Godammn vacuum cleaner broke. Took it apart, its just a part of the brush roller that is broken. Should be an easy fix. But they don't sell spare parts for my vacuum. They never have, they just want you to buy a new one. So one little easily replaced plastic bit makes the whole thing into non-functional mostly plastic waste. The vacuum is even clearly designed to be easily repaired, it's one of the most intelligently laid out appliances I've ever seen.
But it's not profitable to sell spare parts, so I have to send this thing to a landfill if I can't figure out some ghetto fix. This intentional wastefulness is one of the things that pisses me off about capitalism nearly every day.
I hereby manifest into existence thus: paying money to see a green ecological scene within a dystopically bleak city.
Cory Doctorow wrote a short story about that:
https://reason.com/2018/11/17/sole-and-despotic-dominion/
"right to repair" is definitely one of the things that radicalized me.
Ifixit.com is a great resource. I bought their basic repair tool set and got a cool ass poster. https://www.ifixit.com/Manifesto
First time I learned about that, and they used light bulbs as an example because I guess they used to last very long compared to nowadays. Infuriating.
What? I'm not being funny, but the modern LED bulb lasts orders of magnitude longer than even the best incandescent.
I'm not really sure what you're trying to say? Obviously they've only been around for a decade or two, but even CFLs before then we're better than an incandescent. The light bulb planned obsolescence thing was from back in the 30s, and it takes one look at the market to see that it's longevity and efficiency that sell now?
There's so many examples of planned obsolescence out there, I really don't see why you need to use an example that's not true.
Incandescent were the only things on the market for like, a century
Well, not quite, but yeah they had a long run on their own.
Even then, the cartel that limited light bulb lifespan has been dead since ww2, and there were even decent reasons to limit their lifespans to that, given the added energy inefficiencies that that would bring.
There is always a barrier to what can be achieved with a level of technology. We've reached it with lithium batteries today, and they'd reached it with incandescents back in the day. Again, you can point to so many things that are needlessly disposable around you like difficult to replace phone batteries, non replaceable washing machine bearings or clipped/glued together appliances that you don't need to use what some dudes did with a long obsolete lightbulb technology that may not even have been that much of an issue anyway.
Because CFLs were designed after their form factor was designed, and it's really expensive to make a good ballast that small. Florescent tubes have the ballast mounted separately, and it has room to be as big as it needs to be. The ballast in a CFL has to be cheap enough to be disposable with the lamp itself when it goes bad, and small enough to fit, which means it has to sacrifice lifespan and effectiveness at it's job. An inefficient ballast wears out the lamp faster, and itself degrades faster.
Well you have to appreciate that's anecdotal evidence, and presuming that you're using both kinds of bulb in the same way there's really no reason why that should be happening. Like for like, a CFL bulb should last anywhere from 6-15 times longer than an incandescent, and an LED should last more like 25 times longer. This doesn't mean that all CFL bulbs will last that long, there's always defective units, power fluctuations, ambient temperature, high numbers of cycles - these can all reduce the lifespan of a bulb.
Unless you're using especially cheap bulbs, I'd guess your usage or power supply isn't conducive to long bulb life.
Wait...when you buy a phone it comes locked? Here that only happens for free/cheap phones on plans. You buy the phone pre-paid you have no issue
Unlocked phones cost astronomical prices in the us.
This is partially a money grab and partially due to laws that restrict burner phones.
What, so even once you've paid it off, it's still locked to that carrier?
Yep. It's not actually cheaper to get a locked phone, the carriers just lie to your face about how much they will charge you. They make the earlier payments what they told you they would be, and the later ones a lot more expensive. That way, it will be too late to return the phone because you realize you got scammed. 100% of carrier phone stores have fraud as a core part of how they operate. It's how they make money. I don't understand how more people aren't pissed about this and demand legislation to end this practice. I mean, I'd rather just abolish capitalism, but making this scam easier to prosecute people for carrying out and actually enforcing the law is such an inoffensive liberal way of fixing this problem that you would think someone would do it.
See, shit like this just blows my mind. I think that capitalism has reached it's peak looking around at the landscape here in the UK, and then I hear shit like that and realise that it can and will get so much worse.
I don't see how even the most lib-est of Libs could support carrier locking, surely they'd see the argument of 'it's my personal property, I should be able to do what I want with it?'.
Liberals here often don't think about it like that anymore. It's not your property to do whatever you want with, it's you paid for a service and any physical goods involved are incidental. It's like capitalism here is begining to transcend physical reality.
