North Balwyn Repair Cafe in Balwyn North, Victoria, Australia | Community

North Balwyn Repair Cafe

Locality: Balwyn North, Victoria, Australia

Add/Update information

Reviews

Tags

• Home improvement
• Appliance repair service
• Community

21.01.2022 I've always heard that the mechanic's car is always the last one to receive attention. Perhaps the same can be said about a repairer's tools? I've been using this bench top multimeter for a couple of years now and it had an annoying habit of fading the display intermittently. I could bring the display back with a light tap on the side of the unit so I tended to put up with the problem. Recently I've found that I've been a little more curious about electronic faults and their... causes (and this has me fix a couple of TVs that have been on my long-term "sick" list). I decided to educate myself on how these sorts of vacuum fluorescent displays worked and realised that my fault was quite likely due to a faulty supply to the display module, rather than a fault with the display itself, which might well have been a more difficult fix. After pulling the multimeter apart and checking the board, a couple of dry joints were found at the base of the (rather large and heavy) transformer. Promising! I retouched these joints and the unit appears to be working perfectly, with no display instability any more. The whole job probably took about 25mins. Have you got a similar long-term patient? Do some reading, ask some questions, give it a go! See more

21.01.2022 Well it looks like we are starting to emerge out of our Melbourne COVID-19 slumber, but not quite there yet. We have decided to cancel the planned November face-to-face repair session and have a slim hope of the December one. Most likely we will also need to cancel the December repair sessions and re-charge ourselves for early next year. Please be patient. We have been fielding a number of enquiries on our FaceBook page, and we hop this will continue. Please note, we are not ...a replacement for repair services that can be obtained from commercial service providers. Our motivations is to encourage you to consider fixing items, and to help you with diagnosis, advice, tools and some assistance for more difficult fixes. We are also happy to receive your offers of items that may be useful for spare parts - please don't take offence if we say "no" - we do not have storage for much at all, but we may have some suggestions at to what else you may be able to do rather than throwing the item out, and sometimes you just might have some parts that we find very useful. Thanks again, and hope to see you before too long. See more

18.01.2022 While things appear to be on the improve in terms of the Melbourne COVID-19 situation, we have decided to cancel the September NBRC repair session. We have been helping a number of people "out-of-session" so if you need some advice, let us know - we may be able to assist. See you soon (hopefully),

18.01.2022 This fix took a bit longer than expected, and another good learning experience for me. The NAD 310 amplifier had a failed right channel (no audio output). The fuse supplying this side of the circuit had blown. The culprit was a shorted BUK555 MOSTET transistor. I replaced this transistor, which was mounted on the heat sink with a number of other transistors. I also replaced the blown fuse. When I connected the mains power, the same.fuse blew again. A.lot of testing and troub...leshooting later, I identified that the insulating plastic bush that I used for the BUK555 had cracked and broken during installation which had created a short at this point in the circuit. I binned the damaged bush and replaced it with a good spare. Lesson learned - when installing an insulated transistor on a grounded heating, check for shorts to earth before you connect the power again ... See more

16.01.2022 Nonna’s angel needed fixing. Even angels break arms. Now Angel is back to work blowing us all good wishes during COVD times

16.01.2022 Some machines are worth persevering with. This one needed a full strip-down and rebuild of the motor, new brushes, new motor pulley, new belts and the fabrication of a replacement motor capacitor network (due to unavailability of parts). All of the other parts were difficult to source and ended up coming from all different parts of the world (UK, US, Switzerland). In the end, and after a bit of a clean and re-oil/re-grease, she is up and running again - hopefully for several more years. The photos of the motor show the muck form the exploded/leaked capacitors mixed with a massive amount of carbon dust form the motor brushes - yuk! I literally needed to wash and thoroughly dry all parts of the motor before I could even have a good look at it.

14.01.2022 Come on down to the DIY repair café! Costa lives by the three Rs Reduce, Reuse and Recycle but he believes there should be a fourth R - Repair! He visits a repair café in inner city Sydney to learn how to give his old garden tools a new lease of life.

13.01.2022 Successful Repair of Sunbeam Mixmaster MXAC Problem motor running all the time. Problem was caused by a build up of icing sugar on the motor feedback sensor and chopper. Speed controller pot needed refurbishing as well.

12.01.2022 Check this out. May have some I great ways to reuse items.

11.01.2022 Hi all, I'm sorry to say that we are unable to hold our planned face-to-face Repair Session next Sunday as we had hoped. The current COVID-19 restrictions do not allow it. We remain ready to re-open when we can. In the meantime, please do not throw out any items that you are unsure about - send us a question as we may help you decide the best new-life for your faulty or unwanted item. Please do this even before you consider e-waste - there are often valuable spare parts in b...roken equipment! We are particularly keen to hear from any of you who might want to do a live diagnosis for your item - let us know and we may be able to do this by video or phone. If we get enough enquiries, we may even create a live broadcast of the activity for others to watch While we have been waiting for our next NBRC, some of us have been honing our skills on our own projects. You might see some of these posted on this Page soon. See more

07.01.2022 Nice story about our friends at the St.Kilda Repir Cafe.

06.01.2022 A quick job on the damaged connector tor a lapel microphone,. The wires were showing through the insulation near the plug - a common location for damage through regular use. Thankfully the wires were relatively easy to strip and took the solder well. Once they were reattached, and a couple of extra pieces of heat shrink added to provide some bending strain relief, the connector was reassembled and tested by recording and playing back some speech input. All good (although it reminded me that I don't have a voice fit for radio!)

05.01.2022 My daughter's wide-screen computer monitor- suddenly stopped powering on. Not even a power indicator on the front. I suspected it might be a faulty power supply module (which is an external unit for these TVs). A quick check with the multimeter confirmed that the power brick had indeed failed. I confirmed the the TV was still ok using a benchtop power supply and then set about searching for a replacement power brick with compatible voltage and current specifications (19VDC, 3.42A). I had a few in my spares, but needed to cut off and rejoin the connector as it was slightly different to the IBM/Lenovo spares that I had. All good now - monitor is working fine. It is always good to fix a faulty item using parts you have rescued from landfill!

01.01.2022 Another ugly repair! But I ask you, it's a rubbish bin, does it really look worse than it should? :-)