- Toast is toasted on one end, un-toasted at the other.
- Control is just a timer, so the second time you use it twice in succession it will be hot at the start and will need a shorter time, which you have to figure out.
Check out the Sunbeam Radiant Control Toaster (1949-1980), which is still considered the peak of toaster design.[2] It's repairable, too. Now replicating that would be a good project.
- "And that mechanism doesn’t just wear out after nearly three-quarters of a century of use: there’s a single screw underneath the crumb tray to adjust the tension of the wire, and it alone is enough to bring many aging toasters back to life."
Having mended a few toasters in my time I salute this effort. Cheap toasters are very difficult to take apart and mend. The toasting mechanism on this one looks great.
Cheap toasters only last a few years before dying. Usually because someone jams it up then clumsily unjams it while damaging the element.
After going through a few toasters in quick succession I finally bought an expensive Dualit one. It's still going 25 years later. I changed the timer mechanism once which was a joy, and you can easily buy spare parts.
The Dualit cost over 10 times more than the cheap toasters though. I don't regret that purchase though and it has actually saved me money over the years and made much less landfill.
Funnily enough the toaster in this article looks quite like the Dualit. I don't suppose that is a coincidence!
Dualit "Classic" toasters are the only toasters I'm aware of with heating elements that can be replaced. Every cheap toaster I've owned has died from the wire in one of the heating elements burning out. The only two toasters I'd buy these days are a Dualit or a vintage Sunbeam Radiant Control toaster. Dualit wins for the modern slot widths though.
Having recently done a timer replacement on a Dualit, I think that might literally be a Dualit timer module. Looks identical in the packing box photo. It wouldn’t surprise me if the heating elements were the same as well (haven’t checked) though those are probably more commonly available as generic items.
I was given a Dualit Classic Newgen 4 slice toaster as a wedding gift.
It was without a doubt the WORST toaster I have ever used.
I've never been so annoyed by a product before. In fact, it annoyed me so much that I ended up returning it and replacing it with a cheap toaster that is 10% of the price and functions better.
I'll list the fatal flaws with it in descending order of importance:
1) Unlike basically every single other toaster on the market, it does not have a cage or other mechanism that closes on to the bread slices and keeps them an equal distance from the heating element. This results in at least one part of every single slice of bread getting burned to a crisp, and at least one part of every single slice not being toasted at all. After using this toaster for a week, I couldn't believe how any engineer at Dualit could release this. Do they even use their product? It is a catastrophic oversight.
2) The timer is an analogue mechanism, much like an egg timer. I found that there was an extremely thin margin in which the toast is toasted. Anything under that and it's not, anything over that and it's burned beyond recognition. I cannot even count the number of times the smoke alarm in my house went off because my toaster burned my bread to a crisp. Another catastrophic oversight.
3) Because the timer is analogue, when you turn it it makes a clicking noise as an egg timer does. This means it's very easy to mistake the toaster for being on, when in fact it's not. The number of times I went to make toast, only to realise a few minutes later that the toaster was unplugged for some reason and my bread was still bread is unreal. I'd then end up ruining my scrambled eggs by waiting another few mins for toast.
4) The toaster allows you to spin a dial to choose how many heating elements to use. This is a pain in the ass. It's so easy to forget about, until you go to pick up your toast and find out that only 1 and a half slices have been toasted of the 4 you put in there.
The sad thing is, the toaster looked awesome. We also have a Dualit kettle (which is great) and it matched. Unfortunately they prioritised aesthetics over function, and it shows. If you want a toaster that requires you to go through a checklist of switches to check before operating, then requires constant supervision to avoid burning your toast, and will still give you burnt sections of toast anyway despite all of that, I could not recommend a better candidate.
My toaster broke a week ago. I tried repairing it and found out exactly what the post says: almost impossible without breaking it (or seriously bending parts just to take them apart). After realizing that I wouldn't be able to, I decided to buy a used one, but couldn't find any on offer around my area that looked in good enough shape. Ended up paying 25€ for a new one, which will arrive by post any time soon. I find the whole experience extremely unsatisfying and would love more of this (repairable and self-assembly-able electric appliances).
I hope the comments here don't end up quibbling about the practicality or economics of this toaster specifically, because the point here is the process. This project involves reverse engineering, designing from scratch, manufacturing, developing beginner-accessible documentation, and performing real-world user studies. We should be encouraging people to do more of this!
But I am actually interested in the economics! The author mentions sending her designs out to a factory - I would expect this is astonishingly expensive for a single prototype! Wouldn’t that be thousands of dollars? Is anyone familiar how to get good factory-made parts like this at DIY budgets?
Not that that takes away from the article at all. This project has many merits, and although cost may not be one of them, it’s still interesting!
This project seems to take its heating elements, clockwork timer and knob from a classic Dualit 2 Slice toaster - so those parts are all available off-the-shelf.
Other than that, this design needs some laser cut and bent metal, and some wooden feet. If you're able to bend the metal yourself and find some off-the-shelf feet, you could probably get the flat sheets of stainless steel laser cut and shipped for less than $100.
On the other hand, if one wanted a factory to do more demanding production processes, with more worker time or more machine setup - you're right that it would cost a good deal more.
On the subject of Dualit toasters: I've picked several up on the street over the years, cleaned them up and replaced a few parts (heating elements and/ or timers) and for about £10 effectively had a new toaster to give away/ sell. Dualit toasters aren't the best but I wholeheartedly recomend them from the point of view of DIY repair and maintainence. Our current model is 20 years old this year.
Yeah, the knob and the lack of automated pop-out made me think that they at least deeply evaluated dualit models. I have 2 dualits. Both inherited, both well over 20 years old. There really is not much to repair with these things.
I will say the OP’s design looks cool, it’s certainly an interesting exercise and portfolio item.
I’m like this with Mazzer grinders. It’s a niche kink, but I’m addicted to them.
People claim they break, but I’m yet to find one that wasn’t fixed fairly easily. With the intention of selling, I sand and paint them. But then they are so beautiful I can’t.
Best are the models ‘Major’ and above. The air vents look so good. Who needs to grind 20kgs of beans per day? Not me, but I can do this 5 or 6 times over.
The last one I picked up off the street had no problems whatsoever, except for the fact that the power cord had been cut off. Presumably someone had cut it off deliberately, which is infuriating - but hey, free toaster.
People usually do that to specifically indicate that it has a problem of some sort, so someone else doesn't assume it's working. Although with a toaster, just the act of flipping it around to cut the cord might dislodge whatever toast bits were causing it to smoke and such in the first place.
In my experience, desperate people cut the cords off of perfectly good appliances to sell the copper as scrap. Copper wire fetches something like ~$1/lb as scrap. It's infuriating when they cut it right at the connection to the appliance, making it too time consuming to test.
A label of "Broken" or "Works" or "Missing X" is so much more helpful for appliances left out.
Good point, if it was just sitting by the curb, a metal scraper might have just cut the cord instead of taking the whole thing. I've noticed that different scrapers have different criteria for what they'll take. Some will take the whole thing and break it down or just sell it as unsorted metal and others are more particular and will pick through and just take what they know they can get the most/easiest money for.
I once had to cut the power cord off of an appliance (a dehumidifier, in this case) as part of the process to claim a recall. They company didn't want me to ship back the entire unit (annoying, but understandable given the weight of it), but they wanted to ensure that it wouldn't still be used, since it was recalled for being a fire risk.
There are also services that can do the sheet metal bending for you if you have the cad designed. Of course shipping can get pricey, but I think it’s not prohibitively expensive.
I build things like this in similarly low quantity - you are probably looking at a grand or two toaster kit there, 95% of which is the custom parts - if it was done locally. The time for someone else to do it is what your paying for. It can be done exceptionally cheap in dollars if YOU do it, but you'll still pay with your time, and you'll still need machine access.
Cheap and easy "factory" quality is probably PCBWAY or similar in China - they do more than PCBs these days. Call it "prototype" budget - several hundred dollars of parts instead of thousands.
My experience is that PCBWay and similar usually offer better quality than doing it yourself. They get their costs down by automating everything they can. They're usually competitive at initial samples than many of the big houses too for essentially the same reason.
The other big insight here is that often making 50 doesn't cost much more than making 1, as much of the cost will be in programming and setup charges, not actually running the part. Sheet steel is pretty cheap, too.
OSH Cut (https://oshcut.com/) provides similar services. Their automated DFM analysis software is pretty impressive.
Perhaps more interesting to the audience here is that Caleb Chamberlain, the CEO (and a college acquaintance of mine), writes a series of articles about running the business for the trade publication The Fabricator. You can find them here: https://www.thefabricator.com/author/caleb-chamberlain. He covers both business (operations, strategy) and technical aspects of running a highly automated small job metal fabrication shop.
No, it wouldn't cost thousands. There are plenty of shops that specialize in prototypes and small pilot runs and there's nothing complicated about the design or material of this product.
It looks like off the shelf electronics with custom sheet metal parts.
Are far as low volume prototyping goes, sheet metal is as cost efficient as it gets for large metal parts. If you're sourcing from China, I'd estimate 500 bucks per prototype (with two sets in case one breaks).
Perfect in what sense? Kickstarter is useful if you're thinking of doing something capital-intensive and need money and customers beforehand. This comes with downsides: deadlines, shipping, cranky customers, etc.
This is a hobby project and there's nothing to suggest that the author wants to get in the business of selling toasters for a living... or that it would be wise for them to do so.
