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Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

  • Welcome to our site! Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

Can anyone pls buy these

Krups coffee grinders still use through-hole 555 timers. They claimed the vibrations of the grinder was shaking the surface mount components off of the PCB.

I bought the first one in about 2005 or so. Since a new one is cheaper than replacing the blades, I've bought two more since (the exact same model is still available). The first two had the same through-hole parts. I'll check the current one when it dies.

Crazy isn't it - but the cost of keeping and supplying spares isn't cheap, manufacturing and selling new product is far cheaper.

When you replace them do you keep the old ones for spares? - and them throw them away decades down the line :D
 
Crazy isn't it - but the cost of keeping and supplying spares isn't cheap, manufacturing and selling new product is far cheaper.

When you replace them do you keep the old ones for spares? - and them throw them away decades down the line :D
No, I don't keep spares. I am just curious to see the manufacturing technology and the circuit design for what is essentially a delay timer - push the button and the hopper fills over the next 20-seconds of run-time. How complicated can they make the circuit including the stepdown from 120vAC. The answer, "simple and cheap" for some companies and "surprisingly simple because they selected expensive modules" for other companies, and "how cheap have 32-bit microcontroller become" for other companies.

I'm mostly of the mindset, if it comes apart easily, I'll pull it apart to take a look before it goes in the bin. I also don't like repairing things that are used as consumer products by people who expect them to work and fail safely. I know the effort that a company like Krups, Sony, Electrolux put into selecting components, materials, design and manufacturing technologies to insure a failure mode doesn't end up in a fire or electrocution. I don't have the test facilities or time or spare device to do that. Buying a new one is so much cheaper.
 
I still have over 10,000 surplus of the brightest 5mm LEDs in sealed bags with ESD protection builtin when I used to distribute custom LEDs for 1 client in NZ.

In the 90's I managed a quick turn SMT manual assy for RF boards with 6805's and ceramic hybrids under DIY tinned brass shields onto FPC boards. There were designed for retrofit (auto-meter-read) AMR in mechanical AC power meters with 928 MHz wireless custom radios. A girl could assemble 10 prototypes in 1 day easily with 3 PCB per assy using 603/805's.
 

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