Stupid light switch can't be opened
(click image for big)In MAKE, Vol. 4, Mister Jalopy wrote a "Maker's Bill of Rights." In the introduction, he stated "If you can't open it, you don't own it."
Well, here's a light switch that I paid full price for, but don't really own. I learned this when the block plastic strap (the part attached to the chain you pull to turn the light off and on) broke off inside the housing. There was a screw on the housing, but when I removed it, the housing wouldn't come apart. That's because the metal socket (the part with the threads in it) has a dimple pressed into it, preventing its removal from the plastic housing.
In addition, the seam between the two halves of the plastic housing seem to be glued or melted together, violating one of Mr. Jalopy's tenets: "Screws better than glues."
So I had to throw it away instead of repairing it. Yes, I know it's dangerous to play with electricity, but I would have liked to have been able to peek inside, at least!
Here's an attractive PDF version of the Maker's Bill of Rights.
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Disposable is cheaper to manufacture. If you want repairable, expect to have to shop around and pay more.
"No user-serviceable parts inside. No serviceable parts inside, whether you're a user or not. When it breaks, buy another; that's likely to be cheaper than the parts anyway."
This sort of thing is really not intended to be serviced. It's put together as permanently as possible for safety reasons, not proprietary ones.
The dimple in the metal socket is probably there to keep the metal socket from coming off during repeated on/off cycles and the resultant heating and expanding of the device. It's there to help keep your house from burning down.
It's a light socket with a pull cord. The cost of the parts to repair that are, well nothing. Open it up and reconnect the pull chain higher up.
Many things are not intended to be serviced but they can be if you are willing to take on the liability if it breaks. If you can vouch for the changes you made then you can change it. Just be prepared when things go wrong.
Finally a note about if you can't open it you don't own it. A similar motto comes to mind when involved in scavenger hunts. "If it's not bolted down, you can take it. If it can be unbolted, it's not bolted down."
If the light can be cracked open in a manner which lends itself to being pieced back together, it is once again owned by you.
Well, here's a light switch that I paid full price for, but don't really own.
Yes you do, you just didn't buy one that you like.
You should have mailed it to me. This could have been repaired. Really. It may have not ultimately been economical to reapair, but it is possible.
I think the book is misquoted here, seems to me that it should be, "If you can't open it, you need a larger hammer"
This is an ungrounded appliance, which means it needs to be double insulated. The plastic case is the second layer of insulation. Having a metal screw penetrate the plastic case would compromise that and make it non-code.
Tk ff yr dmn tnfl hts.
I discovered the same thing not two days ago when I had one go bad on me. That kind off thing really gets me.
I completely agree with Mr. Jalopy on this one! Having had to shell out $70 for a new power adapter for my Dell Laptop which just had a lousy connection because the darn thing couldnt be opened up without breaking it.
I hate it when I run into things like this. I never throw anything out without first looking at repair options. Conversely, I also tend to cannibalize a lot of things for parts, so an uncrackable case is a deal breaker for me on most stuff.
I'm just a cheap gal, that's a tinker at heart, I suppose.
I seem to remember the pull chain sockets of a generation ago being re-buildable.
I've had this happen to me as well. I hate those friggin things.
I just noticed that I can't go in and fix "my" kidney. Lame.
I'm stubborn about that kind of thing. Out of sheer cussedness I've managed to repair burned out tweeters , dead phonograph cartridges, burned out transformers, transistors with sheared off lead wires, mechanical meter movements, a couple of light bulbs and even the occasional 'sealed' switch.
The key is to saw it open with as little damage as possible. When you consider the crude conditions under which most of these things are made, it's reasonable that a skilled and persistent user should be able to get it apart and safely back together.
I'd have opened up the plastic body of that by sawing it along the seam with a .020" abrasive wheel on a Dremel. Drill out the dimple. Crack it like an oyster. Rearrange the innards to your liking and put it back together with high temp epoxy.
This is by no means efficient or effective, with a replacement costing a buck ninety, max, but it's satisfying to continue to use something rather than discarding it.
It's called sonic welding, a lot of old action figure were don't this way.
yup, Ross is completely right. You can fix damn near anything with a dremel, jewelers saw, magnifier,the right glue and time. Lot's of complex stuff gets fabricated in the field when there is no choice.
A similar thing happened to me this week, but with a smoke alarm. My friend was house sitting and the smoke alarm in the apartment was chirping. When we tried to replace the battery, it became clear that the entire unit had to be replaced. It was sealed, and to get it to stop chirping the instructions said to punch through the back of the case with a screwdriver at a certain spot. This permanently disables it, like a smoke alarm lobotomy.
I'm sure the circuitry is more durable than one battery cycle, and that landfills can do without all those beige discs with batteries locked inside. And buying new detectors instead of just batteries every year isn't my idea of efficiency.
