[HN Gopher] The last design you'll ever make
___________________________________________________________________
The last design you'll ever make
Author : bryanrasmussen
Score : 195 points
Date : 2022-01-19 09:45 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (interactionmagic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (interactionmagic.com)
| lisper wrote:
| I recently had the unfortunate experience of attempting to
| recycle a Sonicair toothbrush. The "disassembly" process to
| extract the (dead) battery did not work as advertised, and I had
| to attack the case with several additional implements of
| destruction besides a hammer. I was shocked at how difficult it
| was. There is absolutely no way that the average consumer is
| going to succeed in extracting the battery, and so all those
| toxic materials are going to end up in landfills. Unfortunately,
| I've also tried many other electric toothbrushes and none of them
| work as well as my Sonicair. So I'm left with the horrible choice
| of either polluting the environment or settling for substandard
| care for my teeth.
|
| :-( :-( :-(
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > There is absolutely no way that the average consumer is going
| to succeed in extracting the battery, and so all those toxic
| materials are going to end up in landfills.
|
| Only if your country / region's waste processing sucks. There
| are separate hand-in points for things like electronics, and
| garbage should be sorted before yote into landfill to sort out
| recyclables and toxins. I believe that they can't just put
| chemical waste (e.g. batteries) into landfills in most
| countries.
| beerandt wrote:
| Even the most basic municipal landfill is lined, capped, and
| waterproofed such that even hazardous materials that might
| end up there aren't "polluting the environment".
|
| There are reasons to sort out certain waste, usually as a
| precaution to chemical reactions, but not leeching, but its
| mistaken to assume only "toxic" waste is isolated from the
| environment,
|
| The reason they are called "sanitary" landfills is that they
| already safely contain concentrated sewage, and prevent it
| from infiltrating water supplies.
| TrailMixRaisin wrote:
| The article links to the Billy disassembly instructions
| (https://rabbitholeprodorch001.blob.core.windows.net/plugins/...)
|
| I thought this a great idea until I have seen step 5. This step
| is exactly the reason why I opened the document as every other
| step is straight forward. "Just magically remove the 18 nails
| that you hammered into the back." If you have ever tried to do
| that you have noticed that this is hard to do without damaging
| yourself or your furniture. On the same level the instructions
| could tell me to remove the glue or unweld a seam.
|
| The disassembly instructions are not more than the assembly in
| descending order.
| anamexis wrote:
| To be fair, those are just little brads that just hold the
| backing on, which is a step above cardboard. I think it
| wouldn't be too hard to remove them with a nail puller while
| keeping the front unblemished.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Just use the backing as the nail puller, soft kick from
| inside the cabinet does it just fine.
| nemetroid wrote:
| Haven't done this with a Billy in particular, but in my
| experience flimsy backings give out before the nails do.
| jandrese wrote:
| Slip a putty knife between the backing and the nails and
| use it to pry.
|
| If the backing fails then you can remove the nails using
| a pair of pliers but you'll need to find a new backing.
|
| This of course assumes the person who assembled the
| furniture originally didn't use glue on all of the joints
| like I do. I've found that if you glue all of the joints
| in a flat pack when building it the expected lifetime can
| be improved by an order of magnitude or more, especially
| if you're moving it around regularly. Seriously it is
| night and day between the wobbly one you only followed
| the directions on and completely solid one that's fully
| glued.
| baldeagle wrote:
| Unwelding is just grinding out the weld and maybe some of the
| other heat affected zone. It isn't super uncommon. Perhaps you
| didn't have the right tool to remove the nails, or they had
| just been freshly installed. Their grip strength in particle
| board / chip board isn't that strong, and with just a little
| play it is easy to slip a small pry bar under the head.
| Something like the little one here will help a lot:
| https://www.homedepot.com/p/Dasco-Pro-7-5-in-Ultra-Bar-II-wi...
| jaqalopes wrote:
| As an American I learned a lot from this article. The idea of
| encouraging product design that is specifically repairable with
| the same parts that went into it during the initial manufacturing
| seems like an obviously great idea, but I know enough about
| planned obsolescence to know why that isn't the world we live in.
| The examples here about irreversible disassembly (breaking
| things) was also eye opening. It makes perfect sense but I had
| never considered or really noticed this phenomenon. Of _course_
| it should be possible to take an electric toothbrush completely
| apart and recycle the components, but that 's often so difficult
| that the entire thing gets thrown away, wasting all the
| components, recyclable or not.
|
| I am sensitive to environmental problems but hadn't ever really
| thought about it at the level of these products, thinking such
| waste was just an inevitable feature of Capitalism. I'm very
| heartened to learn that there is a legislative effort in the EU,
| however nascent, to try and change these patterns and create a
| better future through design. I will never think about "right to
| repair" the same way again.
| ajuc wrote:
| I remember watching a video by industry insider taking apart
| Tesla and VW electric motors and comparing them. And he was
| constantly complaining that VW uses too many bolts and screws
| where they could make snap-in connections that are cheaper and
| less likely to vibrate loose.
