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Make Everything Replaceable

dehipudeʃhipu wrote 12/25/2015 at 01:30 • 2 min read • Like

I think this is the most important thing that I learned in all my years making things.

You see, things break. Sometimes they wear off or become obsolete, and sometimes they arrive already broken. And from time to time you make a mistake and release the blue smoke from them. But it's not just that. Often you just want to remove a part to see how things work without it, or temporarily switch it for another part. Or scrap an old project and recover parts from it.

Whatever the reason is, it's all much easier when you can simply unplug and/or unbolt it. Therefore:

This will not only let you fix your projects when they break, it will also allow you to diagnose the problems in the first place, and will make your projects easier to reproduce by other people or yourself.

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    Stefan-Xp wrote 01/25/2016 at 21:10 point

    Everything is replaceable, it is just a matter of efford ;)
    But thank you for your writeup. I liked it! Keep up the good work!

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    deʃhipu wrote 01/25/2016 at 21:14 point

    That's exactly the point -- you should keep that effort in mind when designing. Of course it's always a trade-off, and repairability/maintainability sometimes takes second of farther place, but I think you should always consider it, at the back of your head, while designing.

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    davedarko wrote 01/25/2016 at 10:53 point

    Add some pictures and this is a place to send people or go to to remind oneself. 

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    deʃhipu wrote 01/25/2016 at 14:37 point

    Hmm... what kind of pictures do you have in mind? Those ideas are pretty abstract and hard to draw. On the other hand, anybody knows how a bolt or plug looks like...

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    jaromir.sukuba wrote 01/25/2016 at 10:46 point

    Great points, IMHO.

    As I was reading it, a lot of pictures of non-repairable and ugly soldered arduino boards hot-glued to piece of cardboard - seen somewhere on the interwebz - came to my mind.

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    deʃhipu wrote 01/25/2016 at 14:43 point

    Hmm, so something like the "that's what will happen if you don't brush your teeth" photo at the dentist office?

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