Electrical fault - what to do?

Heedtheadvice

I'm in agreement with Strider. If it was simply the element then you could expect it to trip the breaker anytime.

If you can see a crack and whilst it is dry try just a few drops of superglue. It might seal enough to stop the problem but failing that just put hand in pocket and pull out those few coins!

martinsurrey

Strider590 wrote: »

Yes they/we are, been largely driven out of business by "throw away" culture and built in obsolescence (can't get parts)..

don't forget that every thing is incredibly cheap these days

Kettle

In the 1960/70's an electric kettle cost half a weeks average wages. that's the equivalent of £250 today for a basic electric Kettle.

If you spent that these days you would rightly expect it to last a long time (and it would as it would be an industrial one).

Strider590

martinsurrey wrote: »

don't forget that every thing is incredibly cheap these days

Kettle

In the 1960/70's an electric kettle cost half a weeks average wages. that's the equivalent of £250 today for a basic electric Kettle.

If you spent that these days you would rightly expect it to last a long time (and it would as it would be an industrial one).

Doesn't explain why people happily throw away a 12 month old £1000 TV, when all it needs is a few £ worth of commonly available components.

We've gotten used to this idea that nothing is worth fixing anymore, built in obsolescence sent repair guys out of business and now there is no "Freds Electronics repair shop", people just go straight out and buy new.

Built in failure modes are another thing too, deliberately designed to fail, deliberately designed to be unrepairable.

Cambridge soundworks THX 550 5.1 system, failed on me, I opened it up and realised I needed the best part of 8 hours just to dismantle the thing to find the fault, the whole thing had cement like glue drizzled all over the 4 stacked PCBs, making it hard to identify components and near impossible to remove one component without damaging another, I salvaged the speakers for my own home brew workshop Bluetooth/MP3 player and I binned the rest.

martinsurrey

Strider590 wrote: »

Doesn't explain why people happily throw away a 12 month old £1000 TV, when all it needs is a few £ worth of commonly available components.

really? they are covered for up to 6 years, and a £1000 tv is pretty top end so would be expected to last 3 years at least.

and don't forget that a 22" colour tv cost £300 in 1970, that's £5000 in todays money.

Strider590 wrote: »

We've gotten used to this idea that nothing is worth fixing anymore, built in obsolescence sent repair guys out of business and now there is no "Freds Electronics repair shop", people just go straight out and buy new.

partly I agree, but its also about increasing complexity, and reducing costs.

If when a Kettle cost half a weeks wages, getting Fred to repair it for a days wages made sense, these days £30 wouldn't cover the first 45 mins of a repairmans time, let alone the parts or shop overheads, so why ever try to repair it (from a purely economic point of view), add in that most things have circuit boards these days that are never going to be repairable and it adds to the problem

Strider590

martinsurrey wrote: »

partly I agree, but its also about increasing complexity, and reducing costs.

Not really, electronics is all surface mount now, smaller is not more complex and everything is processor controlled instead of having so many sub circuits.
In the 80's/90's CRT TV was a complete nightmare to work on, these days 90% of faults are in the power supply and 90% of those are heat damaged capacitors. Other faults don't require much fault finding at component level, just replace the faulty module.

Stuff does more, but it's not really more complex.

As for cost, it costs more to grind the markings off a component than it does to leave it alone.... Why grind off the markings? So no one can identify or repair it.