|
| Like there wasn't even a thought in his mind that making it
| possible to disassemble and reassemble an engine is a good
| thing.
| Taywee wrote:
| I've been using some Leopold mechanical keyboards for 10 years
| now. I've had one dead keyswitch and one chattering one, and both
| were extremely easy replacements, needing just a little bit of
| soldering.
|
| I've been preaching this exact thing for a long time. Little
| annoys me more than a design that is not repairable.
|
| As an aside, Osterreich has two R's, and "Osterreich Post" isn't
| inflected correctly, and would more likely be something like
| "Osterreichische Post" (depending on the context, but mixing
| languages makes inflection weird).
| wand3r wrote:
| Kind of an aside, but can anyone recommend an online (preferably
| free) product/industrial design class? I am interested in
| learning about making a physical product, something like
| furniture or small consumer goods. Just curious but havent found
| a good one on edx or the like yet...
| disruptiveink wrote:
| My issue with most repair jobs as a hobbyist who can do amateur
| level of soldering is, oddly enough, stripped screws. No matter
| what I'm trying to do and despite my best efforts, there's a very
| high chance of me stripping a screw, which is something that can
| happen in seconds and then either becomes very hard to recover or
| impossible. At some point, I either have leave it alone or
| destroy the casing altogether.
|
| They show a Playstation 3 controller in the article, which is
| actually easy to get into... if you don't strip the screws. Just
| a few seconds of using a PH0 bit instead of the required PH00 the
| other day lost me a controller that probably could have been
| saved. Is this a case of bad tools? I can definitely believe that
| when tackling rusty, big screws: larger and higher quality
| screwdrivers with good grips definitely made the difference for
| me in the past. But for precision jobs, I have no clue what I'm
| doing wrong. I was using an iFixit driver kit for this job. How
| do you avoid this? Do you absolutely have to know the exact bit
| to use for every screw beforehand? Is just guessing "eh, this
| looks about right" just asking for trouble?
|
| The much maligned in right-to-repair circles Torx and Apple
| pentalobe screws are actually great for me. Never in my life I
| ruined one of those, where sometimes I feel like I damage one out
| of five Philips or flat head screws I attempt to unscrew.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Torx are really good screws actually, I believe you can apply
| more torque to them without stripping them and they're a staple
| in any repair kit these days.
|
| Similarly I have screws (and adapters) in my toolkit that look
| a bit like torx, they inspire me with a lot more confidence
| than Philips heads.
|
| And my TV is mounted to the wall with 8cm deep screw-bolts.
| That one didn't come with any tools, but we have a set of
| ratchet bolt thingymajigs that did the job just fine. My drill
| bit just was a little too short and the hole was on the wonk so
| it still took far longer than I would like, but, lessons
| learned.
| beerandt wrote:
| Torx and starheads are great for things like soft wood, but
| too much torque screwing into metal or plastic is going to
| crack the casing or strip the threads or hole instead of the
| head.
|
| Similarly they work well for bolt applications with a lock
| washer or other point of weakness to handle over tightening.
|
| Torx screws really should be used with a driver with an
| adjustable torque setting, which is pretty standard on most
| cordless drivers now, but rare for manual ones.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| FYI, Phillips screwdrivers are often referred to as "star"
| in my experience by average people. Best to just use the
| proper terms.
| beerandt wrote:
| >FYI, Phillips screwdrivers are often referred to as
| "star" in my experience by average people.
|
| FYI, that's wrong. The proper generic term for Phillips,
| Frearson, Posidrive, and similar is cruciform or cross
| drive, not star.
|
| >Best to just use the proper terms.
|
| "Star drive" _is_ the proper generic term inclusive of
| the trademarked Torx, its security Torx version, and
| similar 6-sided drivers.
|
| Just as Robertson is a tradename for a type of square
| drive.
|
| A quick search seems to only list Phillips as "star"
| drive for some Indian web sites.
|
| [0]The hexalobular socket screw drive, often referred to
| by the original proprietary brand name Torx or by the
| alternative generic name star drive, uses a star-shaped
| recess in the fastener with six rounded points.
|
| [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_screw_drives
|
| Also: https://www.sizes.com/tools//screw_drive.htm
| stephen_g wrote:
| We switched everything to Torx at one of the companies I do
| work for (from Phillips) because too many screws would strip
| out. This is SATCOM stuff, mostly maritime. You get a tiny bit
| of gunk seizing the thread, and you wouldn't be able to get
| screws out because you couldn't apply enough torque to loosen
| them without camming out and stripping them. Torx has basically
| completely solved the problem.
|
| At the factory all the structural screws and bolts go on with
| torque wrenches (not really necessary for covers etc.). But you
| can get the feel pretty easily when required in the field -
| we've had so many fewer problems, it's crazy. I'd never design
| something with a Phillips screw in it again!
| titzer wrote:
| I, too, struggle with stripping screws. It gets better, but you
| have to be careful. For one, don't ever use a power tool.
