People say that like the replacement parts are just a mystical thing that spawns out of thin air once they need them.
Most parts that break are injection molded plastic. Injection molding is what differentiates manufacturing and home made garbage. Something home made will never look and function as good as something injection molded by a manufacturer. And the reason for that is cost. To say injection molding is expensive is an understatement. The machines, the tools, the expertise and the material is something that a private individual could never afford and has barely any profit margin for manufacturers. On top of that there’s storage and distribution.
So if a manufacturer has to produce extra pieces of each part that might break, store and keep track of them for 10+ years for models that are no longer produced, then the customer better be ready to cover those costs with their initial purchase or have the replacement part be ridiculously priced.
We accuse companies to want their cake and eat it too, but the we do the same thing. We want products to be cheap but also reliable or look good but be repairable. We can’t have all.\
There are plenty of devices that are cheap AND repairable - looking at a ~15-year old Brother HL-2140 printer by my right hand that still has all key parts readily available (not that I ever needed to change anything other than drum and toner, but parts are there)
The secret to cheap repairability is actually quite simple - make a good, no-fuss model and sell it for long. This will remove the necessity to print specific parts in small batches for older models, and by the time the model actually gets retired, there’s so much spare parts you barely need to produce anything at all.
Granted, this doesn’t work that well with ever-evolving stuff like computers (although it does to a certain extent), but most other tech is just fine a decade or more in.
People say that like the replacement parts are just a mystical thing that spawns out of thin air once they need them.
Most parts that break are injection molded plastic. Injection molding is what differentiates manufacturing and home made garbage. Something home made will never look and function as good as something injection molded by a manufacturer. And the reason for that is cost. To say injection molding is expensive is an understatement. The machines, the tools, the expertise and the material is something that a private individual could never afford and has barely any profit margin for manufacturers. On top of that there’s storage and distribution.
So if a manufacturer has to produce extra pieces of each part that might break, store and keep track of them for 10+ years for models that are no longer produced, then the customer better be ready to cover those costs with their initial purchase or have the replacement part be ridiculously priced.
We accuse companies to want their cake and eat it too, but the we do the same thing. We want products to be cheap but also reliable or look good but be repairable. We can’t have all.\
There are plenty of devices that are cheap AND repairable - looking at a ~15-year old Brother HL-2140 printer by my right hand that still has all key parts readily available (not that I ever needed to change anything other than drum and toner, but parts are there)
The secret to cheap repairability is actually quite simple - make a good, no-fuss model and sell it for long. This will remove the necessity to print specific parts in small batches for older models, and by the time the model actually gets retired, there’s so much spare parts you barely need to produce anything at all.
Granted, this doesn’t work that well with ever-evolving stuff like computers (although it does to a certain extent), but most other tech is just fine a decade or more in.