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 completely agree with the principle of make do and mend, but there are limitations.
Our washing machine broke down last year. That is to say that the drum was making a fearful racket and wobbling. Some of you may already have guessed that the spider had failed.
Getting the damned thing apart to confirm that that was the case took at least a day.
The part was available - for £450.
There would have been no sense in replacing it with out replacing all the seals and hoses, etc. which had been disturbed. Reassembly would, presumably have taken longer than disassembly.
Things tend not to last as long as things used to. In my formative years, things were certainly more expensive in real terms, but they tended to last longer, nowadays price is king but quality sometimes suffers. I am constantly amazed at the low life of products but also at the low relative cost too. Compared to many today I am a make do and memder . Yet compared to my parents and grandparents I am a touch extravagent . What "balance" do we set?
I remember a few years back there was a cheap wristwatch you could buy, it functioned OK, it cost 99p, a replacement battery cost £1. Guess what? nearly everybody just bought a replacement watch when the battery expired!
Does anyone remember the brand Welco? I think that the name had just one "l" in it, but it may have had two. The company distributed spare parts for electrical domestic appliances. The display was often seen in private electrical shops. The items were mainly small and were contained in a plastic bag with a cardboard printed header. The items available in the range were...
Replacement pygmy lamps for 'fridges or heat resistant oven lamps.
Vacuum cleaner drive belts and carbon brushes for motors.
The problem is often down to the manufacturers. I have a Meile fridge, which has a broken handle, a simple injection moulded part which might cost 50p to make. The spare handle is listed as a spare part for £150! the same is often true for car parts, things that often break are priced to make repairs expensive, or at worst uneconomic, presumably to make one buy a new car, or fridge or whatever. One manufacturer of complex electronic products multiplies the cost of spare hard disks by 20 times to the end-user, but buying one elsewhere results in the warranty (which doesn't cover disks) being cancelled. This is all simple profiteering and this legislation goes nowhere in tackling the problem. There are all kinds of excuses for the high prices, stockholding, handling, loss due to excess stock, packaging etc, but there is no doubt that the public is seen as a cash cow for spare parts.
Had to strip out the brushes out of another failed machine, file and shape them to replace what was left in a vacuum cleaner.
Before that, I just happened to pop along to a local Hoover repair shop to be told a set of replacement brushes were not available and then was quoted £60.00 for a new hoover goblin. I didn't even bother to stay to suggest a part exchange. The logistics of time, transport and parking outweighed any further communications.
So what we have are programmed obsolescence, consumerism and commercialism
Another issue is the availability of Repair /Maintenance Manuals to make replacing items easier, some U-tube style videos are available. I recently repaired a fridge, just shorting out the thermostat proved the fault as the compressor started running. Replacement £30 main problem was removing the sensor without prior information.
The reference libraries in this country should be able to provide a copying service for all the obsolete and other service manuals I would have thought.
Now there's a money spinner for our library service.
Two years ago I restored/serviced a GWR electric signal machine (used to operate signals on a preserved railway) about 70+ years old, using the manufacturer's installation & maintenance booklet issued 1927! Still working fine and so overengineered there's no chance of it wearing out for another century or two!
Currently have a couple of digital timeswitches on my bench, normally about £250 each so worth fixing, but trying to get info or stuff out of the manufacturer is like getting blood out of a stone.
In the 1970s it was easy to procure service manuals from many sources. I used these with good effect to make modifications, repairs or correct design weakness.
Around 1990 I bought a music centre. Its features included an Aux In socket - useful, but I also wanted an Aux Out socket, to make recordings to media other than the incorporated compact cassette. I approached the maker's distribution centre for a service sheet but my request was flatly refused under the subterfuge of safety. I was told that by law they could not provide this. (I checked up on the law they quoted and found out that this was indeed the case.)
If these nanny state laws are being abolished then that is all to the good. It is strange that it is OK to carry out d.i.y. repairs on a motor car, a thing weighing nearly two tons and capable of moving many times faster than any of us can run, but electronic equipment - oh dear, no way!