| Second, find a screwdriver that fits the actual screw's
| dimensions--not just the screw type and rough size, but
| actually fits the depth of the (e.g. Philips) head. Too
| narrow/sharp of a screwdriver can easily strip screws. I found
| a magnetic tip helps a lot too, if only because the driver is a
| different, grippier material.
|
| There are ways to recover stripped screws, e.g. by using a bit
| of rubber band between the screwdriver and the head. There are
| tons of YouTube videos. But if you can't, you are probably
| better off drilling it out than destroying the case.
|
| > The much maligned in right-to-repair circles Torx and Apple
| pentalobe screws
|
| I have no idea why they invented those; hex (Allen) screws are
| better. I don't have these tools and neither does practically
| anyone else. Oh, that's why they invented them.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| Hex screws strip extremely easily and if you use a bit too
| much force the hex bit easily gets stuck in the screw and you
| have to wiggle it free, further damaging the screw.
|
| Torx bits are much better, and they are very common, at least
| in Europe.
|
| Pentalobe on the other hand, is just Apple being Apple. They
| don't want you opening their devices (with some exceptions,
| like the remarkable RAM upgrade mechanism in the old 27"
| iMac, or the various fancy ways of opening Mac Pros.
| eropple wrote:
| Was going to say this - there are a _lot_ of hex head
| screws out there whose slots are now nearly perfect
| circles.
|
| I use some in the shop, but they're exclusively ones where
| the head can be a full-depth socket, at least as deep as
| the screw threading is wide. And when I have to tighten or
| loosen a hex head, it's always with a T-handle wrench to
| ensure I've got the thing squared.
| ya_throw wrote:
| Torx can take more torque than a hex (due to the much smaller
| driving angle at the tool/bolt contact point). Bolts that
| take the same torque can thus have a thinner head.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Pentalobe is simply there to make repairs harder.
|
| Torx was specifically designed to allow transferring more
| torque with less wear and not meant for user hostility. It
| was certainly used that way for some time in some
| applications (while in others Torx was chosen mainly for its
| original intended purpose), but I'd say nowadays the bits are
| so common that it's not really effective as an annoyance for
| the user.
| throwaway946513 wrote:
| The patent on Torx ran out a few years ago if I remember
| correctly, and I have any Torx bit at home for small devices,
| while only missing the bit for wood screws and larger.
| jandrese wrote:
| If you are stripping Phillips head screws a lot try finding a
| screwdriver one size larger. I tell people to find the
| screwdriver that looks like the right size and then go one size
| up. The head should be snug in the screw, if it is not you are
| far more likely to strip it.
|
| Also pay attention because some Phillips head screwdrivers are
| pointy and some are more flat tipped. Using a pointy
| screwdriver on a flat type screw is a good way to strip them.
|
| With the right tools you will almost never strip a Philips head
| screw that isn't rusty or glued in. In the latter case you're
| more likely to snap the head off entirely than to strip it.
| Finally, when removing the screw remember to push down on it
| (yes this seems counterproductive) to avoid slipping out of the
| hole.
|
| Guarantee doesn't include cases where the knucklehead before
| you used the wrong screwdriver and rounded the crap out of the
| screw head.
| mikestew wrote:
| _Guarantee doesn 't include cases where the knucklehead
| before you used the wrong screwdriver and rounded the crap
| out of the screw head_
|
| For those cases, there's the manual impact driver. Hand-held,
| whack the end of it with a hammer and it drives the
| Phillips/whatever bit into the fastener while giving it a
| little twist. A couple of whacks will remove the most
| stubborn screw. Or it will tear the head off. Those are the
| only two outcomes I've ever seen, it never just sits and
| spins in the rounded slots.
| doubled112 wrote:
| > some Phillips head screwdrivers are pointy and some are
| more flat tipped
|
| Some Phillips are not Phillips at all. They are JIS. Or
| pozidriv.
| jackyinger wrote:
| You absolutely need to use the correct sized screwdriver for
| the screw. And then make sure to press the screwdriver firmly
| into the screw while you turn so it can't climb out.
|
| You can get away with close enough or lower pressure if the
| screw is loose. If it is not, one size off and you're asking
| for trouble.
|
| If it seems like this is annoying, think of the screw as an
| interface. One typically works to comply with an interface's
| specification, otherwise they likely get unexpected results.
| beerandt wrote:
| Not only this, but the correct driver head is designed to
| spin out before stripping the screw threads or over
| tightening.
|
| The head stripping instead of the threads or hole is a
| feature, as the desired point of failure.
|
| A quality screw can spin out without too much damage, but
| often today cheap screws mean trashing it once that's
| happened.
| erwincoumans wrote:
| For me the fragile flat ribbon cables are hindering repair:
| they either break too easily or they are super hard to put back
| into their slot. And getting too close with a soldering iron
| will just melt the whole thing :)
|
| How do you repair a broken flat ribbon? They are often custom
| sizes, including weird shapes going around corners.
