"Right to Repair"

Just as the 'All American 5' radios that all used the same 5 tubes in them. Probably a hundred different names and models of the old AM radios.

One of the Good old days of around the 1960' was the tube testers in many stores with the new tubes under them. Free for anyone to walk in and use.

I believe the name is Louis Rossman that is on Youtube that complains about how Apple does for the repairs. Most of the time you take anything into the Apple repair place you loose all your data.

Ralph Mowery wrote: ================

1. To turn a handsome profit.
2. To sell new products and prevent the return of older versions to the marketplace.
3. Keep all others out of the game.

This unethical practice is precisely what R to R is trying to stop.

.... Phil

Partly true. HP only sells assemblies, such as the fuser roller assembly. For your HP LaserJet 6MP for 230VAC would be RG5-4111-000CN. If you want refurbished fuser assemblies, or parts, one must get it from a 3rd party vendor. For example:

If you're unable to find a replacement roller, try high temperature silicon tubing over a 6mm steel rod.

On a sunny day (Wed, 4 Aug 2021 18:59:01 -0400) it happened Ralph Mowery snipped-for-privacy@charter.net wrote in snipped-for-privacy@news.eternal-september.org>:

That was the case here few years ago, now things have changed and I can get parts for say a washing machine or whatever online. Even the handle of my fridge that broke I found online in minutes from a local shop. The chips for my dryer from China :-) Service manuals are often available at some cost online too,

On a sunny day (Wed, 04 Aug 2021 12:45:31 -0700) it happened John Larkin <jlarkin@highland_atwork_technology.com> wrote in snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Once worked for a company that build space stuff. We got a call from ESA about some communication equipment that stopped working, was urgent they were testing a spacecraft, launch window..

Went there, 10 minutes to locate a defective capacitor. So I said: this cap 10nF 100V we have this, can replace it now. Oh No, this needs to be space compatible, whole thing had to be.. would need to go through the whole administration process, Was ground equipment you know. Sigh

And you wonder why Webb is not flying?

....

On a sunny day (Wed, 4 Aug 2021 16:01:25 -0700 (PDT)) it happened Lasse Langwadt Christensen snipped-for-privacy@fonz.dk wrote in snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:

Serviceability .. for example my coffee grinder has screws that turn only one way (malformed heads) so opening to service the motor for example can only be done by drilling out those screws. Clearly done to prevent people opening it. I would like to see a law forcing them to use normal screws.

Grin. When I wanted to fix a washing machine with a broken clock motor in France (this was ~1980), I could only get the complete program switch assembly. For the same model in the Netherlands, they would sell me just the *coil* of the clock motor.

Jeroen Belleman

The more parts the manufacturer has to keep around (as spares), the greater his "cost of inventory". If a part is no longer used to produce a product, then there is some risk that the spares inventory may never get sold off. Remember, legislation will likely specify a *minimum* time that you must make spares available; I doubt "we underestimated the post-production demand and ran out" would be a valid defense: "make more!" (or, assume every sold unit will need a complete replacement set?)

This effectively puts pressure on prolonging the use of *existing* parts -- which implies reduced innovation.

I suspect the practical result will be that manufacturers will have to make available the same FRUs that they do to their "authorized representatives/partners" and nothing more. This can be argued as having minimum impact on the manufacturer and effectively maximizing the number of "authorized partners" to include all DIYers.

The Market will then select for manufacturers that offer "enough" support for the needs of its customers.

There will likely be limitations on FRUs that have safety consequences to "untrained" customers (I wonder if a car owner can purchase his own replacement airbags, given that they can detonate from static charge, etc.).

I know I can't service my own air conditioner as I need to be licensed in the proper reclamation and disposal of "old" refrigerant, etc.

There will likely be some "relief" for customers against vendors who have artificially "locked" their designs. E.g., I know a firm that sells distilled water in "chipped" bottles -- claiming that it is done to ensure the quality of the "reagents" (ha!) used in its process. But, given that hospitals are the typical customers, it's hard to assume that a hospital can't have distilled water "on tap"!

This may disrupt some business models where the equipment is underpriced with the goal of recovering costs from perpetual "supplies purchases".

Y Does Don Write So Much S**te ? ==========================

Been like that for many decades too.

Question:

What does it take to shut up a f****ng idiot like ?

..... Phil

Sounds about like a story from about 20 years ago. The military needed a diode for a radar unit. The diode is a common one and can be found almost everywhere. Even the local Radio Shack store had them in stock.

However the diode had to be 'certified'. There were none in stock in any of the military supply parts. Call to the maker and they did not have any. The diode company made one for them. However they could not make just one and had to make many. Cost several thousand or more dollars just to get that 10 Cent part.

They may have done that to prevent people from opening it up due to law suits. Some fool jury will award a lot of money to some fool that opened it up and got injured.

It's often better to not ask. The semiconductor people have a "copy exact" policy too. Don't ask.

If you search for a part in Digikey, and the average costs say $3, there will be an occasional outlier at $400. That's for the people who absolutely have to have the exact part.

Nice scheme, change part numbers slightly and sell the old ones for hundreds of times the price.

I saw one study that found that JAN-TX (highest military grade) transistors were less reliable than ordinary 2N parts.

The military are in fact less picky about this than they once were. COTS.

That's 8mm ID. One can get a 6mm ID soft tube to slide over a 6mm OD metal rod using compressed air to inflate the tubing.

I've done this to make a cable from vinyl tubing and insulated stranded copper wire.

Joe Gwinn

Sorry. This should work better:

Nice. I also use vinyl tubing for replacing rubber feed rollers. Here's one from the HP 65 calculator card reader:

Just for fun, here are some other material problems with various HP products:

"HP LaserJet 2200 Duplex Paper Jam Repair"

In test equipment, HP seems to have invented a shrinking plastic formulation, which was found in the HP 8640B signal generator:

Bottom lines: Yes, you may need to make your own parts in order to fix HP hardware.

I fixed a similar problem with a Brother MFC-9840CDW printer, but it didn't require as much disassembly to access. I don't recall the details yet.

The brass hub was likely pressed into the plastic gear, which then had to had le static hoop stress. Are the gears made of nylon, or delrin? Delrin is claimed to be suitable for press fits, but not nylon.

Yeah. I used to always buy HP printers, but the eventually beat me out of the habit. I do have an LaserJet5pm that I bought new, and still works. I did have to max the memory out, though. It's cheap now days.

Joe Gwinn

Really? You are going to debug a 1100 pin CPU??? Ok...

There is also a need for someone who can repair such devices economically. With many devices costing only a few hundred dollars it doesn't make much sense to make it repairable when the shop will charge $200 or more.

If there was actually a market for schematics someone would start reverse engineering popular devices and selling them. It's not a copyright violation to reverse engineer such devices.

FPGA firmware and CPU software are another matter. Companies make many repair actions a crime by enforcing copyright on things that have any such code. You might think that if you own a board with such code you could buy an unprogrammed board and copy the copyrighted materials, but no, you don't have that right. That is one of the issues the Right to Repair organization is addressing and has won support in Congress for.

Sure, but very, very few would benefit much from such laws because so few can effect a repair even with that info.

Good luck.

I found out that the possession of a white coat was very important :-)

They generally thought I was an apprentice at a TV repair shop and the boss had sent me to pick up some parts. In reality I was just a teenager repairing TV sets on my own.

Of course, this only worked at places where a business account wasn't too strictly required because the tax autority would not have issued me the equivalent of a VAT number.

Later I found that if you said you don't need part xyz for repair but for engineering experiments it often made it sail through as well.