Also, I'm fine with not being able to hack my kidneys.
What is that anyway? A socket adapter to add a switch? What lamps don't have switches?
And a drawstring switch? Hate those things. There's probably a reason I've only ever seen them in the US.
Bottom line is that's a stupid product to begin with IMO.
Last week I replaced the pull chain switch in a neon beer sign from my mother in law's bar. The switch was sealed in the high voltage transformer unit so I had to drill out 4 rivets to get access. After that it was a matter of matching the switch to a replacement part, modifying the housing to take the replacement, wiring it up and reassembling the transformer with sheet metal screws in place of the rivets. It's one thing to have a cheap light socket fail due to a bad switch, but an entire neon sign? The switch worked and the sign works like new.
Of course, the sign sat here for so long waiting for me to get to it that the beer it advertises no longer exists, but the sign lights up, dammit!
Put in an oven at about 150 F for about 3 minutes on tinfoil (in case the plastic melts easily). The glue should release and you can pull it appart; you might not be able to put together again easily (but normally if it is glue you can just put your own glue back in); although I wouldn't recommend that in this case as it's an electrical device and you might be starting a fire with your "repaired" device.
good gods! Kids these days,I don't know... This device provides two,ungrounded receptacles on the sides so you can still have your bare bulb light and also plug in two more devices (and likely burn down the house).
Wait until you see my remote controlled automatic electrical record player hack the PhonoBOt 4002. A couple more evenings in the shop and it'll be ready to unleash on the unsuspecting world.
your mother-in-law owns a bar??!
I'd like to threadjack this into asking who has LED lighting in their homes at this point? How's that working for you?
The shot and a beer joint on Gratiot between the tattoo parlor and the Chinese takeout place.
The hot bartender is my sister in law. Friendly, but quick to put a boot to the unruly.
Regarding field repairs of 'unrepairable' products, I'm in awe of Australian bush mechanics. They can do virtually any repair with the most minimal materials and tools. This is hands on engineering at its finest. Arguably it's the most 'human' of our abilities: to modify and repurpose the things in our environment.
I recall a story of one bush mechanic who found a Rolls Royce V12 aircraft engine in a field and got a Big Idea. Some time and a lot of work later he was running a 2 cylinder slice of it in a motorcycle frame as a 5 liter dragster. That is mechanical craft of the highest order. When I think something can't be fixed I remember that guy whittling a bike engine out of the power plant from a Spitfire.
wow! That's the kind of mentality that has to be encouraged! We are getting closer to the time when it really WILL be possible to let our machines get out of hand. Got to own that Tech!
Interesting how that expression has evolved: "let your machines get out of hand"; first meaning: to let go of the tiller, second meaning: to lose the ability to make,understand and repair it, coming meaning: "Welcome, Robot Overlords!".
#10, wood chisels and a good whack is all you need for opening brick style AC power adapters. I do it all the time. The power supply you mentioned probably has a bad capacitor in it (near where the AC comes in) just make sure you don't mess up the heatsink inside.
Ross,
I may have to stop in for a beer some time.
More on topic, most of my projects use parts from scrapped or scavenged equipment. Also, when I rebuild or remake, I tend to make things more robust than they used to be... I don't have a clear idea on the internal workings of that switch, but I guarantee several pieces would have been swapped out for something bigger and stronger, and that chain would also be replaced. Of course, all the parts go back into the scavenged bits bin.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Repair-modular-power-supplies/
I've got a frustratingly similar problem with the Ceiling light/fan combo in our kitchen. Came with the house, I don't know what lunatic wanted to clean cooking oil off the top of a ceiling fan for years to come, but I hate them.
Unfortunately it's THE light in the kitchen, and the stupid chain's jamned. (Agree, chain lights are ridiculous, but we have them here in Canada too)
However, I'm taking it as an opportunity to get rid of the huge grease collectors posing as fan blades and put in a globe light. It's aluminum wiring, so I will be paying a professional - I'm comfortable with working on lights and switches normally, but aluminum is just asking for me to forget something and burn the entire condo block down.
no mystery to aluminum if just changing a fixture. The hardware store can sell you the magic anti-oxidizing poop to apply to the connections.
What do you think the makers of the switch wanted: you to be able to replace the chain for 15ยข, or you to buy a new switch for $6.99?
Anyway, I am also fully in the fix-it camp. A few weeks ago I re-soldered loose wiring in my girlfriend's vibrator. I had to cut open the little bunny to get to the connections, but when I stuck it back together again with hot glue, the extra texture was apparently very nice. ;)
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/electrical-wiring/part2/section-16.html
@33 appears safe enough
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethylene-vinyl_acetate
I'm really sorry I threw it away now. I liked Ross in Detroit's idea of drilling out the dimple.
meh! truth is it probably wasn't worth saving. They would have cut so many corners in material especially that another failure would have come along soon enough. Feeling stubborn? Search the thrift shops and yard sales for similar gadgets from pre-1980. Bulletproof compared to the China-made tsunami stuff.