My parents literally have a toaster from the 70s that they still use. I have a toaster I bought 20 years ago. Toasters (usually) don't have e-waste. They are incredibly simple machines that are easy to buy without so much as a single diode. That's because they are really simply just a box with heating elements.
If you want to battle e-waste like the article suggests, maybe pick a product that doesn't already have a 50-year service life without the need for repairs.
Modern toasters are generally way less reliable than older toasters. I think it is very difficult to buy a new toaster today that you can be confident will have a 50-year lifespan.
>Modern toasters are generally way less reliable than older toasters. I think it is very difficult to buy a new toaster today that you can be confident will have a 50-year lifespan.
On the flip side, modern toasters cost $10 and last nearly as long. Not everything needs to last forever, but I've never had a modern toaster wear out. You only think the old ones were reliable because they cost enough that people would pay to have them repaired. That and a huge helping of survivorship bias.
> On the flip side, modern toasters cost $10 and last nearly as long.
This claim can only be meaningfully examined in like 60 years, minimum, and I have my doubts. I've yet to see a 70s era toaster die, and have personally watched four modern toasters go into a dumpster in the last 25 years. Old toasters were reliable because consumers of the day wouldn't tolerate disposable crap which informed every aspect of material selection and design.
And I've never seen a modern toaster die, even the cheapest of the cheap ones, but I have seen people replace them for aesthetic or feature related reasons. I can almost guarantee there are more 70s toasters in the landfill than there are 2000s ones. You're falling hard for survivorship bias.
You appear to be confusing first hand experience with some kind of theoretical misunderstanding of why shit gets thrown away. I used a 70s toaster in the 70s, know how their made, etc. Likewise I've closely examined a number of more modern toasters over the decades. Without exception newer models come with noticeably flimsier internal springs and locking components, thinner heating elements and cords, and less durable housing materials. If you're convinced you can engineer a product out of substandard parts and materials and expect durability to remain unaffected I might have a few questions.
Not everyone has a big American kitchen where you can try new appliances and not worry about space. I've been thinking about getting an air fryer but it's not an easy decision because I'd have to remove something else that I use; and I know others in the same position.
It wouldn't replace the toaster, because that fits on the windowsill and an air fryer would not.
Isn't an air fryer already the poster child of a "can't have a regular oven because I have no space in the kitchen, I'm renting the apartment, or both" appliance?
I'm lucky enough to have space for both. They do different jobs - there's overlap, obviously, but I don't bake bread in the airfryer and I don't cook chicken wings in the oven.
>Isn't an air fryer already the poster child of a "can't have a regular oven because I have no space in the kitchen, I'm renting the apartment, or both" appliance?
I suppose it's that for some people but everyone I know with one also has a fullsized oven. They are used for different purposes and often you don't want to heat up your whole oven to warm up some fries for 10 minutes.
I hear you—I also have a tiny kitchen, but there happened to be a carveout for a microwave, which we replaced with a toaster oven. But I grill all my bread on the frying pan, because it this is the objectively superior method. :)
>Also true, but how many people are buying toasters in 2025? I would bet that air fryers and toaster ovens outsell toasters 10:1.
More houses probably have toasters than all the others combined, but toasters don't really wear out all that often. You buy one for $10 when you setup your household and it lasts a decade or more.
Depends where you're from. Lots of people use toasters in the UK.
I'm due to buy a new one, because the supposedly decent one I bought less than 5 years ago isn't toasting properly, and either burns the toast or does nothing despite adjusting the dial.
I bought one in 2017, lasted 2 years before 1 of the heating elements died. We struggled along with 2/4 slices until we replaced it during covid with a 2 slice toaster. I dont really trust its going to last 50 years or whatever.
Another -often overlooked- benefit of buying used appliances, is that they have proven to be sturdy, and/or repairable.
Cheap temu-junk doesn't end up in thrift stores. Or, if it does, is easily filtered out. If I see a toaster that looks well used and/or aged, I can be certain it has at least proven to last a while and actual use.
It's also why I buy refurbished washing machine, refridgerators, etc: a refurbisher commonly won't refurbish stuff that's hard to repair: their economics prefer stuff that's sturdy, easy and cheap to repair. Win win win.
How do you give out a mains powered toaster with assembly instructions just like that?
My experience with diy electronics is that most kit designers are super wary of even giving instruction on mains anything...so as not to be held liable.
The British used to sell appliances without the plug attached - it was just bare wires. Buying the plug separately and knowing how to attach it was just a basic skill you were expected to know.
Not sure what changed, as I understand it they don't really do that anymore.
After going through all the appliances in my Grandad's house and re-wiring them to have the correct mains plug pinout I can understand the reason for that law!
It is actually quite difficult to wire up a UK mains plug really well!
Britain had two common standards for electrical outlets (BS 1363 and the older BS 546) plus a few less-common proprietary types. BS 1363 became the preferred standard for new installations in 1947, but the other types remained fairly common for decades. Appliances were not required to be supplied with a fitted plug until 1994, by which time BS 1363 had become dominant (if not quite ubiquitous).
Thank you for this context. I couldn't guess why would anyone sell a device that's supposed to be plugged without a plug. But if there were different standards it makes some sense.
> The British used to sell appliances without the plug attached - it was just bare wires. Buying the plug separately and knowing how to attach it was just a basic skill you were expected to know.
I'm having flashbacks to moving back to the US from the UK-o-sphere, and re-splicing plugs for appliances that supported both voltages.
My understanding is that selling appliances without plugs was done to make work for the electronic shops. People attaching their own plugs would seem to defeat the purpose.
Flashbacks to my ex's dad drilling the "missing" holes in his Ikea computer desk (pieces in the wrong place) makes me wonder if consumers are ready for DIY electronics. Love the concept and industrial look of it though.
Maybe a toaster made up of modular parts fitting together like Lego? They'd only fit one way so as to avoid assembly errors. Modular construction means that failing parts could be easily replaced.
Nonsense. We just need...about 10-15 USB-C laptop charging blocks rated at 100W each. I'm sure can find a 1:10 USB charge splitter (heck, maybe we just need to get creative with a few 1:4s) on Temu.
Or, in the pre-USB-PD days, you do this[0]. Only 30 USB ports required. I swear I remember this being a toaster instead of a hot plate, but I guess you would need around 300 USB ports for a toaster.
The concept of things like this is excellent, and I don't think that even at massive scale that you could get the average consumer to go along with it, unfortunately. Even if this thing is 30% more expensive than a non-repairable toaster, I bet many consumers would pick the cheaper one, despite it probably not being the long term financially optimal decision. There are valid reasons for it, but even people with means would skip over this, I'd imagine.
I know so many people in my life that can afford the better quality version of something, but instead opt for the cheaper, shittier version. When the shitty one dies, they get a new shitty one. I think it comes down to the short term impact of cost,which is a valid choice if the cost is the main constraint currently, but I repeatedly see this even in cases where the additional cost isn't an issue.
My ranting aside, this is an incredibly cool project and I'd love things like this in my life. Partially for the fact it's repairable and better for the environment, but partially because it's just neat to have a modular version of your household appliances.
> Even if this thing is 30% more expensive than a non-repairable toaster, I bet many consumers would pick the cheaper one, despite it probably not being the long term financially optimal decision.
Toasters are so cheap that I can't imagine repairing them could be cost effective (ie "financially optimal") unless you assign no value to your time. A new, good-enough toaster costs in the ballpark of $30. I love taking things apart and fixing them, but if the repair involves figuring out the part I have to order or soldering anything, it will take far more than $30 of my time.
This kind of project is for people who love to tinker. The economics do not make sense.
Repairability is not necessarily a factor here. A better toaster may need less repair over its lifetime, and thus be more cost effective over its lifetime than a cheaper toaster that will break sooner and probably make worse toast while it works.
If the economics make no sense, it’s only because the economics do not account for the cost to the environment. If the retail cost included reclamation, so that there was no waste at all, this kind of toaster would be the cheapest.
>I know so many people in my life that can afford the better quality version of something, but instead opt for the cheaper, shittier version. When the shitty one dies, they get a new shitty one.
Where I once lived in the midwest this was called the 'Kame-apart mentality'.
But I don't why this toaster can't cost more or less the same, and it comes with that non-purchasable accessory, bragging rights.
I have the same $30 no-name toaster that my now-ex purchased shortly after we were married in 2010. I open it up every few years to deep clean the crumbs, and I've changed the cord twice. Thing is an absolute tank.
I try to be a BIFL type of person and am willing to pay a premium for items that will last. Occasionally I hit up against something like this toaster, though, which runs completely counter to my expectations of what makes an indestructible kitchen appliance.
Replacing: usually not hard. Open the thing, unscrew the things holding the ends of the wire on, remove old cord, put new cord's wires in, screw down, close thing back up.
(Often "open the thing" and "close the thing" are the hardest - modern devices with plastic clipped on plastic and needing delicate shimming to pry stuff open)
Depending on the level of fix you're going for and where the break is, it can be anywhere from very simple and a few minutes, to much more involved.
If the break is actually at the plug end, you can often pop off the plug housing, trim the wire back, and do basically the same as above.
If the break is in the middle of the cord and you're not squeamish about the final fix having electrical tape on bare wire, then cut, strip, twist, tape, and ... don't fuck it up?
Yeah, the plug-only repair can only be done with a hardware store plug meant for that purpose, but they all look pretty chunky and ugly.
I think it’s better to harvest a whole new cord with moulded plug from some other dead appliance. Just make sure it’s a 15A one from a microwave or air conditioner or something— not just a lamp cord.