Ah okay, I get ya. Sorry, I was reading from that that they in some way charged for that? If not, then it sounds like it's mostly the same other than some of the carriers in the UK auto-unlock phones after the end of the contract.
They don't charge for it, but you do have to deal with phone based customer service.
I'm thinking about doing this but I heard it can ruin the waterproofing and I really like having that peace of mind
it doesn't ruin the waterproofing, but it can significantly weaken the seals.
I wish more states had right to repair laws for consumer appliances and cars, and everything really. It’s a whole scam
Capitalism is a fuck
Unfortunately I don't think 3d printing a part would fix this. The assembly with the brush roller includes a bearing, a gear for the belt drive, and plastic piece to hold it aligned in place. This plastic piece is broken and can't be removed from the assembly without permanently damaging other parts.
It's a pretty slick design, two screws and it slides out. It seems the idea is it's like wiper blades, you buy the new wiper and the parts needed to hold and align it as one unit and replace it as one unit. Other more expensive vacuums from the same company work the same way, but if you can't afford the $500 models you don't get spare parts. And unfortunately it seems the sizing of the roller is different on these models and they aren't compatible with the one I have.
What model? I'll look into, if I can print a fix I'll mail it to you
It's a shark zu620. Only way a printed part could fix this is if I could remove the gear and reattach it non-destructively. It seems like it's riveted or ultrasonically welded onto the metal shaft that goes through the brush roller, I've seen this construction method in a bunch of stuff before, but I'm not sure exactly what it is. I don't even know what to Google to see what this is called.
I wonder if any of the parts not listed as being compatible with my vacuum actually are? That would be great if that was the case.
So the plastic part is broken and you can't get it seperated from the shaft? Could you just cut the plastic part off and put a new one on if it was in 2 parts?
I thought about doing that, the gap you have to work with us so tiny there is no way to do that without damaging the gear. Might be possible to melt a hole through with a red hot punch or something, but I think it's more likely I'd make it unrecoverable than fixable. Might try it if I run out of options though.
If you can get me a picture and dimensions of the plastic part I coul try and model a 2 part piece that you just super glue together onto the shaft. I've don't stuff like that before. No promises on it holding together forever if it's a part that gets really hot, but it's worth a shot lol
I appreciate the offer from an internet stranger, but I'm probably just gonna buy a new head, as wasteful as that feels. Gotta lotta stuff going on in my life rn (mostly good for once), just want my vacuum to work.
Hey, keep the old parts in a part bin and maybe one day you'll find a use for a shaft with a gear attached
I do that with a lot of stuff lol. At least I'll be getting a good motor and some led strips as useful parts out of this if I get a whole new head.
Hel yeah, it's always good to have some spare electric motors/generators
Hmm. That actually wouldn't be particularly difficult.
Poor neighborhoods sometimes have vacuum repair shops, or check Craigslist for someone selling the same model
I had a new laptop that I got for a pretty solid deal on one of those frugal websites. It was a steal, but I figured out quick the keyboard was pretty junk when a couple keys broke after a few months. Found website. $4 per key, $6 flat shipping charge. "Fuck it, I'm a gamer."
These fuckers waited a week, canceled my order, then emailed me a link for a "discount" on a $60 full keyboard replacement.
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck capitalism.
My answer to this phenomenon of Capitalism has been to rip open any kind of dysfunctional electronic device for spare parts, DIY ideas and generally trying to upcycle what I can into semi-useful curiosities. So, now I live with like three broken screens around me, just waiting to be turned into daylight lamps.
I'll get to it, aaany day now...
It's a good habit but yeah.. lots of junk around after some time.
Came here to ask the same question.
OP, you got a pic of the part in question by any chance?
I gotta get a structured light scanner, it sucks that they are so pricey still. If the price point for 3D scanning got pushed down to where the printers are at now I think we would start to see this technology on most homes personally
like 5ish years ago I remember hearing about people using xbox 360 kinects and lazy susans for 3D scanning, that might be a look.
or, CAD and a set of calipers.
You can actually create 3D models from phone camera photos with software like Meshroom, as seen here. Autodesk ReCap also does this, I believe. Not sure about cost, but I’m sure there’s a way to pirate it if you need.
If you want to buy something that can be repaired, you have to factor that into the price of the thing your buying. Commercial vacuums can be repaired.
From an engineering perspective, the difference is that that for commercial products, the end producer is likely just assembling a product made from other companies designed specialty parts, whereas for cheaper products, they just manufacture the entire thing as a part of a single process in one factory. The only parts not made in house are probably the air pump and electrical board.
You used to be able to buy those in-house parts a lot of the time though. Consumer manufacturers realized that this means less new sales though.