| handsarebags wrote:
| Second the call for quality screwdrivers.
|
| You might be encountering thread locker too. You'll notice a
| residue on the threads of screws.
|
| I've used a narrow tip on a hot air reflow gun to heat up
| fasteners I know have a thread locker on them. Do need to be
| aware of what is heat sensitive and how the hearts spreading.
| Is sometimes not an option.
| ya_throw wrote:
| It might be a technique thing, although you are correct that
| those maligned "modern" screw designs do not strip as easily.
|
| It is crucial to get the right type and size of screwdriver -
| look for the markings on the screw to differentiate Philips
| from Pozidrive (mixing them up will chew up screws). Give a
| test wiggle before trying to turn the screw - there should be
| minimal slop, and the bit shouldn't immediately try to "cam
| out".
|
| Apart from that, the trick is maximal downward force. Push the
| screwdriver into the screw as you're turning - most cross-head
| designs will try to "cam out" due to tapered sections of the
| interface, and that's what chews up the screws. I rarely strip
| screw heads, even on cheap consumer products.
| [deleted]
| bfirsh wrote:
| I learned the difference between Philips and Pozidrive at
| school, thank goodness, and this has saved countless stripped
| screw heads. I am surprised how few people know about it,
| even professionals.
|
| It's particularly important when using power tools. An
| electric drill with Philips bit will instantly munch a
| Pozidrive screw.
|
| It is the 45 degree markings you're looking for, in case that
| isn't clear: https://shop4fasteners.co.uk/blog/pozidriv-vs-
| phillips/
| [deleted]
| steverb wrote:
| Thank you for this. As an amateur I knew the difference
| existed, but I was never sure how to tell them apart. And
| if I had ever actually thought about it I would have
| googled, but it's one of those things that never occurred
| to me until I was knee deep into a repair.
| disruptiveink wrote:
| Thanks for the tips and for the more or less confirmation of
| my terrible technique. You're right that I pay no attention
| to Philips vs Pozidrive, will definitely need to start taking
| that into consideration. When following a guide, I do pay
| attention to exact bit sizes when they are mentioned , but
| for guide-less jobs I just go with "this looks like it fits".
| Will try out wiggling before committing.
|
| I imagine it'll take a while to start to get a feel for it,
| wonder what's the best way to get a good amount of practice
| without damaging (useful) things.
| ProZsolt wrote:
| If you doing a lot of small screws I would suggest getting
| a Wiha precision screwdriver set. The iFixit set has great
| cost/value ratio, but there are much better tools on the
| market.
| ya_throw wrote:
| Damage useless things? Seriously though, practice and
| experience are necessary, go and get some! Sadly that
| sometimes also includes learning how to figure out when
| you're out of your depth, which can be an annoying lesson
| to learn when you break something nice.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| JIS is still a thing as well. Look a lot like Philips except
| that it's way easier than normal to cam out.
| throwaway946513 wrote:
| JIS screws will strip/cam out if you use a Philips, where I
| misunderstood this when replacing a rear lamp assembly on a
| 2016 Subaru, destroyed the JIS screw head where it had to
| be removed using the 10mm socket instead.
|
| I've now used JIS bits for JIS screws and had no issues
| further than the initial.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Easier to cam out than Philips? Yuck!
| eropple wrote:
| It's generally better to cam out without wrecking the
| head than to cam out only under sufficient force as to
| tear up the slots.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Philips usually damage the head when camming out because
| as they cam out the total contact surface slowly goes to
| zero, so at some point the pressure exceeds the strength
| of the metal.
| eropple wrote:
| Right. In my experience, JIS screwdrivers lose contact
| faster if you're off-angle so they don't have the same
| opportunity to trash the head.
| ya_throw wrote:
| Exactly this - camming out as a protective feature is
| hugely over-blown and possibly totally false. In my
| experience, only the very cheapest of cheese-grade screws
| (a la Aliexpress) chew up _without_ camming out.
| ya_throw wrote:
| It's supposed to be much _harder_ to cam out with JIS,
| unless you try to use a Philips screwdriver on a JIS screw
| (which will most definitely cam out and chew up). I treated
| myself to a JIS screwdriver, for the rare occasions I
| adjust my (Japanese) bicycle groupset.
|
| JIS, as far as I know, is the technically superior cross-
| head design.
| fps-hero wrote:
| Aluminium is weak as piss. I get verbally abused by our
| machinist for simply asking for an M2 tapped hole. Even on a
| CNC, your tap can break during a run and you will have a vey
| bad day. How any of those tiny screw holes is machined in mass
| production is beyond me.
| varjag wrote:
| I did a fair amount of threads as small as M1.2 in aluminium
| and brass by hand. You absolutely want to use two number sets
| of taps (undersize and finishing) for that.
| snth wrote:
| Yes- death to Philips and slotted screw heads. Torx,
| square/Robertson, or (internal or external) hex heads are all
| so much better.