I would also personally not do this with an American ungrounded toaster, even though I have an EE degree and have done a lot of wire stripping, re-assembling wires, electrical tape, soldering, etc stuff.
With experience, there is nothing hard about changing a cord.
Without experience, it is harder. Removing the strain release requires mechanical sympathy; desoldering/soldering requires soldering skill; etc.
If it was your job, you’d pick it up in a day or few. If it is not your job, the learning curve is spread across the time between jobs and there’s relearning if the jobs are infrequent.
The problem as I see it is that 99% of toaster owners don’t know where to find the parts in this toaster and/or how to replace them.
That’s where I’d love to see more experimentation.
There’s a maker space in my old town where you can just take stuff and they’ll nerd out over helping you fix it. I wish there was that, but in a store format.
I want to live in a world where it’s just common parlance to say, “my toaster broke so I have to stop at the FixIt on my way home.
Yes yes, fixing it is too expensive to support this business model. I want to dream, okay?! Maybe a toaster like this makes it much more reasonable for cheaper appliances to be fixed by the summer student from high school who will learn invaluable skills for $15/hr. I would have killed to make min wage taking apart and doing basic repairs on stuff.
I mentor high school students who can CAD and fabricate plastic and metal parts. Surely we could fabricate more young people like that too.
I've toyed around with a similar idea. A pizza shop style manufacturing/fixit hub that would pick up and deliver locally manufactured items like that.
I even think that repairing items at a loss could work out, because you'd get valuable customer data on what items they used enough to break, and what parts broke, giving you an insight to make your own product lines that didn't break in that way.
I love this because it is making a practical, everyday item more accessible.
I know the toaster is not explicitly open source but I've been lamenting the fact that such an incredible amount of energy is spent making things more accessible but most of those things are not what 'normal people' actually need.
For example I think there is a greater need for more open source couches, bikes, houses, clothing, etc than the need for, say, software that helps us coordinate containerized web infrastructure (from a social good perspective)
I don’t mean this in an overly judgmental way, but how much utility is there to open source physical objects for most people if they don’t also include some sort of cost benefit? What’s the utility of an open source t-shirt you can make for $30 when a 5 pack of shirts from Walmart is $10? I like the idea in concept, but how does a normal person implement open source physical good production?
Companies pick it up and start selling the open source product. Since it's open anyone can fix it, modify it, upgrade it etc. Prices go down, both for devices and parts. Even if no new parts are available you still have giant used market.
How many different models/brands are on the market?
I estimate many hundreds, if not thousands.
Each model/brand comes with some degree of custom design and engineering, documentation, etc, etc. All for fragmented production runs, all to try to gain proprietary advantage.
Why do we need so many? We really don't actually, maybe just a dozen or two to address various niches.
If companies just picked up an open source design (which would be constantly improving, just as with software), they could save many of those costs, and potentially even more by scaling up volume of production.
Agreed on the social good of open source everyday items. I'd love to go to a build-it-yourself store/workshop where they have tools, materials, experts, and open source designs available.
The social good of open source software is at an inflection point. Stallman has always been right, but for decades it's been an 'yeah, but so what' situation. In today's consumer tech, surveillance is pervasive and manipulation getting more effective. Of course, that's only a problem if we lived in a fascist state where the government could force companies to work against our interests. Or lived in a network state run by a software company.
The only prudent options are moving to open source SW infrastructure running on personally controlled HW, or moving to an off-grid cabin in the woods. I'm incredibly grateful to the folks that create software like immich and jellyfin that allow me to degoogle w/o losing capabilities that I've come to rely on.
On the subject of toasters, if you want one that lasts then grab an old toastmaster or Sunbeam (the kind with the chrome sides) and spend a weekend doing a deep clean. They are held together with screws, not bent over tabs. You might be up against decades of baked on grease, so you'll have to break out the sodium hydroxide. You should probably replace the asbestos cord with a rubber one too. The toaster will then last the remainder of your life.
The main downside is that the slots are usually to narrow for bagels.
There aren't any infinite number of old toasters out there, but there's enough out there for everyone who wants to do the above.
I bought my Sunbeam in 2022 for $44, brand new. The secret is to buy them in Japan off the flea market sites. Apparently in my case the owner bought it have around as a piece of Americana. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Have you ever had one fail? Mine is the $10 plastic special from 20 years ago still toasting it's heart out.
The simpler a toaster is, the more likely it is to have eternal life. If you can buy a modern toaster that's just the knob and levers (no digital controls or whatever) then there's really no reason it won't last decades.
Tempting fate here but I don’t see any reason why my cheapo spring loaded toaster won’t give me another 10 years of life. There’s nothing to go wrong if used correctly.
Back when I was a kid in the 80s toasters would break because we shoved in hacked up pieces of bread or bagels where the food touched the elements and caught fire. And knives were poked inside to extract burnt remains from the heating elements.
I was shocked to see there are toasters with motorized lifting mechanisms. Is there any practical reason why this is better than a spring?
Actually toasters need to be able to switch off a huge current, which causes arcing. This arcing may slowly burn the PCB and desolder the metal contact mounted on the PCB. At least that's what happened with my last toaster after >5 years. Repaired it once, then after a year it broke again, but this time the PCB through hole was severely burned and it wasn't trivially fixable anymore.
Motorized mechanisms... hmm. Well, sometimes toasters pop up toasts too hard making them land on the floor.
This isn't really true. The heating elements are pretty much entirely a resistive load, which do not cause arcing when switched off. What desoldered your PCB might be the heat itself.
There was visible arcing every time the toaster popped up the toasts though. Now that you mention it, I'm kinda curious what exactly was causing it. (Too late of course.) It's not the first toaster I've seen that produced a flash of light every time it was done though.
> there any practical reason why this is better than a spring?
Depends what you mean by “practical”. Motorised avoid the jump scare and don’t risk launching light pieces out of the toaster.
I’d also assume (but don’t know as I’ve never been much of a toaster person) they can have a longer movement range and limit crumbing through lower acceleration stress.
I bought one from 1965 last year. Got it cheap on eBay. Seller said it didn't work. Seller just didn't know how to turn the knob on the side. I have to buy bread that isn't as wide as I was getting but it's totally worth it. Perfect toast every time.
got a 1930s toastmaster single slice for $30 on eBay. new carbon switch contacts, new nichrome wire, new cord. functions great and really looks nice. there are a lot of broken toasters in the world.
Even other more complex appliances get tossed too easily. My spouse’s desire to get rid of our 15yo microwave was replaced a while ago by the satisfaction of being able to keep it going. I’ve fixed it twice with a few bucks of parts (waveguide cover, door switch).
The thing is with something like this, if you're clever with the design you could make a device that packs flat, but isn't entirely flat.
So imagine you make the depth of the toaster greater than the height (easy with those feet). You put a quarter inch radius on the top plate, make the front and back plate a half an inch shorter so they nest inside the top plate in the box. And in fact if you put locking tabs on the two plates to keep the front from oil canning, those would also fit in if you flip the plates the right way 'round in the box.
You can tell from the bolts in the picture that there are already right angle bends in the sheet metal. So they're already using the third dimension just not with as much flair.
I had similar thoughts. It’s already quite handsome for a project of this nature but there’s still a lot of low hanging fruit for aesthetic improvement without negatively impacting other aspects.
I didn't even think about that. But when I started reading your response I had a sudden flash of cutting my forehead with a falling can of beans and suddenly wishing that cans weren't so sharp.
Sharp edges on appliances aren't that good either.
I tried to find pictures of boxes with rounded corners and they're all rounded on the vertical corners, like a box of mints. Or the polar opposite of a bread box with a lid with a >4" radius of curvature on the lid.
But look at the lid on a metal tin. The lip around the edge is often not a perfectly sharp bend. There's a small radius to it. So imagine the 'lid' was a single piece and the other sides were flat pieces that bolt together. If you size the pieces right they should fit into the 'lid'.
When I was a kid we had an two-slice electric "Side door Toaster" when we stayed in our caravan on holiday.
It had two spring-loaded fold-up doors on each side which you put the toast on. Then they folder vertically to put the toast near the elements. Half way through you pulled down the doors, flipped the slices over and toasted the other half.
This brings a smile to my face after just rough assembling laser cut sheet AL which forms the enclosure for a water circulating pump system I built. Same style of raw sheet metal and external screws. It just needs to work and look decent.
The control knob looks like the one off a Dualit toaster (their Classic model is also extremely repairable), as do the heating elements: https://www.dualit.com/collections/toasters
(I bought a Dualit after using one at a B&B many years ago -- I absolutely love it, though it really is a little overkill for making a few slices of toast each day. But it's a pleasure to use.)
This is excellent work. I like everything about this project - user assembly and repair (repair is much easier not only if the item is designed to be repaired, but if the user assembles it in the first place); flat pack for efficient shipping/storage; the overall focus on reuse and waste reduction. Perhaps, with more projects like this for a wider range of items, it'll be possible to pull manufacturers to a more right-to-repair, cradle-to-grave kind of world.
>Two participants changed their views about toasters in general because how toasters work was not as complicated as they first thought
We really do need to acknowledge that spending time taking things apart is a critical life skill. If you don't do it, you're forever a slave to buying new things.
Agreed. I take apart stuff that is dead, partly to see how it comes apart and gain skills in finding hidden screws(under stickers et al) or non-destructively popping plastic clips (80% success rate...).
But also once it's apart to see how it functions, what good design choices were made vs what was a bad choice because it broke. How could it be improved? Are all the design choices for the consumer? etc etc
Aside: I have a lot of HDD platters sitting around.
