We always knew that McDonald’s soft serve (you can’t really call it ice cream) machines are known to be finicky. There’s even a website that tracks where the machines are broken and, apparently, it is usually about 10% or more of them at any given time. But when we saw a news article about a judge issuing a restraining order, we knew there must be more to the story. Turns out, these $18,000 soft serve machines are in the heart of something we are very interested in: when do you own your own technology?
Cold Tech
There are apparently 13,000 or so of these machines and they are supposedly high-tech marvels, able to produce soft serve and milkshakes at the same time. However, they are also high maintenance. Cleaning the machine every two weeks (try not to think about that) involves a complete teardown. Worse, if anything breaks, you need a factory-authorized service person.
You own it, you should be able to fix it. So much equipment on sale today has either been designed to be impossible to maintain, unnecessarily too complex to maintain, maintainable only with specialist tooling only available to authorised service agents, or with no repair parts availability. It’s a hot-button issue in an age when sustainability is a global concern, so legislators and regulators worldwide now finally have it in their sights after years of inaction and it’s become a buzzword. But what exactly is the right to repair, and what do we want it to be?
Is It Designed For Repair?
For some reason, pod coffee makers are especially resistant to repair. Andy1982, CC BY 3.0
The first question to consider is this: does it matter whether or not you have the right to repair something, if it’s designed specifically with lack of repairability in mind? Consider a typical domestic pod coffeemaker such as a Tassimo or similar: despite being physically quite a simple device, it is designed to be especially complex to dismantle and reassemble. You just can’t get into it when something goes wrong.
Should it be the preserve of regulators to require design for easy repair? We think so. There are other forces working on the designers of home appliances; design-for-manufacture considerations and exterior appearance concerns directly affect the firm’s bottom line, while the end users’ repair experience is often at the bottom of the list, even though the benefit at a national level is obvious. That’s what laws are for. Continue reading “Should You Be Able To Repair It? We Think So.”→
A few days ago, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) came out with a 5-0 unanimous vote on its position on right to repair. (PDF) It’s great news, in that they basically agree with us all:
Restricting consumers and businesses from choosing how they repair products can substantially increase the total cost of repairs, generate harmful electronic waste, and unnecessarily increase wait times for repairs. In contrast, providing more choice in repairs can lead to lower costs, reduce e-waste by extending the useful lifespan of products, enable more timely repairs, and provide economic opportunities for entrepreneurs and local businesses.
The long version of the “Nixing the Fix” report goes on to list ways that the FTC found firms were impeding repair: ranging from poor initial design, through restrictive firmware and digital rights management (DRM), all the way down to “disparagement of non-OEM parts and independent repair services”.
While the FTC isn’t making any new laws here, they’re conveying a willingness to use the consumer-protection laws that are already on the books: the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act and Section 5 of the FTC Act, which prohibits unfair competitive practices.
Only time will tell if this dog really has teeth, but it’s a good sign that it’s barking. And given that the European Union is heading in a similar direction, we’d be betting that repairability increases in the future.
As expensive as a new car is, it almost seems like a loss leader now to get you locked into exorbitantly expensive repairs at the dealership’s service department. That’s the reason a lot of us still try to do as much of the maintenance and repairs on our cars as possible — it’s just too darn expensive to pay someone else to do it.
Case in point: this story about a hapless Tesla owner who faced a massive repair bill on his brand new car. [Donald]’s tale of woe began when he hit some road debris with his two-wheel-drive Model 3. The object hit penetrated the plastic shield over the front of the battery pack, striking a fitting in the low-pressure battery cooling plumbing. The plastic fitting cracked, causing a leak that obviously needed repair. The authorized Tesla service center gave him the bad news: that he needed a new battery pack, at a cost of $16,000. Through a series of oversights, [Donald]’s comprehensive insurance on the car had lapsed, so he was looking at funding the repair, approximately half the cost of a new Model 3, out of pocket.
