I recently discovered Louis Rossman's Youtube channel and it planted a virus in my head to make me want to try much harder to repair things.
Recently my water bottle leaked on my $2000 Thinkpad and fried the LAN card. Ubuntu started complaining that it couldn't find the Wireless adapter to find wifi networks. I think a couple years ago, I'd have just thrown in the towel right away and bought a new computer. Instead I did some research and found a $20 replacement card on Amazon. It took me 15 minutes to fix my laptop. I felt a great sense of pride afterwards for avoiding a great amount of environmental and financial waste.
Same thing with my $200 coffee grinder. It stopped grinding beans properly. I did some research and found the usual cause was a thin plastic piece inside the grinder would crack and become loose. After 5 years of ownership I had previously considered just buying a new one because "well it's pretty old". But instead I found the small plastic part on Baratza's website and successfully repaired my grinder. It cost me $8 and 20 minutes of my time.
I think I'm becoming a repair extremist and will probably start to annoy people by insisting on taking this route whenever possible. It seems like American culture cares very little about repairing/mending things. It seems like people expect everything to break and use it as a cue to buy a new one. It's really sad, especially because I think we were intentionally trained to think that way.
For non-electronics, I bought a huge umbrella online once. It was missing a thin metal rod that helped form a hinge in the umbrella. I told the company this, they sent me a new one and told me to throw the old one away.
Because throwing it away would be ridiculously wasteful, instead I went to Home Depot, bought a steel rod of appropriate diameter for $3, cut off a piece and used that.
>Recently my water bottle leaked on my $2000 Thinkpad and fried the LAN card. ... Instead I did some research and found a $20 replacement card on Amazon. It took me 15 minutes to fix my laptop. I felt a great sense of pride afterwards for avoiding a great amount of environmental and financial waste.
Laptop parts are commonly available on Ebay for very cheap. Laptops are generally very serviceable (especially Thinkpads, Latitudes, and other business-class ones; MS Surfaces are not however) and it's not that hard, with a small screwdriver, to take them apart and replace various circuit boards. Considering how much a new laptop costs, and how cheap something like a miniPCIe WiFi card is, it's absolutely worth it to repair.
Another important thing is that many mass-produced things fail in the same way, so you can frequently Google for your product and failure mode, and find someone talking about what the problem was and how they fixed it. YouTube is an excellent source for repair videos for many things; frequently companies selling repair parts (such as for appliances) will make these videos themselves, to help boost sales and as free advertising (which they actually get paid a little for if lots of people watch the video).
Usually things like coffee grinders or electric stand mixers that have a motor and a gearbox include a plastic piece that is intended to fail first precisely so they are easily and cheaply repaired. They honestly should advertise it on the box, but that'd cut into their repair business.
They are designed to break if the machine comes under too much stress that could break more expensive parts of the machine if the "fuse" wasn't included. Instead, that part breaks, making it cheap and easy to replace.
Indeed, if you ever find a Kitchen Aid stand mixer in the trash, it likely got there because a gear in the gearbox is designed for this reason; they are cheap and easy to replace for anyone with a modest amount of mechanical ability, and those mixers aren't inexpensive new.
Yea, if you can get Kitchenaid to sell it to you. They absolutely refuse to sell me, as a consumer, the grease they use to lubricate the gear head. Even after arguing for half an hour with customer service.
Grease isn't something that Kitchenaid makes. You should be able to easily buy appropriate grease anywhere for dirt-cheap. For small appliances with plastic gears, it's most likely some kind of white lithium grease. A little research online should tell you what kind of grease is appropriate for that application, and then it should be easy to get some inexpensively, perhaps even at your local auto parts store in a tiny single-use packet for $1.
They do sell a food-grade grease, but not to me. Looking at the existing grease in the gearhead, it looks similar to axle grease. Researching food-grade grease on Amazon shows many reviews raising this problem, but no definitive solutions. It's not lithium grease.
Why would you need a "food grade" grease? You're not eating the grease; it's supposed to be contained inside the mechanism. If it's leaking out into the food, that sounds like a pretty horrible design and a product you shouldn't use under any circumstances. Maybe I'm just not understanding this product at all.
My mixer is 50 years old. Over the years, I've pulled the head apart a couple of times when it starts to squeak, and it's obvious there is a very gradual loss of grease - I've re-spread it into the gears.
There is no seal on the shaft that holds the beater.
Kitchenaid is made by Hobart, and they are the lead manufacturer in this market. The design is fine and very rugged.
I don't want use any grease that has traces of heavy metals or, e.g., moly disulfide. There is such a thing as food grade grease for use in mixers, candy machines, etc., but I just haven't yet laid my hands on any.
Recently my water bottle leaked on my $2000 Thinkpad and fried the LAN card. Ubuntu started complaining that it couldn't find the Wireless adapter to find wifi networks. I think a couple years ago, I'd have just thrown in the towel right away and bought a new computer. Instead I did some research and found a $20 replacement card on Amazon. It took me 15 minutes to fix my laptop. I felt a great sense of pride afterwards for avoiding a great amount of environmental and financial waste.
Same thing with my $200 coffee grinder. It stopped grinding beans properly. I did some research and found the usual cause was a thin plastic piece inside the grinder would crack and become loose. After 5 years of ownership I had previously considered just buying a new one because "well it's pretty old". But instead I found the small plastic part on Baratza's website and successfully repaired my grinder. It cost me $8 and 20 minutes of my time.
I think I'm becoming a repair extremist and will probably start to annoy people by insisting on taking this route whenever possible. It seems like American culture cares very little about repairing/mending things. It seems like people expect everything to break and use it as a cue to buy a new one. It's really sad, especially because I think we were intentionally trained to think that way.