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- Hacker News
- We have at least one in Portland, and they do both clothing and electronics repairs. It's great to see a repairability movement!by QuercusMax
- It's a lovely event and people happy. If you're into repairing stuff, you might know about some nasty tricks by the manufacturer like plastic gears where past models had metal gears and so on. Modern stuff is really hard to repair. Electronic components are just too small to repair, stuff is controlled by a microchip and debugging and understanding it, is not a project you do within an hour. There are also people who bring stuff from Temu to fix which is almost impossible. Time and necessary effort for repair are one of your biggest enemies in a repair cafe. Sure you can repair a fully automated coffee machine. But that usually takes some hours. So technically you could repair it, but the time just won't let your. It's voluntary work after all. And most people appreciate it and are generous with their donations.
The biggest downside of voluntary working at a repair cafe are a certain type of people. I've heard things like "You should do this more often" (in a way of once a month isn't a good service), people act like it's a free service, where they can bring stuff and come back later to pick it up again.
But really: Most people are really sweet and it's fun to figure out what's wrong and in best case fix it. Some people are already happy to know that they at least tried or what they have to do to fix it later on their own. Sometimes you also get the chance to explain that people have to be more careful about their devices. Once I had a 3 year old vacuum cleaner with so must moisture that the carbon brushes were stuck because the frame oxidized. Or another vacuum cleaner that was probably used outside with very rough dirt. The hose was clogged because of a stick and a mixture of leaves and dirt that pilled up.
It's a fun job and making people smile makes me happy too
by adapiz - We have a Fixit Clinic join us every other Friday at our maker space open build nights in Berkeley. Next event is 28 August https://eastbaymakersclub.comby tagami
- There's also one I nopa and Mission. Mission event coming up September 13.
https://repaircafesf.org/ https://www.instagram.com/sfmissionrepaircafe/
by raybb - I've been involved for several years. If you don't yet have one in your area, are handy at fixing things and have the inclination - contact them for info on starting one up.by canada_dry
- I have been a "repair mentor" at our "repair studio" for 3+ years. It's very rewarding. We did have to set some ground rules: (clean your fan/vac, bring batteries, etc). Collaborated with our local library.by washbasin
- > clean your [item]
Anecdote: I gave an apprentice a small vacuum to fix, when he opened it up several live bed bugs emerged. That was fun! /s
by canada_dry - I fixed a lot of stuff over the past couple of years. Recently I put alot of our shellys back to life. They were taking care of our rolling shutters, but died due to a low quality capacitor. I soldered quality ones in it and they now do their job as expected again.by jfsebastian
- Similarly, even the higher-priced Logitech mice often use tact switches that are only rated for a relatively low number of clicks (probably 1 million?), so many of them started failing on me after about two years. Replacing the switches with higher-rated ones (50 million clicks) is trivial on all the mice I have disassembled so far. The switches and replacement glider pads (which need replacing after removing the screws hidden below them) are often just a few bucks but make the mouse last for several more years.by TonyTrapp
- Considering that for the average person things, not food, nor housing, nor transport are the main drivers of our negative impact on this world. Repairing instead of throwing away is very undervalued.
See: https://myhiddenimpact.com/nl/en to discover your biggest impact driver and https://thinkbigactnow.org to learn more.
- You linked to the dutch language page.by cwillu
- Tried it:
With nearly zero meat Im still 125% on food compared to the control group??
- I love this idea. A lot of repair knowledge is buried in non-English forums or unsearchable Discord servers (grr Discord). We need to localize it and rebuild community expertise.by kayson
- Here is a list of Repair Cafes in Switzerland: https://www.repair-cafe.ch
Supported by the Switzerland Department for the Environment.
by sschueller - by Coeur
- Love those places! We have a very vibrant one here in town that is open almost every day of the week (with different focuses per day, like textiles, electronics etc.). Sometime ago I've been there to have an old German radio from the 60s repaired and there was actually a guy there who used to work in a radio manufacturing company in the 80s and really knew all about these kinds of devices. I think he was retired and going to these repair cafés just as a pastime and for fun and was super enthusiastic to repair it. I think these places are not only a great way of community-building, but also great for passing on knowledge. And to prevent electronic waste of course. (The repair café actually got some fundings from the federal state government, who were subsidizing these repairing initiatives for a while. Not sure if that's still going on.)by shin-ra
- My ex-partner and I used to have "drink it and fix it" on Sunday evenings where she would bring stuff out for me to fix and we'd slowly get pissed! Some things remained fixed, some things, erm, needed re-fixing!by filterfish
- Like others, I love this idea. A related idea I had was a library of 3d models of parts. Like thingiverse, but specifically for repair/replace components and not limited to plastic. My thought was if it's plastic you could 3d print whatever little busted plastic part was going to send your household item to landfill. But also models of things like automotive parts that you could have made by somewhere like xometry. I thought of it as an "international component database."by jaredhallen