Air fryer dries out the entire bread to a coaster.
A toaster blasts the outside of the bread with massive radiation, with thin wire element that goes from dead cold off to 100% instantly, so that the outside gets toasted before the inside gets dry.
Air fryer is way too slow and the moving air makes it even worse.
Larger toaster-oven air fryers are even worse. Way too slow to heat up and way too much of the wattage wasted radiating away in other directions being just 2 or 4 quarts tubes inches away from the bread, and with splatter shields covering them besides, instead of a veritable cage of thin wire filaments all around the bread and right next to it.
I have not found the air fryer to cook in the same way as my toaster.
The AirFryer is essentially still an oven (at least mine is) with the heat coming predominantly from the top, leading to some form of "double baked" bread, which IMHO isn't the same as toasted (where the bread can be crisp on the outside but still soft in the middle)
I find this thread fascinating because even people's "long-term durable" idea of a toaster is way below my experiences and expectations. I would expect even cheap ones to last atleast 20 years. And whats with people replacing their toast cords? What are you doing with the cord that it doesn't last decades?
I wonder if this is a case where spending more money results in a worse product because the cheapest versions are essentially a solved design without any gimmicks or unproven design changes made to try justify a higher price/markup.
One obvious thing is that some people are probably toasting a slice a week and others half a dozen a day. The parts don’t time out, they wear out, so that really matters.
Another is that being cheap, there’s probably quite variable quality.
So it’s not that surprising that experiences vary.
"Wear" is exactly right; most toasters have a pretty crude design involving hot glowing wires, springs and an electromagnet that jolts the whole thing pretty violently when it's finished. Just the glowing wires will fail after a while, even if you make them extra thick.
(That said we have a basic model secondhand toaster that gets used multiple times a week for the past six years and it's still fine... although some of the glow wires don't work).
Toasters are one of those appliances you unplug when not in use (classically, anything that gets hot must be unplugged when not in use or supervised). They are a large source of fires, my mother knows someone who just lost their house to a toaster fire. So all that cord manipulation can take a toll on it.
Just put the toaster behind an additional switch? Extension coords with switches (either one for the whole strip or one switch per plug) are readily available. And the biggest heat generators (stovetop and and oven) can typically not be unplugged so clearly heating elements can be made relatively safe.
Sure but that's not really what people want in their homes. Switched appliance circuits were never a thing in the USA likely because it's not hard to pull a plug that's literally staring you in the face. So pragmatically it just evolved this way and honestly it's not a big deal.
You bring up a good point in that at one point it is also about ensuring the quality of materials and construction processes so that everything lasts by default. On top of that, repairability is another factor. I have a fancy kettle that I am sure will not last five years, and I regret buying it.
Assuming this comment is made in good faith, it's referring to the fact that it can be delivered in a "flat package", so to speak, and has to be assembled by the customer. Flat being a relative term, rather than a specific width.
If you want repairability then you can buy a Dualit. They are unreasonably expensive but very easy to fix. Mine is 25 years old. I replaced one of the elements a few years ago. It's held together with screws and bolts - totally user-repairable.
Fun project, nice write-up, but not solving a problem that needs to be solved.
I recently replaced the timer dial in a Dualit. Super easy since wires have crimped connectors. The replacement part could have been cheaper (~15% of new toaster)
The goal of reducing e-waste is commendable. I really like the idea that if people built their own toaster then they will know how it works and they will feel more comfortable repairing it if something goes wrong with it.
That being said I would have started a project like this with researching why toasters end up in the trash. Is it because they break? (and if so which part?) Or is it because people get bored with the old design and want something new which fits their kitchen decoration better?
My suspicion is that there are garbage toasters not built to last. And then there are good quality toasters where the toaster probably could serve for decades. Maybe even hundreds of years with part replacements. But changes of taste, and design is what limits the lifetime of the second kind of toasters in reality not breakage.
It's a fantastic idea and I love the concept of user assembly and repair of household appliances.
I think the author has done something wonderful and thoughtful here.
However, I think a toaster is probably the least complex and least risky kitchen appliance. There are quite a few kitchen appliances that I would not feel comfortable using if I had assembled them myself. Anything with spinning blades for example. Also I don't think anyone should be assembling a flat pack microwave, where doing it wrong could end in radiation leakage.
But still, it's a great idea for less risky things. I look forward to open source hair dryers. Those things burn out in no time
We had an old toaster which was swinging plates to hold toast against the elements as a central core. Want both sides toasted? flip the toast. It was a 1920s design. Very functional, few parts to break (springs, hinges mostly) and it burned toast very effectively. It also did not accrue crumbs the way modern sealed-box toasters do.
I think if I was making a toaster I'd be looking to this model rather than the slot model, simply because its simpler. Or, placing toast on a flat bed with a reflecting heat plate behind the element. That would work for far thicker toastable objects, and also refreshing pita &c.
What I don't like about Thomas Thwaites's Toaster project is that I feel the end product intentionally looks bad. I feel the artist could have chosen different paths and could have created a practical toaster just with a little bit of care. The artist just choose to not do that because if the toaster would look practical and usable that would undermine their message about globalism, and the supposed impossibility of the task. Because in a project like this "man sets out to build a toaster, and actually succeeds" does not sounds good. And that just feels like learned helplessness.
He's an artist, not an engineer. I'm willing to believe that the toaster genuinely is his best effort. I know that I could do far better, but I have a lifetime of experience in herding atoms. I suspect that my attempt at oil painting would be equally risible.
But also, there is no clear boundary between being an artist and being an engineer. There are artist who show great mastery of engineering in their art work. Either because they studied engineering, or because they picked up enough relevant skills practically to achieve what they want to achieve.
I have a particular taste and not everyone will agree what is and isn’t art. But i consider for example David C. Roy‘s wooden kinetic sculptures both art and engineering. Similarly Jacob Tonski’s Balance from Within (a victorian sofa balancing on a single leg) incorporates both art and excelent engineering. Or Thea Ulrich’s aerial moon sculpture. Where the physical manufacturing of the sculpture is the engineering component, while the aerial dance performed on it is the art component. In each of these they could have said “hey I’m just an artist, you can’t possibly expect my thing to work” or “hey i’m an engineer, you can’t possibly expect my thing to have artistic value”. But they were not satisfied with either of those, and pushed themselves, their art and their craft until they got something wonderfull.
Where there is a will there is a way. And where the will is to make the object look shitty, you will get that result. Which is fine. But i have heard people draw the conclusion from his work that somehow this is the best anyone can do. And that is not fine with me.
I would definitely buy one, assuming there was some guarantee on parts availability "for the lifespan of the company up to X decades" or some similarly long time.
I would doubly do so if the design were open-source.
I would triply do so if I could have all my new home appliances this way. I tossed my last fridge and my last washing machine over parts which would have been in the single-digit dollars to manufacture.
If the author is not commercializing this, the design and instructions should be open-sourced (and, ideally, advertised to a Chinese discount company).
I find it incredibly frustrating if something breaks and my experience from attempting to repair it is that it's impossible to disassemble. I'm currently sitting with a broken coffee grinder that I can take apart with a brick :(
I frequently dream of openly licensed appliances that are repairable!
I guess I'm the only one who thinks it's just not a very good design. Right off the bat there is no excuse for all those screws, and those trays block all the radiation from the elements from reaching the bread! It's a terrible design for accomplishing the task.
Screws are the king of parts count, manufacturing process (for the screw itself, and it's nut, as well as then using the screw), and falling apart later.
Having the thing be held together by screws is not necessarily the problem, it's having so many instead of having interlocking pieces that need only a couple screws, or maybe none.
The alternative doesn't have to be glue or rivets or welding, just folds and tabs and slots.
And some amount of welding or rivets isn't necessarily anti-repair either, it just depends what, where, & why.
Cool project, also curious about the economics. Have been thinking recently with the increasing quality and affordability of 3d printers and assistive benefits of LLM's it would be cool to basically have the equivalent of lego builds kits for all kinds of consumer goods.
flatpack | ˈflatˌpak |
noun
1 Electronics a package for an integrated circuit consisting of a rectangular sealed unit with a number of horizontal metal pins protruding from its sides.
Is there good data on goods that are the largest contributors to e-waste?
A toaster is a great test case for learning about repairable design, but I can only imagine most people will only buy on average 1 or 2 toasters in their life.
Framework seems like they're tackling laptops, which to my gut feel like they're largely responsible for consumer waste.
Not sure where you people are getting these multi decade toasters, I need to replace mine every 5-10 years. Obviously not the worst case of e-waste either way but 1 or 2 seems like a severe underestimate but that could just be my own experience.
Usually a heating element dies or similar. If it were easier to replace the heating elements I'd think it'd help reduce waste, but as you and others have noted, that wasn't the point of the article.
The first was a two-slice Kenmore (RIP Sears) which still works. It cost $20 and was purchased close to 25 years ago. I only used this a couple times a week and now the usage is very sporadic, but it always works when I need it to.
The second was a Cuisinart toaster oven, which is not exactly a toaster but has ended up being our primary toaster. I have no idea how old it is since we bought it at a garage sale for $5 about 5 years ago. This is used almost daily, sometimes multiple times a day, and for a lot more than just toast.
I can see buying one more toaster, meaning a toaster oven, in my life, but it will probably be to get new functionality (e.g., air fryer, larger capacity, etc) instead of replacing something broken.