| throwaway946513 wrote:
| Slotted (flat) screw heads at least enable the user to use a
| 'non-tool' to remove the screw in the case they do not have
| the necessary tool on hand.
|
| Take for example my front license plate, the flat head screws
| enabled a random while I was at work to remove the plate from
| the car, without any specialized screwdriver.
|
| So in some instances flat heads may prove to be useful.
| Philips however has often led to the screws I need out
| getting stripped. Torx all the way.
| CapitalistCartr wrote:
| I use Wiha screwdrivers for that very reason. Buy some good,
| German ones; inspect your old ones, and give most of them away.
| FourthProtocol wrote:
| Give rusty screws a shot of WD40 and let soak for a while.
| Overnight if it's really bad. Clean the WD40 off the screw
| before starting to unscrew, then proceed as required.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| If it comes to the worst, there are still things you can do.
|
| 1) If the stripped fastener is accessible (i.e., not down a
| hole) you can try cutting a new cross slot in a screw head or
| new flats on a nut using a Dremel tool with a cutoff wheel (or
| a small file, if you're old-school). This is also an option for
| any special fasteners that you can't get a driver for.
|
| 2) You can (carefully) drill the screw head off, then, once the
| piece immediately below the screw head is loose and has been
| removed, grab the stub with a pair of vise grips and turn it
| out.
|
| 3) If it's in plastic, you can heat the screw head with a
| soldering iron until the plastic surrounding the screw body
| melts and the whole thing can be pulled off (obviously this is
| going to result in damaging the plastic to some degree... you
| may need to use a larger self-tapping screw to put it back
| together, or you could put a small amount of hot-melt glue down
| the now-oversized hole, in case you need to do it again).
|
| As others have said, hand drivers are a better choice for this
| than powered drivers. If you do use a power driver and it has
| adjustable torque, start at the lowest setting. And yeah, as
| much downward pressure as you can apply without breaking the
| case is a good idea.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| The "stripping in seconds" bit makes me think you might be
| using a drill / driver to do it instead of a screwdriver. With
| the former it takes a fair bit of practice to notice imminent
| slippage, while the latter makes it much easier so that you can
| avoid it.
| SeanLuke wrote:
| Interesting that he mentions the Dave Smith Instruments (now
| Sequential) Prophet 12. I have a Prophet P08, and have opened it
| up to repair it, and it is a work of design elegance. It contains
| five boards, each connected via an easily removed ribbon cable,
| attached to a metal body with just a few screws. You can
| trivially remove all the boards, and in fact I did exactly this
| to ship the boards to the company for a minor repair rather than
| shipping the entire unit.
|
| Another work of design beauty was the NeXTstation, NeXT's pizza-
| box shaped workstation. A solid magnesium case with an elegant
| molded heat sink on bottom, opens with a single screw in the
| back. Inside there's a fan (two screws), a power supply attached
| directly to the case over the heat sink (one screw), a mount for
| the floppy drive (one screw), a mount for the hard drive (one
| screw), and the motherboard (one or two screws). And that's it --
| that's the entire thing! You can break down the entire machine in
| less than five minutes. Did I mention it's made of solid
| magnesium?
|
| How NeXT/Apple has fallen.
| iNate2000 wrote:
| But compare the NeXT Station to the current Mac Pro. This is a
| similar product with similar use cases and price tag.
|
| The current Mac Pro gets a 9/10 repairability score on
| iFixit[1]
|
| [1]
| https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Mac+Pro+2019+Teardown/128922
| jandrese wrote:
| The iFixit team clearly has not been asked to remove the WiFi
| from those Mac Pros.
| mountain_peak wrote:
| Funny, I have a DSI PolyEvolver, and when one voice decided to
| go on the fritz with an intermittent issue, I couldn't find a
| schematic anywhere (that's because DSI hasn't made a technical
| service manual available for years). Not that other synth
| manufacturers are more forthcoming with service manuals, but
| they are at least "available", which helps immensely when
| troubleshooting. DSI was very helpful, but in the end, the
| issue turned out to be a lead-free solder joint issue on one
| the DSP legs (early lead-free solder was prone to cracking
| under repeated heating and cooling cycles).
|
| Not sure what the article is implying by saying the Prophet has
| interesting silkscreen designs or instructions - that may help
| remove the right components to send back to DSI, but doesn't
| help someone diagnose and repair the board themselves. Oh,
| also, I have successfully replaced the battery in a Sonicare
| toothbrush without destroying it - still working to this day.
| boznz wrote:
| Very trivial to include a bill of materials and/or a link to
| the schematic on most PCB's I do it with all my industrial
| designs but it doesnt necessarily help if 99% of the logic is
| in the microcontroller flash unless you also publish
| documented source code. Once you've done that it is game over
| as a business as it will be copied mercilessly unless you
| have some sort of "platform as a service" or ability to
| exclude copies.
