Fix this please (20 Jun, 2022)

[aardvark_admin]

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Could there be a resurgence in the supply of independent repair services run by people who love a challenge and have excellent problem-solving skills?

Did your town have a "Mr Fixit" guy who seemed to be able to repair almost anything, regardless of the availability of spares or service information?

Might this skill be revived at a time when manufacturers are just shifting to a model which promotes replacement over repair?

Do we now have enough cool tech such as 3D printing, CNC machinery and independent online informational resources to make such a service viable?

And even if it might be uneconomic to repair many items, surely the cross-subsidy that has always taken place in the repair industry would allow the few "easy" jobs to subsidise the hard ones such that it becomes a profitable enterprise to become a "Mr Fixit"?

[phill]

the road to the return of the " fixit's " may be a lot longer than you think
the era of the throw away culture has also dragged along the remove all clutter ( aka useful devices with no immediate purpose )
anyone that does have a surfeit of useful items is now considered a pariah
we have gone so far down the track of greed and self indulgence it's hard to see us not being able to avoid ending up the same as the usa

[joeseph]

I try & fix whatever I can within reason.

Must say sourcing replacement parts at sensible prices is frequently difficult - last repair I did on the washing machine & also dishwasher, it was cheaper to buy an entire scruffy second-hand appliance & rob it for bits than source and pay for the actual faulty part.
Probably my most complex repair was replacing a shutter on a Canon 1D MK II. - them's fiddly!

[Perry]

Both my father and I are in the pariah category Phill describes.
But there are evil factors at work.

One is technology changes / advancements.

In a digital age, why would one keep spares, carcases-to-pirate, etc., of a film camera?
I suppose one can still buy positive and negative films? Dunno? D&P anyone?

Same likely goes for OHPs and acetate slides in these days of project-images/slides-direct-from-laptop.

Or reel-to-reel tape recorders?

So the list might go on.

Tricky choices.