I, too, would bet that your Cuisinart is likely to outlast you and me. That's what I have, and it's been in daily use for close to a decade now. Other than the silkscreened buttons losing their labels (easy fix: cut out some clear labels made with the P-Touch) it's as good as when it was new. We like it so much that we still kept it when we got a drawer-based air fryer 2 years ago which is my favorite kitchen purchase of all time.
We have a toaster with a built in FM radio. That thing is pushing 15 years now. Obviously adding an FM radio to a toaster is idiotic and we don't use that feature, but the toaster part just works. It was a Christmas present from my wife's employer, so I can't imagine it being all that expensive.
But I see your point, we've had multiple other toasters, some toasted themselves to death by melting their own plastic casing.
The saddest failure was a Krupp coffee maker, that thing was amazing, made the best coffee. Sadly I melted the power cord on a stove top. This was before I had a proper set of tools, so I gave up trying to remove the "security" screws, that would have let me open it and replace the cord.
I'd say mobile phones are worse, many more produced so even considering phone size. And harder to take apart even though laptops are getting worse. But this is all anecdotal, don't have any hard info.
Tech thats not getting properly recycled is LCD Monitors, was CRT's but they became profitable to mine for copper and gold.
People are too sensitive to scratches on their screen and just throw it out. Once a monitor hits an eWaste bin that only gets worse.
But the much larger problem with eWaste is packaging. Theres more packaging, with different grades of plastic, than there is shit inside of it that can be repaired or recycled.
Phones are collected and recycled. Batteries are collected, sorted and recycled. Ancient Desktop computers are often marked as scrap, "recycled" to a developing country where they are suddenly reborn as... desktop computers and live a third or fourth life. Otherwise desktops are fairly recoverable, they go straight to "ex government" style stores, ebay, what have you.
Laptops are pretty bad too, because of the integrated screen.
Hard drives, some people like to destroy instead of wipe for security reasons. But the metals are fairly recoverable.
Networking gear tends to live on in someones home or study lab, or it goes to developing nations.
I actually find that appliances were quite unlikely to even hit an ewaste bin, likely going to landfill instead.
For contributors to e-waste in terms of quantity of items, I'd assume somewhere in the top 10 you'd for sure find vape pens, cell phones, tablets, and all manner of computers.
By weight there is probably a lot of large appliances, since their PCBs and chips are so unreliable, usually only lasting a couple of years, and people feel like suckers spending the ~$500-700 of labor and parts (mostly labor) that every repair costs on these, both because they feel like 'this one must be an especially bad design, so maybe I should buy a new one / a different brand' and because it seems insane to spend like 70-100% of the purchase price on a repair. So the whole thing is chucked in the landfill. Of course, the replacement will be a P.O.S. too, but what choice do we have?
1-2? I'm on 6 or 7, and I'm hoping to get another few decades in. I've spent as little as $10, and as much as $50. When the last one died, I gave serious consideration to the Dualit, but the slots aren't long enough for my usual bread. So I went with Wirecutter's $30 recommendation and fully expect it to die within the decade as well.
Admittedly, I eat toast for breakfast at least 340 days a year, but I do sort of wish someone would sell a toaster that lasts so I could quit putting crappy ones in the landfill.
Probably a lot in generic household appliances - washing machines, microwaves etc. They've all get electronics in these days.
In my limited experience, things that get hot and or wet as part of their function tends to break more often than those that don't. So basically anything in your kitchen or laundry.
PAT isn't exactly a particularly sophisticated benchmark.
But then again, toasters aren't exactly idiot proof (neither are most things in the kitchen) so I guess as long as that case has a low impedance path to the earth pin, and there aren't any exposed single insulated wires, I'd also be happy.
Then I saw the PAT, looked that up, and it is not near equivalent. Here is a 20 year old version of UL 1026 Electric Household Cooking and Food Serving Appliances for comparison.
I designed an automotive part that is fabricated out of sheet metal and this article resonates with me because while the completed product looks very simple, the process of getting to the completed product is very complex and has dozens of iterations of designs, failed prototypes, mistakes, etc.
That's what is so infuriating when my products get copied by sellers from China or similar - they are taking all of the hundreds of hours of work that I put into a design and skipping that, going straight to the easy part of producing the finalized part.
Making the thing is the easy part - making up the thing is the hard part!
You could split a TV into a couple parts, but I'm skeptical about how much that would improve repairability over the status quo. If you're able to fix those parts, you can get the TV open.
Getting some manufacturers to use standardized control boards and power supplies, and listing them in the spec sheet, would do a lot more than any ease of access.
My parents are using an electric hand mixer that is 45+ years old. It's still fine.
Products of the past did last longer because they weren't as cost-optimised yet.
It seems similar to the story of the vastly over-build Volvo red block engines.
Yet, we don't live in a (global) society that cares about living consciously, to build things that last. If something lasts, we don't consume. And that's our true purpose. To consume the things that are produced.
Do we need 20+ brands of peanut butter? Why do brands even exist? Why can't we just but 'peanut butter'?
The word and our society is actually so strange, if you really think about this. By the way, did I mentioned yet, I really miss David Graeber?
MY first job (in the last 70s) was working in a TV rental store doing small item repair. In particular, repairing toasters was probably my #1 activity. Essentially the failure was nearly always the same -- one of the three toasting elements failed, and so I would replace all three elements, and the customer got a working toaster back.
It was never clear to me (at least I don't recall it being clear) why the heating elements failed. It could be from someone sticking a hard tool into the toaster when trying to remove a small item (and breaking the element). It might be that a piece of bread gets stuck to a portion of the element and catches fire at that point -- maybe that weakens the element at that point. This was, of course, long before toasters got electronics in them!
The heating elements in a toaster are essentially the same as the heating elements in a lightbulb. Eventually, enough heat cycling, the metal fatigues or melts at a certain point, the circuit opens, and your toaster stops lighting up the room. Of course, trauma is always an option too.
that's strictly not true, at least for many segments. my 1960s Kitchenaid mixer has been used since..the 60s, and if you buy a new Kitchenaid today, don't expect that plastic gear to last very long if you actually take it out and use it.
I found an 1969 ad for a kitchenaid mixer. It's cost $125 in 1969 dollars. That's over $1000 in todays dollars. You're comparing a mixer that costs half as much. And, believe me, fixing the skimp issues that kitchenaid introduced to give the execs a bigger bonus can be fixed for a lot less than $500.
Furthermore, you probably can buy a mixer for $1000 that has a similar chance of surviving 60 years for $1000.
I had a 60s kitchenaid and it was super loud, possibly over 90 db. Additionally, it had square corners where stuff got stuck, couldn't handle some solids well, and to wash it you often had to remove the blade and gasket.
One interesting thing was a gimmick about heating soup with the blender using solely friction.
I eventually bought a modern plastic refurb which has been a dream. I do think it is a shame that it won't last 50 years.
A Kitchenaid K5-A mixer cost $159 in 1960. That would be $1,700 today. I'll bet you can get someone to make you a replacement metal gear for something less than $1,000.
Come on, this is basically what a Dualit Classic is. I really don't see this is much more than an exercise. The problem is asking people to spend 5x to 10x the price of cheap mass produced unmaintainable tat.
I feel that the real thing that this guy is getting at, which I am also a fan of, is "How could we as a society, shift the culture away from disposability and consumption to sustainability and repair?"
As someone without all the answers, it seems like only a heavyhanded degree of regulation could have any chance (e.g. high taxes on whole categories of devices with low/no repairability). Though perhaps in a trade apocalypse situation that may happen sooner than we think (such as total breakdown of trade with China) perhaps repair will suddenly be relevant. This is why, as I understand it, basically every car owner in Cuba is also a mechanic.
Of course, they had the benefit of having 1950s cars when trade barriers went up. We've got houses full of devices built and purchased with the understanding that you throw away anything with a plug or a battery within 5 years max!
Probably not intended as such but "actual female woman" is also a bit disrespectful, since it implies that trans women aren't "actual female women", why not use cis? It gets your point across and doesn't imply anything else.
Because some people don't use that term to describe themselves either, even if that is what they biologically are. CIS is a pretty good term, because it's very technically correct. Sadly many have been on the receiving end of debates where it is used a a slur, and considers it hurtful.
Personally I mostly see it used in anger, so I wouldn't use it, unless doing a biology report.
It also has the weird problem that you mostly see it in a "do you identify as cis", which I at least don't... I am cis, but that's not question. This leads to some really weird situation where you have teams of larger middle age straight, and cis, men, but you have one or two that answer that they don't identify as such.
This is very much off topic, but I'd personally I'd prefer that we just stop labeling people. Just use their name, it's fine, you don't need to know or even understand the gender of the person who makes a repairable flatpack toaster. It's an cool project regardless of who made it.
I do think it matters that people default to male. I wouldn’t want people to keep calling me “she” because I happen to be in a woman-dominated field. I understand why one would find this grating.
There's a video.[1]
- Toast is toasted on one end, un-toasted at the other.
- Control is just a timer, so the second time you use it twice in succession it will be hot at the start and will need a shorter time, which you have to figure out.
Check out the Sunbeam Radiant Control Toaster (1949-1980), which is still considered the peak of toaster design.[2] It's repairable, too. Now replicating that would be a good project.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKbUNDPXCWk
[2] https://www.theverge.com/22801890/sunbeam-radiant-control-to...
[2] is remarkably interesting:
- "And that mechanism doesn’t just wear out after nearly three-quarters of a century of use: there’s a single screw underneath the crumb tray to adjust the tension of the wire, and it alone is enough to bring many aging toasters back to life."
edit: There's other HN threads about it,
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29342936 (232 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38868753 (76 comments)
Thanks for that video.
