[SGVHAK] Repair Cafe report & next Repair Cafe

[Matthew Campbell]

Thanks Lan, I wish I could have made it down there.  It sounds like fun!

Unfortunately I'm out of town the next weekend, grab me for the event in 2
months!

Matt


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*Matthew Campbell*
Storage Solution Consultant
Storage Design and Engineering

*Kaiser Permanente*
IMG-Systems Integration
99 S. Oakland
Pasadena, CA 91101

626-564-7228 (office)
8-338-7228 (tie-line)
818-314-9897 (mobile phone)
Green Center 3-North, 031W29
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*kp.org/thrive <http://kp.org/thrive>*


On Mon, Mar 3, 2014 at 8:51 AM, Lan Dang <l.dang at ymail.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> The Repair Cafe was fun.   It was held at Throop Hall at Throop Church.
> There was a backyard fruit exchange and a seedling exchange.  There were
> people there with sewing machines and tools.  There was a representative of
> the Caltech Bike Lab there fixing bikes.  His name is Jonathan and he
> actually works at JPL.  At the Really, Really Free Market, we scored a
> Kill-a-Watt and a soldering iron with a rusty  tip.  We all earned one time
> dollar for our efforts.  We might've earned more if we'd actually been
> members of the Time Bank.
>
>  James, Adam, and I were sitting at the "tinker" tailor under the auspices
> of Scoops, who filtered jobs our way and gave us advice on how to fix
> things and lent us some tools.  One thing I discovered is that the
> screwdriver set I had is great for unscrewing most electronic parts, but
> not for reaching screws that are deeply recessed, because the barrel is too
> thick.  Also, sometimes you want a regular screwdriver when you're trying
> to pry things open.
>
> I got to use my soldering iron to solder together the wires in a pair of
> high end headphones.  Someone brought in a projector that was showing funny
> colors.  Scoops diagnosed it as a problem with one of the lenses, I think.
> At least, it was a square piece of glass that looked burnt.  There were
> also blenders and dehydrators and vacuums.  I got a toaster where the lever
> wouldn't stay down.  After taking it apart, James checked out the circuits
> with a multimeter, and said it was an issue with the power supply to the
> circuit board that controlled the timer. While we couldn't fix the toaster,
> the process of diagnosing what was wrong was very interesting.  For
> example, this toaster used a magnetic latch for the lever, and if power
> wasn't getting to the magnet, then it couldn't act as a latch.  We also
> realized that the controls on the toaster were not doing anything.  The
> toaster still works if you manually hold the lever down.
>
> There are some repairs that span multiple Repair Cafe events, because
> first you diagnose it, then you advise them about the part they need to
> replace, then you wait for the part before you can finish the repairs.
>
> I think the next time we do a Repair Cafe, we should wear our SGVHAK
> shirts and bring along our business cards.
>
> I believe the next Repair Cafe will be on May 3rd at the Pasadena Earth
> and Arts Festival.  It's supposed to take place off the grid, so Scoops is
> going to figure out how to make that work, considering our need for
> electricity to power things like soldering irons and even the devices, to
> verify that we've fixed things.
>
> We'll post another Meetup event once we have more details.
>
>
> Lan
>
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