Right to Repair Featured

I think I did actually. This was years ago but if I recall correctly the compressor cost about £70 and the labour about £35.

That must have been some decades ago. In the mid-eighties when doing an OU degree a fellow student doing the same module as me worked for the now defunct Comet service department. At the time she said they would not even look at anything of value below £35 as that was their minimum charge for the work. Last time I had an appliance repaired by an engineer must have been 10-12 years ago and that cost £70 minimum.

Richard

Often with large chips the circuit board itself can be part of the heat management regime and socketing can make this more difficult. A modern processor may be specified as dissipating 50 to 60 Watts and can have over a 1100 connection pins (balls) on a 0.05 inch (1.27mm) pitch [0.5mm diameter soldering pads]

With (processor) chips of this size socketing introduces a second layer of unreliability. There will be a socket to PCB board connection and a processor to socket connection - an extra 1100 connections that can go wrong compared to just soldering the IC to the board.

In my teens, a friend of my mother gave me an old radio which had stopped working- her local shop had said it was beyond repair. I didn't like the taped up joint in the mains lead, so I replaced the lead and it worked well for quite some years. My mother's friend bought a new radio - but not from the shop which told her it was unrepairable.

I'd guess it's something you use very infrequently?

Why not simply buy 2 and squirrel one away? Sods law dictates is the part that breaks is not in the spares pack.

To an extent this is missing the point IMHO. A right to repair does not mean that repair needs to be easy, or even within the scope of DIY for the majority of consumers.

It does mean that access to parts and information must me possible at a fair and reasonable price, and where required, that pre-programmed parts must be available, and/or the tools required to program them. Also tools required to integrate operation of changed parts where required. There also needs to be a legitimate way to access schematic information and service documents.

Currently for many doing board level repair, they are forced to buy copies of schematics and board view layouts from dodgy Russian and Chinese FTP sites hidden behind paywalls. Spare parts often have to be recovered from scraped boards sold off on a spares black market. Many repairers also have to turn down fixes on modern easily repairable stuff simply because the maker refuses to make spare parts available at all.

In the case of refrigeration equipment that may be skewed by all the requirements for the recovery and handling of refrigerants.

That really does not stand up to any scrutiny if you think about it.

Yes it would be *theoretically* possible, but in practice, it's not going to happen. Think of the implications:

All tool makers would need to agree on a standard and use / license it, then support it (as well as continuing to support there existing designs for their current customer base).

The quality and facilities of the battery interface currently supported on *all* tool vendors tools would now need to be condensed down into the one platform. That means not only main contacts that can take the current load expected by the top end tools, but also comms with the battery management systems, thermal sensors, and cooling capabilities. Sso all cheap tools would therefore need to rise in price.

If the batteries are to now be interchangeable, then the minimum quality of packs would need to rise to match the quality required for the pro market as well (where one battery alone often costs more than a whole budget tool deal including tool, charger, and battery).

That is before you get onto the argument of which format you adopt. If it matched any existing design, then that maker gets an "unfair" advantage. If it matches none, then every maker is disadvantaged, and they all loose the "lock in" that keeps customers loyal to the brand. (and you will note that it is the well known pro brands that have the largest and most innovative range of tools on offer).

That it's nonsense? :-)

It would be possible in the short term to produce a standard battery with adaptors to fit all makes? Would make them slightly bulkier in the short term until eventually replaced by one that takes this standard battery direct?

You can get various adapters from tool-X to battery-Y, they're a bit clunky though ...

I'm not sure how arduous that is in practice. My mate who runs a small garage has all the equipment for aircon and claims to follow all the disposal methods and rules.

Indeed it was - last century actually.

A car has inbuilt valves/ports to facilitate the automatic collection of the refidgerant. Assuming no faults in the air-con, all the collection, checking, drying and recharging is performed automatically by machine.

It happens that John Rumm formulated :

They battery/tool makers are continually changing the interface anyway, try charging a Makita from a charger of just a few years ago - they would only need to agree a standard for a set range of tools.

Most of those arguments would have applied to phone chargers circa 2005. Everyone had their own charger and port design, and they were all keen on selling into their 'ecosystem' of cables, car kits, etc. But then the EU forced them to settle on USB. And now the ecosystem is a lot better - one format, where you can interwork kit from multiple suppliers, and you aren't locked in. Some chargers are more capable than others, but it's all handled by the protocol negotiating. If you go to Poundland and buy a 500mA charger it's not as good as a 5A fast-charger, but they both work on any brand of phone. You can also plug a £10 dumbphone onto that 5A fast charger and it'll work - it won't charge at 5A but it'll do whatever it can do.

Now power tools are a bit different, but they don't seem insurmountable problems. For another example, car batteries cover a range, but you buy one to fit based on chemistry, size, capacity, CCA, and terminals. You aren't locked into buying the Bosch brand battery because you have a Bosch brand alternator - you buy a battery that will fit with enough CCA to start the car. If it doesn't have the CCA it won't work, but people know this and they manage.

The makers won't do this of themselves, that's why they need external pressure for them to decide it's in their interest to do so. Or legislation.

Theo

But you have to be careful which standard you adopt - remember SCART, and all this leads which were not fully populated!

The *physical* interface changes, or is different. I have three 10.8v sets of tools, one is Parkside (Lidl or Aldi), one is Titan (Screwfix) and one is Duratool (CPC etc.). They are obviously basically the same but are all subtly different in their physical characteristics, quite unnecessarily.

Theo formulated the question :

Nail, head!