From the video, the heating elements look to be "flat wire toaster heater elements", maybe from made-in-china.com [0]?
I also see some flat heating elements as Waring replacements on Amazon [1].
[0] https://zgeycom.en.made-in-china.com/product/LOEGudIBnbkz/Ch...
[1] https://amazon.com/Waring-027901-Heating-Element-Toasters/dp...?
I also found a "How it's made" clip for a Rowlett toaster [0]. It looks like those heating elements are also available for sale [1].
[0] https://youtube.com/watch?v=SFptFIiRsCg
[1] https://www.ebay.com/itm/140421765340
You kids and your new fangled technology.
This is peak design:
https://www.moose-r-us.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/getoas...
(not my exact my model)
I inhereted it from my grandma and she still go full.
Don't walk away because that toast is burnt FAST.
I'd be worried about asbestos in a toaster of that vintage.
That's what gives it that nice tangy flavor.
In the photo of the Sunbeam, it's also got un-toasted areas
Having mended a few toasters in my time I salute this effort. Cheap toasters are very difficult to take apart and mend. The toasting mechanism on this one looks great.
Cheap toasters only last a few years before dying. Usually because someone jams it up then clumsily unjams it while damaging the element.
After going through a few toasters in quick succession I finally bought an expensive Dualit one. It's still going 25 years later. I changed the timer mechanism once which was a joy, and you can easily buy spare parts.
The Dualit cost over 10 times more than the cheap toasters though. I don't regret that purchase though and it has actually saved me money over the years and made much less landfill.
Funnily enough the toaster in this article looks quite like the Dualit. I don't suppose that is a coincidence!
Dualit "Classic" toasters are the only toasters I'm aware of with heating elements that can be replaced. Every cheap toaster I've owned has died from the wire in one of the heating elements burning out. The only two toasters I'd buy these days are a Dualit or a vintage Sunbeam Radiant Control toaster. Dualit wins for the modern slot widths though.
My Italian Milantoast has everything replaceable as well: https://www.milantoast.com/en/products/spare-parts/
For €400 I would hope so.
Not even a bagel mode (which is also useful for baguette-style bread)!
Having recently done a timer replacement on a Dualit, I think that might literally be a Dualit timer module. Looks identical in the packing box photo. It wouldn’t surprise me if the heating elements were the same as well (haven’t checked) though those are probably more commonly available as generic items.
They look the same to me: https://www.dualit.com/collections/toaster-spares
It seems slightly disingenuous to use the repair parts from a toaster on the market without crediting them.
I was given a Dualit Classic Newgen 4 slice toaster as a wedding gift. It was without a doubt the WORST toaster I have ever used. I've never been so annoyed by a product before. In fact, it annoyed me so much that I ended up returning it and replacing it with a cheap toaster that is 10% of the price and functions better.
I'll list the fatal flaws with it in descending order of importance:
1) Unlike basically every single other toaster on the market, it does not have a cage or other mechanism that closes on to the bread slices and keeps them an equal distance from the heating element. This results in at least one part of every single slice of bread getting burned to a crisp, and at least one part of every single slice not being toasted at all. After using this toaster for a week, I couldn't believe how any engineer at Dualit could release this. Do they even use their product? It is a catastrophic oversight.
2) The timer is an analogue mechanism, much like an egg timer. I found that there was an extremely thin margin in which the toast is toasted. Anything under that and it's not, anything over that and it's burned beyond recognition. I cannot even count the number of times the smoke alarm in my house went off because my toaster burned my bread to a crisp. Another catastrophic oversight.
3) Because the timer is analogue, when you turn it it makes a clicking noise as an egg timer does. This means it's very easy to mistake the toaster for being on, when in fact it's not. The number of times I went to make toast, only to realise a few minutes later that the toaster was unplugged for some reason and my bread was still bread is unreal. I'd then end up ruining my scrambled eggs by waiting another few mins for toast.
4) The toaster allows you to spin a dial to choose how many heating elements to use. This is a pain in the ass. It's so easy to forget about, until you go to pick up your toast and find out that only 1 and a half slices have been toasted of the 4 you put in there.
The sad thing is, the toaster looked awesome. We also have a Dualit kettle (which is great) and it matched. Unfortunately they prioritised aesthetics over function, and it shows. If you want a toaster that requires you to go through a checklist of switches to check before operating, then requires constant supervision to avoid burning your toast, and will still give you burnt sections of toast anyway despite all of that, I could not recommend a better candidate.
My toaster broke a week ago. I tried repairing it and found out exactly what the post says: almost impossible without breaking it (or seriously bending parts just to take them apart). After realizing that I wouldn't be able to, I decided to buy a used one, but couldn't find any on offer around my area that looked in good enough shape. Ended up paying 25€ for a new one, which will arrive by post any time soon. I find the whole experience extremely unsatisfying and would love more of this (repairable and self-assembly-able electric appliances).
I hope the comments here don't end up quibbling about the practicality or economics of this toaster specifically, because the point here is the process. This project involves reverse engineering, designing from scratch, manufacturing, developing beginner-accessible documentation, and performing real-world user studies. We should be encouraging people to do more of this!
But I am actually interested in the economics! The author mentions sending her designs out to a factory - I would expect this is astonishingly expensive for a single prototype! Wouldn’t that be thousands of dollars? Is anyone familiar how to get good factory-made parts like this at DIY budgets?
Not that that takes away from the article at all. This project has many merits, and although cost may not be one of them, it’s still interesting!
It all depends on what you ask the factory to do.
This project seems to take its heating elements, clockwork timer and knob from a classic Dualit 2 Slice toaster - so those parts are all available off-the-shelf.
Other than that, this design needs some laser cut and bent metal, and some wooden feet. If you're able to bend the metal yourself and find some off-the-shelf feet, you could probably get the flat sheets of stainless steel laser cut and shipped for less than $100.
On the other hand, if one wanted a factory to do more demanding production processes, with more worker time or more machine setup - you're right that it would cost a good deal more.
On the subject of Dualit toasters: I've picked several up on the street over the years, cleaned them up and replaced a few parts (heating elements and/ or timers) and for about £10 effectively had a new toaster to give away/ sell. Dualit toasters aren't the best but I wholeheartedly recomend them from the point of view of DIY repair and maintainence. Our current model is 20 years old this year.
Yeah, the knob and the lack of automated pop-out made me think that they at least deeply evaluated dualit models. I have 2 dualits. Both inherited, both well over 20 years old. There really is not much to repair with these things.
I will say the OP’s design looks cool, it’s certainly an interesting exercise and portfolio item.
I’m like this with Mazzer grinders. It’s a niche kink, but I’m addicted to them.
People claim they break, but I’m yet to find one that wasn’t fixed fairly easily. With the intention of selling, I sand and paint them. But then they are so beautiful I can’t.
Best are the models ‘Major’ and above. The air vents look so good. Who needs to grind 20kgs of beans per day? Not me, but I can do this 5 or 6 times over.
The last one I picked up off the street had no problems whatsoever, except for the fact that the power cord had been cut off. Presumably someone had cut it off deliberately, which is infuriating - but hey, free toaster.
>Presumably someone had cut it off deliberately
People usually do that to specifically indicate that it has a problem of some sort, so someone else doesn't assume it's working. Although with a toaster, just the act of flipping it around to cut the cord might dislodge whatever toast bits were causing it to smoke and such in the first place.
In my experience, desperate people cut the cords off of perfectly good appliances to sell the copper as scrap. Copper wire fetches something like ~$1/lb as scrap. It's infuriating when they cut it right at the connection to the appliance, making it too time consuming to test.
A label of "Broken" or "Works" or "Missing X" is so much more helpful for appliances left out.
Good point, if it was just sitting by the curb, a metal scraper might have just cut the cord instead of taking the whole thing. I've noticed that different scrapers have different criteria for what they'll take. Some will take the whole thing and break it down or just sell it as unsorted metal and others are more particular and will pick through and just take what they know they can get the most/easiest money for.
I once had to cut the power cord off of an appliance (a dehumidifier, in this case) as part of the process to claim a recall. They company didn't want me to ship back the entire unit (annoying, but understandable given the weight of it), but they wanted to ensure that it wouldn't still be used, since it was recalled for being a fire risk.
There are also services that can do the sheet metal bending for you if you have the cad designed. Of course shipping can get pricey, but I think it’s not prohibitively expensive.
I build things like this in similarly low quantity - you are probably looking at a grand or two toaster kit there, 95% of which is the custom parts - if it was done locally. The time for someone else to do it is what your paying for. It can be done exceptionally cheap in dollars if YOU do it, but you'll still pay with your time, and you'll still need machine access.
Cheap and easy "factory" quality is probably PCBWAY or similar in China - they do more than PCBs these days. Call it "prototype" budget - several hundred dollars of parts instead of thousands.
My experience is that PCBWay and similar usually offer better quality than doing it yourself. They get their costs down by automating everything they can. They're usually competitive at initial samples than many of the big houses too for essentially the same reason.
The other big insight here is that often making 50 doesn't cost much more than making 1, as much of the cost will be in programming and setup charges, not actually running the part. Sheet steel is pretty cheap, too.
SendCutSend offer surprisingly inexpensive sheet metal parts in single quantities.
https://sendcutsend.com/
I have ordered stuff here: https://www.schaeffer-ag.de/en/
OSH Cut (https://oshcut.com/) provides similar services. Their automated DFM analysis software is pretty impressive.