| mountain_peak wrote:
| A BOM would be lovely and glad that you include a link
| right on the board, but isn't a showstopper - most
| components are fairly obvious on inspection/testing (not so
| much when manufacturers sand off/exclude/obscure IC
| identifiers), but a list would definitely be a huge
| timesaver. A schematic is almost essential though - I think
| the PolyEvolver board is 6 layers and would take ages to
| map out.
|
| Oddly enough, someone else mentioned the other day that
| Sequential started a cloud-based service for converting
| wavetables to a usable format for the new Pro3 [0] - it's
| free now, but maybe a service after DSI was bought out by
| Focusrite?
|
| As for source code, updates are still downloadable from
| DSI, plus the microcontroller has an I2C or JTAG interface
| and isn't protected AFAIK; wouldn't be overly difficult to
| extract the source (albeit in machine code). I think I
| previously ordered backups of the DSP and microcontroller
| when they were still available - just in case, but there
| are a bunch of components that aren't available from DSI or
| supply shops anymore (e.g., the custom CEM chips). I think
| that's an aspect of the right to repair that may be
| overlooked - component availability.
|
| [0]: https://www.sequentialwaves.com/
| SeanLuke wrote:
| If you get frustrated with your PolyEvolver, feel free to
| ship it directly to me :-)
|
| Seriously though, I build patch editors in my spare time
| (https://github.com/eclab/edisyn) and would really like to
| make an editor for the PolyEvolver.
| mountain_peak wrote:
| The PolyEvolver is one of my favourites - the sounds
| haven't 'aged' much, unlike most of the 90s synths; would
| be difficult to let that one go!
|
| Woah - you wrote and maintain Edisyn? Excellent software,
| and pretty much vital to the productivity (and sanity) of
| synthesists worldwide; thanks very much for your work!
|
| I use Edisyn for my Kawai K3 (which has an unusable button-
| and-dial interface for wavetable editing), although it's
| not on your list in GitHub for some reason. I have the
| SoundTower PolyEvolver editor, and it's quite functional
| (albeit within a quirky interface). It also 'unlocks'
| custom user wavetables, which is helpful. Not sure if that
| influences your decision to tackle another editor, but I'm
| sure it would round out your DSI list (and the MonoEvolver
| would be a natural leader/follower).
| SeanLuke wrote:
| Yes, I wrote Edisyn. Hmm, Edisyn has never had a K3
| editor; it's on my list if I ever come across a unit.
| It's got a K1, K4 and K5 editor. How are you using Edisyn
| with your K3?
| mountain_peak wrote:
| Apologies - I just looked for the software and can't seem
| to find it on my machine - may have been on an old iPad,
| but not likely to have been your excellent software.
| SeanLuke wrote:
| I as almost able to get a K3m locally a while back, but
| no... :-(
| [deleted]
| titzer wrote:
| I recently bought an antique chair, literally from the 1800s. It
| is a little thing, probably a child's chair. One of the legs
| broke. At first I was sad since it was a nice buy ($15?) and fit
| exactly into a little space I had for it. I mean, it survives a
| hundred years and then gets broken by my idiocy within weeks?
| Then I had a look. The thing is put together with _no screws_. It
| 's literally a friction fit for every one of the 4 legs and cross
| braces. So fixing it is as easy as spinning up a wood lathe and
| making a new leg. And it turns out...it _has_ been repaired
| already. This is why it has lasted 100 years.
| joncrocks wrote:
| Chair of Theseus...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
| funkaster wrote:
| like most GA planes. Eventually you'll replace _almost_
| everything in them :)
| rhapsodic wrote:
| _> So fixing it is as easy as spinning up a wood lathe and
| making a new leg._
|
| Which, for 99.99% of humanity, equates to "not easy".
| titzer wrote:
| That's just if you want to match the actual leg style. A
| round stick of wood with a hole in the right spot _would_
| technically work :-)
|
| I don't have a lathe, but when I run across one, I'll give it
| a go, or ask a friend.
| jandrese wrote:
| The trick is hand carving the pegs exactly the right size
| to friction fit in the hole. Without a lathe that is tall
| ask.
|
| But also I wonder if they didn't include some glue to hold
| that chair together originally. Screws in furniture are
| mostly just there to keep the thing together while the glue
| cures.
| throwaway946513 wrote:
| From the old wood work I've seen around the house, most
| appear to have glue with a wood dowel, pin, or shim to
| lock the glued piece into place while it dries, and
| aren't applying excess pressure to the grain causing a
| split piece of wood.
| voiper1 wrote:
| Quite possibly it was green woodworking. When the greenwood
| dries, it increase the tightness of the joining.
| nayuki wrote:
| The linked PDF about illegal build configurations in LEGO was an
| interesting read: http://casadebricks.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/05/Stressing...
| vlovich123 wrote:
| For electronic devices, this would also mean the ability to load
| on your own SW on any processor _. That means the manufacturer
| needs to provide the toolchain, relevant specs, and source code
| (basically whatever they used for development) in escrow.
| Additionally, many updates are now cryptographically signed which
| means you 'd need to put keys in escrow that get released when
| support from the manufacturer ends (which itself has serious
| security implications since the escrow holder, in addition to the
| manufacturer, now has root access to all devices).
|
| _ This is actually very hard to define. Ideally it would also
| include any code that's updateable including firmware, but then
| are you including things like CPU firmware?
| unglaublich wrote:
| They could transfer escrow to a trusted international org that
| can provide keys to users.
| _nalply wrote:
| I ordered a Framework laptop and hope that this the laptop that
| will stay for decades with me till I die.
|
| https://frame.work
| marapuru wrote:
| For those who like to read more about designing for product EOL,
| I highly encourage Ends. by Joe MacLeod.
