Category: Repair
Helping other people fix stuff at the Repair Café or Fixit Clinic
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This Repair Café took place at the Mountain View Senior Center from 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM. First, I worked on an Instant Pot® Vortex® Plus 10 Quart air fryer that wouldn’t power on; the owner said it had just stopped working one day with no major incident preceding it. After some light disassembly (prying…
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This Fixit Clinic was held at the Hayward Library. There weren’t very many people. I worked with another fixer on a Japanese foot-warming table that wouldn’t temperature regulate and stayed on constantly. It was constructed with two quartz heating elements controlled by a bimetallic thermostat mounted on its underside, with reflectors to direct all the…
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This Repair Café was held at the Museum of American Heritage. First, there was a DeLonghi EC702 espresso machine that wasn’t providing sufficient pressure to push the water through the coffee grounds. Unfortunately, the owner forgotten to bring the portafilter (filter basket), so we couldn’t confirm this; running the machine without the filter in place…
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This Fixit Clinic was held in the Hayward Library. It was a slow day, possibly because of the July 4th weekend travel rush. First, I watched other people fix a 50-year-old blender running loudly and slowly, even at the highest setting. It was a joy to take apart: a few hex-head self-tapping screws held the…
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I attended this event after taking a bit of a break from Repair Café/Fixit Clinic, which I enjoy and benefit from, in order to self-study two AP courses, which I dislike and… maybe benefit from. Anyhow, this event was at the Saratoga Library and there were a few high schoolers attending! First up was an…
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This one was held in San Mateo Public Library. First, I worked on a rice cooker whose non-rechargeable lithium battery had run out. From my understanding, the battery was used to avoid the need for an AC power supply, needed not only to keep the clock running when the appliance was unplugged, but also to…
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This event occurred at the Hacker Dojo in Mountain View, a collaborative hackerspace for software projects. I first worked on a portable electric radiator with a detached cord winder (the plastic thing you wind the cord around for storage), a loose caster, and a plug with burn marks. The cord winder had a cantilever snap-fit…
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The event was held at the Museum of American Heritage from 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM. First, I worked on a Technics SL-MC7 CD changer. It had a magazine into which up to 60 CDs were loaded and a sliding carriage to select and play discs. When plugged in, the machine showed “checking discs” on…
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This Fixit Clinic was held in the Hayward Public Library from 11:00 to 2:00 PM. I took on the unwise challenge of attempting to repair a person’s VHS VCR, a task probably best left to someone older with direct experience with these devices. Luckily, I had watched a few YouTube videos on the subject so…
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The Fixit Clinic is an event in which “coaches” help people repair their broken household items with a focus on teaching repair skills rather than actually getting the item in question repaired. I, along with another person spent the entire 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM period helping to repair a leaking Nespresso Inissia. This coffee…
