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FormulaNova said..Macroscien said..Mark _australia said..
Agree with warranty as 3 years is not the reasonably expected lifespan for a thing that sits on a shelf not subject to vibration or extremes of weather etc. Designing lifespan into electrical goods is common but it is close to unlawful when one considers our solid consumer laws in Australia. Nobody expects a TV to last 3yrs.
As an aside, best things I ever learned in this (sort of) area:
Capacitors. I have had work tools that just hum and won't start - capacitor. $20 replacement saved a $1500 compressor. $8 saved a vac pump.
Mate had an LG telly that was pretty flash for its time, was just really slow to fire up and after a few mins you could watch TV. Just annoying but it was clearly on the way out. He replaced it but had googled and results said capacitors......
Free TV for me, never seen inside one but it took a couple mins to open up and see a 2 caps were swelled. Replaced 2 of them - with $5 for 10 of them on eBay (!!) and still using it 10yrs later.
Or fridges - if the freezer is cold and the fridge isn't, its just the fan that circulates air from the two.... might be dead but more likely full of crap. Blow it out, vac it out or just rock the thing side to side until some grey sh!t lands on the floor. People throw out $3K fridges due to dust ingress in a $20 fan. Wow.
Amazingly there is less and less technicians able to fix electrinonics or just understand what is inside and how it works.
I remember 20 years ago seeing asian technician able to fix almost any electronic device with just multimeter, oscilloscope and soldiering iron. Without the need for any diagrams or schematics. This days I have a long quee of devices and tools lying in my workshop and waiting for better times to get fixed. For example.
1.Hydraulic wood log splitter . Capacitor to replace on motor $15
2. LG washing machine . Technician ask $950 plus labour to replace comptuer board but all is needed $10 thermistor.
3.plasma cutter fixed at $600 and failed soon after
4. Golf buggy motor controller??
But at this moment in time the only hope is in YouTube DIY
It is a dying skill as there is less work, therefore less people want to learn.
There is the serviceman that runs a column in Silicon Chip magazine. He advertises that he is willing to have a go at fixing things, and even though he is based in NZ it may make sense for somethings especially if it is expensive and almost impossible to replace.
Manufactures make things hard to repair these days, especially at component level. It makes more sense for them to stock replacement boards than to identify bad components. Sometimes this can be a benefit. As a case in point, I had a kelvinator AC unit fail and a simple board swap got it working again. I decided to risk it as a tech would just do the same anyway. The cost of the board was probably only slightly more than an hour of a tech's time to look at it, so it made sense. But I think a lot of manufacturers don't even want to provide these spares anymore, so even this will become more and more difficult.
Things these days are often too complex to fix anyway, unless it is engineered into them. Microcontrollers are so cheap that it makes sense to do a lot of things with them and how do you troubleshoot something that could literally be programmed to do anything? You just need to replace it.
In theory Australia has rules where manufacturers are to provide a reasonable amount of spares at reasonable costs, but I wonder if this really happens? In the case of your LG washing machine, surely $950 is more than is justified if a new machine is close in price.
There is room and hope for AI that will comes to our rescue.
Every problem was already solved or fixed by somebody somewhere.
What we need is algorithm now designed to storage solutions in big database, sort, organise and supply on demand the answer.
What YouTube is already doing to some extend.
But we need Wiki like database that one day consists How to service or repair every device on Earth. I don't mind even pay a dollar or two to learn. So both provider of video clip can be paid, AI database for service.
This days to find answers you need to spend hour browsing troght multiple forum video etc because everything is randomly fed into internet storage. But our satabase should be organised by device type, manufacturer etc.
I can even imagine in few decades from now return of skilled repairman fixing things as that is environment friendly to fix instead throw to landfill.
Repair could be made by robots most likely because people will have better things to do then get hands dirty.
I hope windsurfing will be still in fashion.
I can imagine service centres around every city where you coukd fix everything from kitchen hardware to electrics and vehicles.
Many parts could be 3D printed on-site without the need to wait for replacement parts. Not only plastic but complex metal parts made now by laser deposition.
BTW my Samsung TV also developed red net like pattern on left side on screen .
FormulaNova
> 9 months ago, 2 Apr 2023