Perhaps more interesting to the audience here is that Caleb Chamberlain, the CEO (and a college acquaintance of mine), writes a series of articles about running the business for the trade publication The Fabricator. You can find them here: https://www.thefabricator.com/author/caleb-chamberlain. He covers both business (operations, strategy) and technical aspects of running a highly automated small job metal fabrication shop.
Whoa that looks really fun.
Great website, love the video demo of using the siet.
They're a great service. I've done some laser cut aluminum bits for projects, and the quality is fantastic.
No, it wouldn't cost thousands. There are plenty of shops that specialize in prototypes and small pilot runs and there's nothing complicated about the design or material of this product.
It looks like off the shelf electronics with custom sheet metal parts.
Are far as low volume prototyping goes, sheet metal is as cost efficient as it gets for large metal parts. If you're sourcing from China, I'd estimate 500 bucks per prototype (with two sets in case one breaks).
Isn’t this the perfect type of project/product for Kickstarter?
Perfect in what sense? Kickstarter is useful if you're thinking of doing something capital-intensive and need money and customers beforehand. This comes with downsides: deadlines, shipping, cranky customers, etc.
This is a hobby project and there's nothing to suggest that the author wants to get in the business of selling toasters for a living... or that it would be wise for them to do so.
> sending his designs out
sending her designs out
Thank you. It's too late to edit, but goodness am I embarrassed now. Very sorry, Kasey!
I've taken the liberty of doing a s/his/her/ in your comment above; I hope that's ok.
(Edit: er, I mean s/ his/ her/. The thises are all intact.)
The target, though, is particularly bad.
My parents literally have a toaster from the 70s that they still use. I have a toaster I bought 20 years ago. Toasters (usually) don't have e-waste. They are incredibly simple machines that are easy to buy without so much as a single diode. That's because they are really simply just a box with heating elements.
If you want to battle e-waste like the article suggests, maybe pick a product that doesn't already have a 50-year service life without the need for repairs.
Modern toasters are generally way less reliable than older toasters. I think it is very difficult to buy a new toaster today that you can be confident will have a 50-year lifespan.
>Modern toasters are generally way less reliable than older toasters. I think it is very difficult to buy a new toaster today that you can be confident will have a 50-year lifespan.
On the flip side, modern toasters cost $10 and last nearly as long. Not everything needs to last forever, but I've never had a modern toaster wear out. You only think the old ones were reliable because they cost enough that people would pay to have them repaired. That and a huge helping of survivorship bias.
> On the flip side, modern toasters cost $10 and last nearly as long.
This claim can only be meaningfully examined in like 60 years, minimum, and I have my doubts. I've yet to see a 70s era toaster die, and have personally watched four modern toasters go into a dumpster in the last 25 years. Old toasters were reliable because consumers of the day wouldn't tolerate disposable crap which informed every aspect of material selection and design.
And I've never seen a modern toaster die, even the cheapest of the cheap ones, but I have seen people replace them for aesthetic or feature related reasons. I can almost guarantee there are more 70s toasters in the landfill than there are 2000s ones. You're falling hard for survivorship bias.
You appear to be confusing first hand experience with some kind of theoretical misunderstanding of why shit gets thrown away. I used a 70s toaster in the 70s, know how their made, etc. Likewise I've closely examined a number of more modern toasters over the decades. Without exception newer models come with noticeably flimsier internal springs and locking components, thinner heating elements and cords, and less durable housing materials. If you're convinced you can engineer a product out of substandard parts and materials and expect durability to remain unaffected I might have a few questions.
Also true, but how many people are buying toasters in 2025? I would bet that air fryers and toaster ovens outsell toasters 10:1.
Still, I think this is a great portfolio piece. The designer should keep going, and amass a little collection of simple repairable appliances.
Not everyone has a big American kitchen where you can try new appliances and not worry about space. I've been thinking about getting an air fryer but it's not an easy decision because I'd have to remove something else that I use; and I know others in the same position.
It wouldn't replace the toaster, because that fits on the windowsill and an air fryer would not.
Isn't an air fryer already the poster child of a "can't have a regular oven because I have no space in the kitchen, I'm renting the apartment, or both" appliance?
I'm lucky enough to have space for both. They do different jobs - there's overlap, obviously, but I don't bake bread in the airfryer and I don't cook chicken wings in the oven.
>Isn't an air fryer already the poster child of a "can't have a regular oven because I have no space in the kitchen, I'm renting the apartment, or both" appliance?
I suppose it's that for some people but everyone I know with one also has a fullsized oven. They are used for different purposes and often you don't want to heat up your whole oven to warm up some fries for 10 minutes.
But that's the whole point.
A toaster does only one thing and takes up space.
An air fryer or toaster oven does lots of things, and also makes toast.
That's why toaster oven makes very little sense for anyone except if they have a "big American kitchen" and want to fill their countertop.
yeah, our toast is toasted in a frying pan.
Tiny kitchen here. I'd like to try an air-fryer, but for now my one table-top appliance is a instant pot. It is used daily.
I hear you—I also have a tiny kitchen, but there happened to be a carveout for a microwave, which we replaced with a toaster oven. But I grill all my bread on the frying pan, because it this is the objectively superior method. :)
Every single kitchen I've ever visited in the UK has a toaster and a kettle. Just because things aren't popular in the US...
Are air fryers and toaster ovens not popular in the UK?
If you have one of those, they (can) replace your toaster.
>Also true, but how many people are buying toasters in 2025? I would bet that air fryers and toaster ovens outsell toasters 10:1.
More houses probably have toasters than all the others combined, but toasters don't really wear out all that often. You buy one for $10 when you setup your household and it lasts a decade or more.
Depends where you're from. Lots of people use toasters in the UK.
I'm due to buy a new one, because the supposedly decent one I bought less than 5 years ago isn't toasting properly, and either burns the toast or does nothing despite adjusting the dial.
I bought one in 2017, lasted 2 years before 1 of the heating elements died. We struggled along with 2/4 slices until we replaced it during covid with a 2 slice toaster. I dont really trust its going to last 50 years or whatever.
Ours died and I just bought a new 4 slice toaster to replace it.
I haven't seen a toaster oven big enough for my family, and we otherwise have an excellent oven with convection features.
How big is your family? A normal Breville toaster oven can hold 4 slices. And there are bigger ones.
Me! I bought one last year.
I just bought one today, heh.
While not discrediting your observation, what would be an example that could be investigated by a small team?
I was thinking about an electronic toothbrush, or a kettle?
Definitely something with parts that fall. I wouldn't do a kettle because those are toaster simple.
An electric toothbrush would be good. There are a few parts that could fall, the battery in particular.
If you want to battle e-waste, buy a used toaster.
Another -often overlooked- benefit of buying used appliances, is that they have proven to be sturdy, and/or repairable.
Cheap temu-junk doesn't end up in thrift stores. Or, if it does, is easily filtered out. If I see a toaster that looks well used and/or aged, I can be certain it has at least proven to last a while and actual use.
It's also why I buy refurbished washing machine, refridgerators, etc: a refurbisher commonly won't refurbish stuff that's hard to repair: their economics prefer stuff that's sturdy, easy and cheap to repair. Win win win.
Have a privileg toploader - happily doing its chores. Its all the years old.
I can walk and quibble about economics at the same time.
[dead]
How do you give out a mains powered toaster with assembly instructions just like that?
My experience with diy electronics is that most kit designers are super wary of even giving instruction on mains anything...so as not to be held liable.
The British used to sell appliances without the plug attached - it was just bare wires. Buying the plug separately and knowing how to attach it was just a basic skill you were expected to know.
Not sure what changed, as I understand it they don't really do that anymore.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1994/1768/made mandates that appliances must be sold with the plug attached. Apparently moulded-on plugs aren't mandated, but seem to be the default now.
After going through all the appliances in my Grandad's house and re-wiring them to have the correct mains plug pinout I can understand the reason for that law!
It is actually quite difficult to wire up a UK mains plug really well!
I remember the mr bean skit where he buys a tv and jams the cord into the plug and somehow this works LOL.
I didn't realize they sold them that way intentionally!
It wasn't uncommon for people to just jam wires into the outlet in a pinch, to the extent that public service announcements warned against it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zH0Kxjx0sEM
Britain had two common standards for electrical outlets (BS 1363 and the older BS 546) plus a few less-common proprietary types. BS 1363 became the preferred standard for new installations in 1947, but the other types remained fairly common for decades. Appliances were not required to be supplied with a fitted plug until 1994, by which time BS 1363 had become dominant (if not quite ubiquitous).
Thank you for this context. I couldn't guess why would anyone sell a device that's supposed to be plugged without a plug. But if there were different standards it makes some sense.
> The British used to sell appliances without the plug attached - it was just bare wires. Buying the plug separately and knowing how to attach it was just a basic skill you were expected to know.
I'm having flashbacks to moving back to the US from the UK-o-sphere, and re-splicing plugs for appliances that supported both voltages.
My understanding is that selling appliances without plugs was done to make work for the electronic shops. People attaching their own plugs would seem to defeat the purpose.
Flashbacks to my ex's dad drilling the "missing" holes in his Ikea computer desk (pieces in the wrong place) makes me wonder if consumers are ready for DIY electronics. Love the concept and industrial look of it though.
Maybe a toaster made up of modular parts fitting together like Lego? They'd only fit one way so as to avoid assembly errors. Modular construction means that failing parts could be easily replaced.