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35857076-ends
| DennisP wrote:
| Checked Amazon. It's a bit ironic that that book, published in
| 2017, is available in paperback but not kindle.
| marapuru wrote:
| Ironic indeed :-)
| fps-hero wrote:
| _Sometimes documentation can be redundant. Strip down an Anker
| USB cable and you 'll find four coloured-coded wires: red, black,
| green and white. Presumably this helps during the assembly
| process, but it also makes repair work a breeze. UK and EU mains
| wiring is similarly colour coded. Software developers will joke
| about self-documenting code that's so clear it doesn't even need
| comments. Maybe this is the hardware equivalent?_
|
| The only axiom that holds true is a cable's wiring is only how it
| probes out, and whether that is correct or not is an exercise for
| the engineer to determine.
|
| - Top image search results for USB wiring show green and white
| flipped, and they are not wrong, because they often are. The
| standard is only between the connectors, the exact wiring doesn't
| matter if it works.
|
| - Cheap cables won't have a black wire, they reuse the cable
| shield as ground return. Funnily enough, cheap cables also use a
| cheap shield bread which isn't flex appropriate, so 95% this will
| fail first.
|
| - Cheap products that come with their own appropriately cheap USB
| cable often take liberties with USB standards, such as actually
| using the connector shield as ground return and leave the ground
| pin disconnect, because they know their product does this
| internally. You will have a great day when you pull this cable
| out of your draw.
| asicsp wrote:
| I think "Design for repair" (based on post link) is a better
| title than "The last design you'll ever make"
| KronisLV wrote:
| Aside from all of the planned obsolescence that others are
| talking about in the comments (which rightfully deserves
| discussion), i can't help but to feel like this hardly works for
| information and communication technology devices - smartphones,
| tablets, laptops/netbooks, desktop computers, consoles etc.
|
| The industry as a whole has this odd desire to always push for
| better hardware and newer things, to the point where Windows 11
| refused to support older AMD processors and whatnot. At the same
| time, Android 8.1 (the OS on one of my older phones) has been
| abandoned and thus makes the device not an entirely viable backup
| phone; unless i'm okay with running insecure software, or want to
| install custom ROMs that will break things, especially in the
| case of a non-mainstream vendor.
|
| To me, it feels like we should stop forcing progress before its
| time has come, which we currently do with better hardware that is
| used in suboptimal ways and tossing aside everything that can't
| keep up, as opposed to actually investing decades to write better
| software.
|
| Right now, my desktop PC has a 1st gen Ryzen 3 1200. If it were
| not for the OS, the browser and almost every piece of software
| and even game that i want to play becoming more bloated, i could
| safely use it for a decade with no issues, Wirth's law be damned.
| In my servers i have 200GEs that are similarly old and yet, are
| fully sufficient for my homelab needs, but eventually you won't
| be able to buy any old new stock for reasonable prices, because
| AMD will be off chasing whatever new skew or technology they need
| to remain competitive.
|
| Even Firefox, the browser that was supposed to be "the good one"
| (e.g. default in most Linux distros, less controversial than
| Chrome/Chromium) got noticeably worse sometime around the Quantum
| upgrade in regards to its RAM usage, even when you limit its
| content process count to just 1. Similarly, it feels like most
| IDEs nowadays are also somewhat heavyweight - why can't i have
| exceedingly boring looking software that has a lot of the smart
| autocomplete that i'd expect, yet doesn't slow the whole machine
| down when things need to be re-rendered because of a non-native
| UI toolkit? Just look at how snappy Lazarus is:
| https://www.lazarus-ide.org/ And yet, i cannot feasibly do webdev
| or many projects with it, because no hype means no new tools, no
| ecosystem support and so on, so i'm essentially dragged along to
| use whatever the modern tech choices are, like JetBrains products
| which are admittedly otherwise great and allow me to work with
| almost every popular tech stack, yet still eat lots of RAM.
|
| I guess this is less of a rant and more of a question to the
| people here: how do you fight back against this supposed
| progress, that somehow manages to couple security updates and
| feature updates with otherwise unnecessary bells, whistles and
| unreasonable amount of browser tech and whitespace in most
| software? How do you fight back against your hand being forced to
| create e-waste?
