Where is electronics headed ? How long til nothing fun can be repaired - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: lordvader88
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 01, 2018, 07:04:21 am
content: I'm just thinking about how more and more stuff uses chips, and less and less discrete parts. And the chips are getting more complicated, and and are already practically impossible to repair.People used to be able to repair radios, TVs without having too much super duper equipment. Compare that to laptops and phones these days, u need a lot more gear.How long til there's next to nothing to repair besides switches, or power supplies ? Or that you need a fully equipped lab or factory setting ?

author: ogden
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 01, 2018, 07:44:39 am
content: Quote from: lordvader88 on September 01, 2018, 07:04:21 amWhy don't you think that more and more stuff become cheaper? Compare average TV set price to average wage in 1980 and now and you will see that better non-repairable TV's now than non-affordable TV's then.

author: JS
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 01, 2018, 08:09:35 am
content: Check Louis Rossmann's channel on YouTube, he doesn't use too fancy tools, some soldering gear (few irons and hot air) a microscope and a DMM, stop counting, he brings all sort of Apple productsback to life replacing individual ICs or maybe a simple jumper wire in a broken trace. His humor might be a bit rough and all that but he does that in a live stream and doesn't take too long, sometimes looks like he spend more time framing the stream than in the repair...He is not alone, many things can be done. TVs usually miss their caps making a pretty straight forward repair, sometimes even simpler... I've done a few, IIRC Dave did some TV PS recapping.Also note that electronics is not the only thing going that route, mechanical parts (from a juice maker I crossed with) also happens to be hard to repair, a few tooth from a 2 cent cog makes it useless, and likely too small for most 3D printers. Then might be more expensive to draw and print the cog but I might had done it justfor the sake of not throwing it away. I extended its life by inserting some needles in place of the missing tooth in the cog but it didn't lasted long. $10 later a new one arrived home.So, yes, less people is repairing things, it's harder or more specialized but mostly it doesn't make economical sense to do so, as the thing itself it's cheap and labor is expensive, not becauseit can't be repaired, but it's easier to hit the "beyond economical repair" mark now than it was back then.JS

author: DC1MC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 01, 2018, 08:39:24 am
content: Countless millions of $$$ and engineering hours have been spent to makeelectronic devicesall products as disposable as possible, every trick in the book from complete sealing to replacing screws with glue and other permanent fixtures, to "intelligent" parts that have encrypted serial numbers and have to call the mother ship, to supply chain control, to copyright lawsuits and lobbing lawmakers to allow all this shit, to highly secure stickers that void your warranty if you even touch them.A repairable device is the worst nightmare of the rich bastards, hell, a repairable human is also their worst nightmare, as the bastion of morality, Goldman Sachs, publicly announced that they will not invest in medical research that cures, only in treatments, because having a medicine that cures permanently is an "unsustainable business model".Let's not start about cars and other more expensive devices, is "authorized repair center" or scrap heap, and in the repair center it will be qualifiedly tossed in the scrap heap and replaced, with the difference that the "authorised" scrap heap has a very strict contract to shred it, just in case some fool will attempt to repair it anyhow.Because no stone has to be left unturned and everything is valid in a war, the SJW have been co-opted and start crying about "lack of diversity" and "white old males", the evil du jour, it shoved even here in the forum there was someone kind of relieved that the ham radio is (almost) gone because it is " the least diverse hobby evar..."So yeah, it's a war, we're losing it and the except minor things nothing will be repairable around 2030, mark my words.DC1MC

author: bloguetronica
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 01, 2018, 09:18:15 am
content: Well, nothing will change, unless people start demanding the right to repair, and also start boycotting every product that is designed to fail (and not to be repaired). Take, for instance, the Microsoft Surface. It is the very epitome of how not to design a product. It is not designed to be opened and closed back together, and the RAM, storage and CPU are directly soldered to the motherboard, making it non-upgrade able. At the other end of the spectrum, you have enterprise laptops that have modular design, but cost an arm and a leg.By the looks of it, unless we do something, it will only get worse.Kind regards, Samuel Lourenço

author: ogden
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 01, 2018, 09:39:11 am
content: Quote from: bloguetronica on September 01, 2018, 09:18:15 amYes indeed. Which part of more complexity equals higher price ppl here do not understand?

author: RoGeorge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 01, 2018, 10:09:12 am
content: Like anything else, EE is changing very fast, or evolving, whatever you like to call it.I don't think the adhesive tape in gadgets (instead of screws) is because of some conspiration. It's about the astonishing progress rate in technology, and about our preferences as buyers:- first, electronics manufacturing is so cheap nowadays that the tendency is to treat electronics as disposable items- then, even if it were to be repairable instead of disposable, nobody will want an old repaired gadget instead of a brand new, shiny one, especially when the new one lures the buyer with more performance and features- in the third place, it's the complexity. Complexity of today's devices is astonishing when compared with what we use to have just a few decades ago. As an example, fifty years ago an AM radio receiver was trivially simple. Compare that with cognitive radio systems we have now in mobile phones networks.So yes, repairing electronics will end some day, same as today nobody is repairing shoes any more. But for sure there will be something new to tinker with in the future, no worry about that.I'm very confident the future will be better, not worse, and it will be very interesting.

author: ogden
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 01, 2018, 10:18:48 am
content: Quote from: RoGeorge on September 01, 2018, 10:09:12 amAfter all -oldskoolelectronics hobbyists can only dream about today's broad availability of various components, tools, materials, services like cost PCB manufacturing, various low cost modules and for god's sake, internet & Arduino. I do not really understand those who whine that they cannot repair their TV anymore. -Build something instead!

