for parts), the loser will be the with hundreds of big vans travelling all over the country for small items.
This is only a small courteous take on this from me, others may have a more generous view.
I don't find this BBC article convincing or appealing to an engineer. I don't doubt that there is a lamp that has been shining for over 100 years, but how many watts does it consume and how many lumens does it output? I'll not hold my breath for an answer to that one.
In general, with filament lamps, life and efficiency are traded against each other. BS 161, now obsolete, was the standard for GLS tungsten lamps, and various competing manufacurers tried to meet it. The 1000 hour life was a workable compromise between life and efficiency. Some uses bought lamps rated at 10 or 20 volts above actual supply rating, to gain extended life, but at the expense of light output and this could be shown to be a false economy unless replacement labour costs were high. Similar arguments could be brought against the 2000 hour "long-life" lamps that some makers produced.
We have moved on to compact source fluorescent lamps, which give both longer life and higher efficiency. Unfortunately they were not as popular as they should have been owing to poor marketing methods and ill-considered legistation to phase out tungsten lamps.
We have moved further to LED lamps. These are becoming widely accepted. It is not all bad news. This is real progress.
I had similar when we used the grill on our Neff oven with the door open (as we were used to doing on our Westinghouse oven) and the metal like push button nearby half melted. I managed to buy a new switch button from Neff, but how to fit it? Nothing obvious by looking at the new one and gently pulling at the old one failed to budge it. Phone Neff and was told that it was not permitted to give repair information out........... IEng MIET did not impress, so the new one sat in a draw, until we had another fault - it was either the fan motor or an element. Being under warranty (although not for the half melted button!) Neff sent out a local engineer. "Can you do us a favour please?" The method turned out to grip the button with pliers and PULL to the point where you expect to break the switch. Then PUSH the new one on with the switch spindle extended, again to the point where you expect something to break.
I don't find this BBC article convincing or appealing to an engineer. I don't doubt that there is a lamp that has been shining for over 100 years, but how many watts does it consume and how many lumens does it output? I'll not hold my breath for an answer to that one.
In general, with filament lamps, life and efficiency are traded against each other. BS 161, now obsolete, was the standard for GLS tungsten lamps, and various competing manufacurers tried to meet it. The 1000 hour life was a workable compromise between life and efficiency. Some uses bought lamps rated at 10 or 20 volts above actual supply rating, to gain extended life, but at the expense of light output and this could be shown to be a false economy unless replacement labour costs were high. Similar arguments could be brought against the 2000 hour "long-life" lamps that some makers produced.
We have moved on to compact source fluorescent lamps, which give both longer life and higher efficiency. Unfortunately they were not as popular as they should have been owing to poor marketing methods and ill-considered legistation to phase out tungsten lamps.
We have moved further to LED lamps. These are becoming widely accepted. It is not all bad news. This is real progress.
I had similar when we used the grill on our Neff oven with the door open (as we were used to doing on our Westinghouse oven) and the metal like push button nearby half melted. I managed to buy a new switch button from Neff, but how to fit it? Nothing obvious by looking at the new one and gently pulling at the old one failed to budge it. Phone Neff and was told that it was not permitted to give repair information out........... IEng MIET did not impress, so the new one sat in a draw, until we had another fault - it was either the fan motor or an element. Being under warranty (although not for the half melted button!) Neff sent out a local engineer. "Can you do us a favour please?" The method turned out to grip the button with pliers and PULL to the point where you expect to break the switch. Then PUSH the new one on with the switch spindle extended, again to the point where you expect something to break.
