I know EU has the Right to Repair initiative and that’s a step to the right direction. Still I’m left to wonder, how did we end up in a situation where it’s often cheaper to just buy a new item than fix the old?
What can individuals, communities, countries and organizations do to encourage people to repair rather than replace with a new?
I’m one of those people that has the technical knowledge to repair most electronics. I still buy new sometimes.
A while ago, I had to repair a faulty pellet stove. It was obvious that the main control board was bad (there was a single small circuit board connected to a handful of relays and sensors, all of which tested as good). This board contained a small cheap microcontroller, a few MOSFETs, and a handful of discrete components. A replacement was $500. Maybe $10 in parts at the most, and they wanted to charge me half the cost of the entire appliance.
I was able to isolate the problem to a bad MOSFET and order a new one for about 50 cents. Had this been a complex circuit, there’s no way in hell I could have found the problem without a schematic.
So in my opinion, the problem is twofold. Manufacturers want ridiculous prices for replacement parts, and no documentation exists to repair the parts themselves. They obviously have schematics from when they designed the board. They should be forced to release them.
The lack of documentation is a huge problem, if you opened up an old tube amp to fix it there was often a full schematic taped to the cover. Solid state amps often had component values stenciled right on the board.
What’s your background that you’ve developed this knowledge? I fantasize about learning to do some of my own electronics repair, but I wouldn’t know where to begin. I’ve looked at trade school and continuing education programs and some online resources, but I don’t want to be an appliance repair guy. I just want to know which component to order and replace when my Japanese hot water boiler burns out.