Don't you see, we do this for your own protection! Don't you like the nice things we make for you? The Nice Things! WE MAKE THEM FOR YOU! FOR YOU! WHY DO YOU HATE US? WHY DON'T YOU ENJOY THE NICE THINGS!?
I'm amazed that this kind of stone-age device is still made at all! I don't think that this would even be LEGAL in the EU!!!
Things I've learned to my chagrin and cost not to take apart:
19th century Swiss quarter repeating pocket watch. I was pretty sure I had figured out why it didn't strike 12 properly. I hadn't. Cost more than the rent to get reassembled.
Top end of a 1980 Renault engine. Head gaskets are simple. Emissions controlled carbs are not. Luckily the car was easy to roll down the block to an optimistic neighbor. It's probably still there.
The only working remote for the garage door. You never notice how much it rains until your wife has to get out of the car in it and it's your fault.
Restaurant soft serve ice cream machine full of pre-mix. Boy do those service guys make a nice wage.
Hydraulic cylinder from a Caterpillar back hoe boom. Easy to reassemble if it didn't weigh twice what I did.
Don't get me started on EU electrical standards. Yesterday it took me 2 hours to repair the electrical circuits in a 35 year old Studer/Revox power amplifier that was blown up. Fine. Today I spent another 45 minutes just on the task of building adapters so I could connect the tiny inadequate ('safe') DIN speaker sockets to speaker connectors used anywhere else in the world. I swear they make stuff so unpleasant to use that people just sit safely, quietly in the dark rather than bother.
Therefore if you own a hammer you own everything
wanna compare almost got kilt stories?
I think there is a market for auxetic sex toys.
that belongs in the latex leggings thread
Pull chain lightswitch/outlet adapters used used to be disassemblable when they were screwed together, usually with a pair of screws accessible through the female socket. Probably the advent of glues that can glue plastic & take the heat of sitting so close to an incandescent bulb has made a change for the cheaper in manufacturing. They also were riveted across the seam sometimes. This is a product that can be machine assembled. No need for threads, or something strong enough to be threaded. No need to have someone assemble it with 2 screws. It's all a part of making things cheap, usually in China or some other far away, low wage place. Cheap manufacturing rules design in many cases these days. I just had to replace a shower valve for a client that wasn't feeding enough hot water. The valve body & valve mechanism are a wonderful piece of cast & machined brass, very simple, with sweat fitting as part of the valve body. The new one, a big box store house brand, had threaded connections & a warning about heating the valve & melting the plastic parts inside. Took it apart & it contained a rats nest of parts, o-rings, springs & rubber seals, all to make up for cheaper, lower tolerance machining. The makers manifesto requires folks to pony up a bit more money for stuff, or get bigger hammers. Or develop more finesse with the hammers they already own.
The guy that owned our home before us was supposedly an electrician, but I am constantly horrified at discovering one of his wiring 'solutions'. He put in a jacuzzi tub for his wife that just plugs into the wall next to the tub. I've always wondered if he was trying to get rid of his wife.
I'm sensing a market for "special needs" items for those that just can't manage in "normal" society. I mean really, what IS normal these days anyway?
Of course there would be extra costs to meet these "special needs" such as increasing manufacturing complexity and liability counter-measures. But hey, some people are just special in society, and we need to realize that. And support it. And do what we can to support them.
Maybe I should hire these guys to fix it: http://bit.ly/2mTqvg
Wiring, like brakes repair, is not a hobby.
sure it is! You just do it til you get it right! No voodoo in brake work either, you can learn the essentials in a weekend.
ROSSINDETROIT and Mr. Jalopy should get together. Srsly.
I hear from Mr. J. occasionally about audio repair issues. I am flattered to be worthy of the contact and hope my answers are worth while.
For DIY technology companionship and general electromechanical craziness I cannot recommend too highly the mad nexus of music and electronics that is AudioKarma .
Tell them Bauhausler sent you.
I had the same one of those with the same pull chain break. I took it apart without much problem, and would've been able to easily reassemble. The weak, extra cheap plastic part that broke, though, was part of the inner workings of the fixture, running through a hole that would not accomodate the chain, and I figured the $3 to replace it was cheaper than trying to mess with fixing it myself. So I used the two plastic sides of the fixture as feet for a small robot sculpture instead.
Maybe I should hire these guys to fix it
I'd go with these guys instead.
My floor lamp was plucked from the curb.
It was "thrown away" because the knob/shaft that screwed onto the threaded shaft in the three way switch got stripped. (The rotary switch itself is VERY stiff and the knob/shaft is some rather soft metal, possibly cast Aluminum.) Now, a three way socket is cheap enough at the hardware store.