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 01, 2018, 11:15:04 am
content: Didn't we pass that point starting in the 1990s when manufacturers started adding features to create enforced obsolescence?

author: digsys
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 01, 2018, 11:21:47 am
content: I agree with - it will get a lot harder and more difficult to repair stuff. Definitely a challenge ... I still accept various consumer items from friends with the -"I'll spend 30-60 mins, and if it's a shlt-mess, I hand it back" SO far ~ 25% success rate, and getting lower. The ONE area where it is a gold mine is vehicleelectronics .. some of the ECUs, mirror controllers, lighting controllers etc etc have $2-5K+ replacement quotes. Usually potted (often just goo, not epoxy).I wait till there's 5+ items and spend a week or two on them ... 95% success rate .. Forget all that, this is the scenario I've been waiting 50 yrs for ..Me -call me Dave : Toothbrush9000 - we'll call it HAL .. just random namesDave: I want to brush my teeth HALHAL: Your teeth are fine Dave, why not have some toast instead. Shall I tell Toater2000 to make you some?Dave: No no HAL, I'm going out and I want to brush my teethHAL: I'm sorry Dave, I don't believe they need cleaning .. besides, you went out last night .. are you seeing that girl again?Dave: FFS HAL, I don't have to get your permission to go out ! Now please brush my teethHAL: I can't do that Dave .. besides .. there's a problem with the fusion power generator .... it really should be looked at.Dave: ok fiiiine, but when I get back .. you WILL brush my teeth !! ....Dave: The status light shows "all is ok" HAL, are you sure you didn't make a mistake?HAL: I'm have HAL9000 processor Dave, we have never ever made a single mistake in our history. Just to be sure, open the reactor door and look inside ..Dave: ok fiiine, but if I don't find anything wrong, I'm upgrading your software to Windows 5000 !!!!<off screen> BBZZZZZPPPPZZZ FHOOOT zzzzttt

author: SparkyFX
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 01, 2018, 01:15:57 pm
content: Quote from: DC1MC on September 01, 2018, 08:39:24 amDepends which sector you are looking at. Everything consumer is ... consumed and therefore not intended anymore to be repaired by definition. One reason some consumer products are still modular, kind of repairable are based on concerns around warranty repairs and logistics. Biggest problem with that is when things do not run as design intended it. I also don´t think that the worst examples serve as representative for the majority neither do overconfident design engineers actually know what they are talking about.But yes, most people do not spend time repairing electronics, because if it is production equipment you need to have a fallback part anyway - nothing beats replacement measured in time. If it is not a production equipment, it is ... comfort? So repair falls into the niche of special cases in which repair beats renewal, e.g. the vehicle ECU repair or you are trying to troubleshoot a whole design, not a single device. Most people want to be cost-effective with their hard earned money.I generally don´t chime in on the planned obsolescence choir, as production tolerances, changes in the environment a device is used in and unforeseen causes require compensation by derating (or over building - depending on which side of the fence you are). Without a doubt there are very bad design decisions, from software based hardware protection features to wrongful assumptions about "what is normal" to outright too cheap to perform, or wear parts without a maintenance plan. OTOH it is questionable if the consumers expectation of lifespan actually matches the price tag and those of the competition.The market achieves to make itself worse either way, after all. German TV set manufacturers built devices that lasted very long, were repair friendly, but might have cut themselves off new sales by making them too durable. As it turns out, there is no unlimited growth. They are also said to not have made the switch to flat panels on time. So they went the way of the dodo, as some cell phone manufacturers did.If you are talking about intentional destruction, that would need a condition which leaves a pattern that could not be explained by bad design decisions regarding their natural spread (based on factors that cause spread). If you are in that sort of camp, come up with some data logging solution, a website where people could enter which device had which defect under which circumstances (just like insurance companies keep huge data sets - and could exclude the insurance of certain devices under their terms or resell to manufacturers).QuoteNope, this is simply a case of psychology for groups of people under market rules, not a big plan or an everlasting development. Nothing else.If next week e.g. piles of trash or faulty devices burning down houses become a political problem, then you need a different set of rules. Which is why i think the EU does handle such questions with the necessary amount of foresight.

author: GlennSprigg
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 01, 2018, 01:55:03 pm
content: Everything is throw-away these days...I mean, who is fixing $39 DVD players now!!Years ago, I worked for a 'certain' Global Tech company, where we had countlesscontracts with businesses to repair/maintain their electronic equipment. Often, we wouldnot know how to 'repair' something, so we had CODE words between techs, while talkingin front of the customer, like..."T-squared C.O." ?? (T.T.C.O. meaning "Throw The C$#t Out"), or..."B.B.F.K." ?? (Black Box, Fuck Knows!!).P.S.The company always wanted to push for THEIR equipment in there !!!Also, they made us add 100% to equipment costs, apart from labor & sundries. If somedevice/panel/equip/part cost $50, then we bill the customer $100. Ok. But if that equipcost $10,000, then we would have to bill them $20,000 !! No exceptions...