|
| Do you use Alpine, Debian (LXDE, LXQt or even XFCE) or another
| lightweight Linux distro (or even something of the BSD variety)
| as a daily driver and live with the fact that some software and
| most of gaming will often be a no-go (about 30/120 games that i
| have on Steam are even supported on Linux)? Do you do complicated
| setups with Windows VMs and GPU passthrough and relative mouse
| movement modes or something? Maybe you try to cut down your
| Windows installs as much as possible, removing bloat regularly,
| attempting to match Microsoft's ability to put it in, in
| combination with dual booting? Or do you just have a dedicated
| machine or two that (hopefully) aren't connected to the network
| and run EOL software (i've personally seen folks doing that with
| Windows XP), thus freeing you from updates that do things that
| you don't want? Or is there a really nice solution that i'm not
| aware of?
| BirAdam wrote:
| I have had similar feelings, and these were made worse when I
| realized that my XT is actually still perfectly fit for most
| things people need to do (read some text or send some text on
| the web, word processing, spreadsheets, email). It can even do
| these things graphically and with low res photos via Windows 3.
| This means that for most people, new computers were not truly
| necessary. Obviously, for any large photos or for video that
| has even a decent quality, an XT is not enough.
|
| This particular problem generates hundreds of millions of tons
| of e-waste every single year. The constant churn strips
| resources during production, and it pollutes during production
| and disposal as most of this waste is just tossed to the third
| world and never truly dealt with.
|
| A major driving force behind all of this churn is actually
| financial. The global financial system is run by a debt based
| currency. More of this currency is created constantly due to
| fractional reserve lending, and due to government spending (all
| government spending in the current system creates money, and
| the government bonds are treated as an asset by central
| governments against which still more money is lent and thus
| created in fractional reserve systems, US dollars are then used
| by foreign banks as an asset to create still more money). With
| constant inflation, money must go somewhere. If money is sat on
| it loses value, thus all investment class assets see ever
| higher climbing valuations and any dip is temporary even though
| it shouldn't be. Companies can therefore get billion dollar
| valuations without even having revenue (in a rational world the
| value of such a company is zero or even negative), and they can
| run off of investment despite losing money year over year. When
| some of these companies finally go bankrupt it's only a
| momentary down turn for a given index of stocks, and nothing
| else really happens. This is also why, despite the 2008 crash,
| the housing market is still bananas and over valued. Money must
| go somewhere and as investors get wary of stocks they drive
| funds into housing. People buy properties without even seeing
| them because they know that land at least has some value and
| inflation is getting stupid... they need to put their money
| _somewhere_. When people have no real method of holding value
| and are also too poor to invest, they are incentivized to
| spend. If some bank actually offered interest on savings that
| was higher than inflation, people might save. As it is, the
| poor have no recourse. Spend it is. By spending, businesses get
| a signal to produce. The production will keep increasing in
| speed until either the global financial system collapses or
| until too many jobs are eliminated by automation. The companies
| using such automation to produce will then be driven into
| bankruptcy (not enough buyers to pay the bills), people will
| again gain employment (because the automated companies are no
| more), and the cycle will repeat. The only way to put a stop to
| recklessness like this is to have money _cost something_.
| Either governments must be responsible and have low debt to
| earnings (think Singapore), or countries must have hard
| currencies where more is only produced when the value is high
| enough to warrant very expensive mining operations. Such
| economic conditions allow for savings and more gradual paces of
| innovation and development where things actually get tested, go
| through QA, and so on (as opposed to millions of laptops being
| shipped with keyboards that are broken by bread crumbs or
| software that is so bad it allows root access if you knock on
| the door properly). As it is, companies cannot do those things
| lest they miss revenue targets and lose whatever the inflation
| rate is in real terms year over year.
|
| As for dealing with it? I just accept that I will have lower
| performance starting year 2 of ownership of any new device, and
| on-going until it is finally not truly usable in the modern
| world.
| automotive_eng wrote:
| Adding my experience (automotive components engineer for OEMs).
|
| There is currently no push to make parts repairable.
|
| What our cusomers (OEMs) care is: price, safety, reliability,
| quality, performance, compliance to standards, fast developmnent,
| fast introduction to production
|
| In my 20 year career I never ever got a request regarding making
| parts repairable. The target is that the part must not break down
| in the life of the product (10-15 years). After that nobody
| cares.
|
| We are more or less moving away from screwing parts together -
| instead of this welding/gluing/press fiting joints are used. This
| is just to save 0.1-0.2 EUR per part by removing few screws,
| using lower quality polymeric materials, etc. (the cost of
| complete assembly for OEM is in the range of 20-30EUR).
|
| As long as the part is cheap, meets performance, safety, life
| requirements the OEMs are happy.
|
| Until there will be no law that will require manufacturers to
| make parts repairable nothing will change. We as parts suppliers
| will strive to make parts as reliable as possible, but just
| enough to meet life requirements and not comprimise safety.
| teachrdan wrote:
| In terms of automotive manufacturing, I've heard it said: "Cars
| aren't designed to be easily repaired. They're designed to be
| easily assembled, once."
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