Luckily, he got in touch with [Rich Benoit] of The Electrified Garage, one of the few independent garages doing Tesla repairs and customizations. The video below is queued up to the part where they actually do the repair, which is ridiculously simple. After cutting off the remains of the broken fitting with a utility knife, [Rich]’s tech was able to cut a thread in both the fitting and the battery pack, and attach them together with a brass nipple from the plumbing section of the local home store. The total bill for the repair was $700, which still seems steep to us, but a far cry from what it could have been.
Hats off to [Rich] and his crew for finding a cost-effective workaround for this issue. And if you think you’ve seen his EV repairs before, you’re right. Of course, some repairs are more successful than others.
For more than a few years now, we’ve been covering the saga of tractors from the larger manufacturers on which all components are locked down by software to the extent that they can only be replaced by officially sanctioned dealers. We’re thus pleased to see a couple of moments when the story has broken out of the field of a few farmers and right-to-repair geeks and into the mainstream. First up: a segment on the subject from NPR is worth a listen, as the US public radio station interviews a Montana farmer hit by a $5k fuel sensor on his John Deere as a hook form which to examine the issue. Then there is a blog post from the National Farmers Union, the body representing UK farmers, in which they too lay out the situation and also highlight the data-grabbing aspects of these machines.
It should be said that, at least technically, the Husqvarna TS 348XD in question was still working. It’s just that [xxbiohazrdxx] noticed the locking differential, which is key to maintaining traction on hilly terrain, didn’t seem to be doing anything when the switch was pressed. Since manually moving the engagement lever on the transmission locked up the differential as expected, the culprit was likely in the electronics.
Testing the dead actuator.
As [xxbiohazrdxx] explains, the switch on the dash is connected to a linear actuator that moves the lever on the transmission. The wiring and switch tested fine with a multimeter, but when the actuator was hooked up to a bench power supply, it didn’t move. Even more telling, it wasn’t drawing any power. Definitely not a good sign. Installing a new actuator would have solved the problem, but it was an expensive part that would take time to arrive.
Repairing the dead actuator seemed worth a shot at least, so [xxbiohazrdxx] cracked it open. The PCB looked good, and there were no obviously toasted components. But when one of the internal microswitches used to limit the travel of the actuator was found to be jammed in, everything started to make sense. With the switch locked in the closed position, the actuator believed it was already fully extended and wouldn’t move. After opening the switch itself and bending the contacts back into their appropriate position, everything worked as expected.
A tiny piece of bent metal kept this $4,000 machine from operating correctly.
As interesting as this step-by-step repair process was, what struck us the most is [xxbiohazrdxx]’s determination to fix rather than replace. At several points it would have been much easier to just swap out a broken part for a new one, but instead, the suspect part was carefully examined and coaxed back to life with the tools and materials on-hand.
Happily the right to repair movement is slowly gaining ground, and recently they’ve scored a major success in the European Parliament that includes a requirement that products be labelled with expected lifetime and repairability information, long-term availability of parts, and numerous measures aimed at preventing waste.
… including by requiring improved product information through mandatory labelling on the durability and reparability of a product (expected lifetime, availability of spare parts, etc.), defining durability and reparability as the main characteristics of a product…
Even the UK, whose path is diverging from the EU due to Brexit, appears to have a moment of harmony on this front. This builds upon existing rights to repair in that devices sold in Europe will eventually have to carry a clearly visible repair score to communicate the ease of repairability and supply of spare parts, making a clear incentive for manufacturers to strive for the highest score possible.
We live in an age in which our machines, appliances, and devices are becoming ever more complex, while at the same time ever more difficult to repair. Our community are the masters of fixing things, but even we are becoming increasingly stumped in the face of the latest flashy kitchen appliance or iDevice. The right to repair movement, and this measure in particular, seeks to improve the ability of all consumers, not just us hackers, to makebuying decisions for better products and lower environmental impact.
With a population of around 450 million people spread across 27 member countries, the EU represents a colossal market that no manufacturer can afford to ignore. Therefore while plenty of other regions of the planet have no such legislation this move will have a knock-on effect across the whole planet. Since the same products are routinely sold worldwide it is to be expected that an improvement in repairability for European markets will propagate also to the rest of the world. So when your next phone has a replaceable battery and easier spares availability, thank the EU-based right to repair campaigners and some European lawmakers for that convenience.