But, you know, a short length of stripped copper wire, inserted into the knob/shaft and then screwed onto the threaded shaft worked long enough to find the first "ON" state in the switch.
I have a compact fluorescent bulb in it, and the lamp is plugged into homebrewed remote switching gimcrack I built 40 some years.
So, free "broken" lamp + 1/2" of wire = Free Working Lamp.
Thank you, lazy neighbors who couldn't be bothered to even try to fix your almost new floor lamp.
Is this thing on?
I got my fixture at the dollar store, so I didn't feel too bad when the chain pulled out on the third use. I took it apart -- obviously it was intended to fail, and they had succeeded a little too well. Probably they meant me to be buying another one in a month or two. The link between the chain and the switch lever looked like packaging plastic, just a few mils thick. The base was actually held together by the flimsy metal of the outer contact -- I just twisted that off with some of that rubbery fabric you use for twisting off jar tops. No glue, one screw. I concluded I didn't want the thing on my electric anyway.
I wanted the fixture so I could mount an old-fashioned night light alongside the bulb in my bedside lamp. I'll just wait for an antique one at the local thrift/recycle store. It will still be working, or at worst it will be repairable AND durable.
Note to self: Don't buy half-assed crap like this. It's just trash waiting to happen.
do NOT buy dollar store electrical equipment. All the safety marks are forged and the first thing they skimp on is the copper. Meaning the ability of the internal conductors to carry the rated current is already compromised, never mind what may happen if you put an over-sized bulb in it.
> but I would have liked to have been able to peek inside, at least!
Turn in your "Maker" badge, sir. Ironic air quotes intended there.
Thank you, lazy neighbors who couldn't be bothered to even try to fix your almost new floor lamp.
Did the same thing! It's not a three way anymore, but it's bright enough to light my whole room up -and- it's a cd organizer.
I love unresourceful people. I have a trunk my neighbor tossed out because he couldn't bother to replace the broken hinges, a rolling chair I fixed with a couple lengths of copper pipe, and so many computer parts from entire jobs thrown out on the street / next to the apt dumpster.
@JimH, @Blixa:
Here is the shirt for you:
http://www.zazzle.com/no_user_serviceable_parts_tshirt-235596023359283277
or better yet, a 'maternity' version (different design):
http://www.toucanisland.com/-280949492+no-user-serviceable-parts-maternity-t-shirt.htm
@10
you can easily open power supplies/ laptop batteries that look unopenable, you just need a knife, source of heat and knowledge (shorting li-ion with a knife is NOT a good thing).
Uhhh...
Why is there no version of this anywhere that's instead called "stupid iPod can't be opened"?
OK, "screws better than clips" isn't as catchy, but still!
I seem to be batting 1000 around here lately, so I can't help but chime in. I'm not sure I totally agree with the Maker's Bill of Rights. Mark, I dig your magazine and all but something occurs to me. If you can't disassemble something to fiddle with it, one of these two situations applies:
1) it was never meant to be disassembled. Sometimes it is more prudent just to get a new one, because in most of these cases the thing that has broken is an integral part of a casting that there is little hope in actually repairing.
Besides - it's the cheaper items that are manufactured that way anyhow.
(there was a time I had a leaky steering gear on my toyota. I bought the parts that would replace the leaky seal on one end of the housing, then realized that I had no way of actually installing the damn things without a bevy of specialty tools and a press - and even then the whole assembly has to be out of the car anyway. It's at that point that you suck it up and buy the 200 dollar part. Let the guys at the factory figure out how to fix and resell your core.)
2) and I mean this with all due respect because I've been there myself - if you can't figure out how to get something apart to fix it, you probably have no business doing it in the first place.
Line voltage is pretty serious business that even electricians sometimes get wrong. That said, there are some appliances that I've 'fixed' that terrify me.
#63 Raz.. ha ha! as a 17 year old I nearly started a machine shop on fire when I put a drill press through a lithium battery. Ah.. learning is fun!
(my job was to destroy obsolete scuba depth gauges by punching a hole in the plastic case - only no one told me what exactly was inside: comedy.)
I still take apart things that can't be fixed. It's usually destructive disassembly but it's quick. If you can't reanimate a device, at least learn from its death. Scrutinizing the innards of a defective socket, switch, power supply or speaker may yield knowledge and parts that will help repair the next one.
In other news, the UK government is to ban light switches.
One cautionary note about taking things apart. Electrical equipment with vacuum tubes runs at extremely high voltages. Even when unplugged from the wall the capacitors can retain enough high voltage charge to injure or kill. Fixing tube gear should be left to professionals and the fatally reckless.
Motorcycle with engine made from Rolls Royce Merlin cylinders referred to above.
Scroll down in this page.
@68: "in other news the UK government is set to ban the operation of light switches by non-approved,non-government registered and licenced personnel" there, fixed.