That sounds like a really cool way to get both safety and maintainability!
You could make a USB toaster, it would just take a lot longer...
Just cook the toast from the flames of the battery.
With 240W power delivery now available, you'd just need 6 ports to get near max allowed power.
Nonsense. We just need...about 10-15 USB-C laptop charging blocks rated at 100W each. I'm sure can find a 1:10 USB charge splitter (heck, maybe we just need to get creative with a few 1:4s) on Temu.
What could possibly go wrong?
Or, in the pre-USB-PD days, you do this[0]. Only 30 USB ports required. I swear I remember this being a toaster instead of a hot plate, but I guess you would need around 300 USB ports for a toaster.
[0] https://hackaday.com/2022/12/01/throwback-usb-hotplate-used-...
For starters, that USB splitter would be single use, assuming it didn't melt before your toast was done.
Brilliant comments like this make me miss Slashdot moderation. +5, Funny
The concept of things like this is excellent, and I don't think that even at massive scale that you could get the average consumer to go along with it, unfortunately. Even if this thing is 30% more expensive than a non-repairable toaster, I bet many consumers would pick the cheaper one, despite it probably not being the long term financially optimal decision. There are valid reasons for it, but even people with means would skip over this, I'd imagine.
I know so many people in my life that can afford the better quality version of something, but instead opt for the cheaper, shittier version. When the shitty one dies, they get a new shitty one. I think it comes down to the short term impact of cost,which is a valid choice if the cost is the main constraint currently, but I repeatedly see this even in cases where the additional cost isn't an issue.
My ranting aside, this is an incredibly cool project and I'd love things like this in my life. Partially for the fact it's repairable and better for the environment, but partially because it's just neat to have a modular version of your household appliances.
> Even if this thing is 30% more expensive than a non-repairable toaster, I bet many consumers would pick the cheaper one, despite it probably not being the long term financially optimal decision.
Toasters are so cheap that I can't imagine repairing them could be cost effective (ie "financially optimal") unless you assign no value to your time. A new, good-enough toaster costs in the ballpark of $30. I love taking things apart and fixing them, but if the repair involves figuring out the part I have to order or soldering anything, it will take far more than $30 of my time.
This kind of project is for people who love to tinker. The economics do not make sense.
Repairability is not necessarily a factor here. A better toaster may need less repair over its lifetime, and thus be more cost effective over its lifetime than a cheaper toaster that will break sooner and probably make worse toast while it works.
Tangentially related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory
If the economics make no sense, it’s only because the economics do not account for the cost to the environment. If the retail cost included reclamation, so that there was no waste at all, this kind of toaster would be the cheapest.
>I know so many people in my life that can afford the better quality version of something, but instead opt for the cheaper, shittier version. When the shitty one dies, they get a new shitty one.
Where I once lived in the midwest this was called the 'Kame-apart mentality'.
But I don't why this toaster can't cost more or less the same, and it comes with that non-purchasable accessory, bragging rights.
I have the same $30 no-name toaster that my now-ex purchased shortly after we were married in 2010. I open it up every few years to deep clean the crumbs, and I've changed the cord twice. Thing is an absolute tank.
I try to be a BIFL type of person and am willing to pay a premium for items that will last. Occasionally I hit up against something like this toaster, though, which runs completely counter to my expectations of what makes an indestructible kitchen appliance.
How hard is replacing the cord? That seems like it goes a long way to extending the life already, though.
Replacing: usually not hard. Open the thing, unscrew the things holding the ends of the wire on, remove old cord, put new cord's wires in, screw down, close thing back up.
(Often "open the thing" and "close the thing" are the hardest - modern devices with plastic clipped on plastic and needing delicate shimming to pry stuff open)
Depending on the level of fix you're going for and where the break is, it can be anywhere from very simple and a few minutes, to much more involved.
If the break is actually at the plug end, you can often pop off the plug housing, trim the wire back, and do basically the same as above.
If the break is in the middle of the cord and you're not squeamish about the final fix having electrical tape on bare wire, then cut, strip, twist, tape, and ... don't fuck it up?
> If the break is actually at the plug end, you can often pop off the plug housing, trim the wire back, and do basically the same as above.
I haven't seen a plug that can be opened in ages.
Yeah, the plug-only repair can only be done with a hardware store plug meant for that purpose, but they all look pretty chunky and ugly.
I think it’s better to harvest a whole new cord with moulded plug from some other dead appliance. Just make sure it’s a 15A one from a microwave or air conditioner or something— not just a lamp cord.
I would also personally not do this with an American ungrounded toaster, even though I have an EE degree and have done a lot of wire stripping, re-assembling wires, electrical tape, soldering, etc stuff.
A new toaster is cheap. House fires are not.
With experience, there is nothing hard about changing a cord.
Without experience, it is harder. Removing the strain release requires mechanical sympathy; desoldering/soldering requires soldering skill; etc.
If it was your job, you’d pick it up in a day or few. If it is not your job, the learning curve is spread across the time between jobs and there’s relearning if the jobs are infrequent.
The problem as I see it is that 99% of toaster owners don’t know where to find the parts in this toaster and/or how to replace them.
That’s where I’d love to see more experimentation.
There’s a maker space in my old town where you can just take stuff and they’ll nerd out over helping you fix it. I wish there was that, but in a store format.
I want to live in a world where it’s just common parlance to say, “my toaster broke so I have to stop at the FixIt on my way home.
Yes yes, fixing it is too expensive to support this business model. I want to dream, okay?! Maybe a toaster like this makes it much more reasonable for cheaper appliances to be fixed by the summer student from high school who will learn invaluable skills for $15/hr. I would have killed to make min wage taking apart and doing basic repairs on stuff.
I mentor high school students who can CAD and fabricate plastic and metal parts. Surely we could fabricate more young people like that too.
I've toyed around with a similar idea. A pizza shop style manufacturing/fixit hub that would pick up and deliver locally manufactured items like that.
I even think that repairing items at a loss could work out, because you'd get valuable customer data on what items they used enough to break, and what parts broke, giving you an insight to make your own product lines that didn't break in that way.
I love this because it is making a practical, everyday item more accessible.
I know the toaster is not explicitly open source but I've been lamenting the fact that such an incredible amount of energy is spent making things more accessible but most of those things are not what 'normal people' actually need.
For example I think there is a greater need for more open source couches, bikes, houses, clothing, etc than the need for, say, software that helps us coordinate containerized web infrastructure (from a social good perspective)
I don’t mean this in an overly judgmental way, but how much utility is there to open source physical objects for most people if they don’t also include some sort of cost benefit? What’s the utility of an open source t-shirt you can make for $30 when a 5 pack of shirts from Walmart is $10? I like the idea in concept, but how does a normal person implement open source physical good production?
Companies pick it up and start selling the open source product. Since it's open anyone can fix it, modify it, upgrade it etc. Prices go down, both for devices and parts. Even if no new parts are available you still have giant used market.
Look at say washing machines.
How many different models/brands are on the market?
I estimate many hundreds, if not thousands.
Each model/brand comes with some degree of custom design and engineering, documentation, etc, etc. All for fragmented production runs, all to try to gain proprietary advantage.
Why do we need so many? We really don't actually, maybe just a dozen or two to address various niches.
If companies just picked up an open source design (which would be constantly improving, just as with software), they could save many of those costs, and potentially even more by scaling up volume of production.
Often the perfect item for you is not available at all. An open source version would allow you to modify the design to your specific needs and likes.
Agreed on the social good of open source everyday items. I'd love to go to a build-it-yourself store/workshop where they have tools, materials, experts, and open source designs available.
The social good of open source software is at an inflection point. Stallman has always been right, but for decades it's been an 'yeah, but so what' situation. In today's consumer tech, surveillance is pervasive and manipulation getting more effective. Of course, that's only a problem if we lived in a fascist state where the government could force companies to work against our interests. Or lived in a network state run by a software company.
The only prudent options are moving to open source SW infrastructure running on personally controlled HW, or moving to an off-grid cabin in the woods. I'm incredibly grateful to the folks that create software like immich and jellyfin that allow me to degoogle w/o losing capabilities that I've come to rely on.
On the subject of toasters, if you want one that lasts then grab an old toastmaster or Sunbeam (the kind with the chrome sides) and spend a weekend doing a deep clean. They are held together with screws, not bent over tabs. You might be up against decades of baked on grease, so you'll have to break out the sodium hydroxide. You should probably replace the asbestos cord with a rubber one too. The toaster will then last the remainder of your life.
The main downside is that the slots are usually to narrow for bagels.
There aren't any infinite number of old toasters out there, but there's enough out there for everyone who wants to do the above.
Technology Connections' review:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OfxlSG6q5Y
If you want that specific toaster (not a generic one, but the automatic one) its going to cost you north of 250 bucks last time I checked.
> cost you north of 250 bucks
Shop around? eBay had at least five automatic ones for sale for less than $250 CAD:
https://www.ebay.ca/sch/i.html?_nkw=sunbeam+automatic+toaste...
Kijiji had one for $35 CAD:
https://www.kijiji.ca/v-toasters-toaster-oven/winnipeg/sunbe...
Shopping for vintage automatic Sunbeams lists dozens more, well below $250 USD:
https://www.google.com/search?num=10&q=sunbeam+automatic+toa...
I bought my Sunbeam in 2022 for $44, brand new. The secret is to buy them in Japan off the flea market sites. Apparently in my case the owner bought it have around as a piece of Americana. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
please help me with good Japanese flea-market sites so I can get one of my own.
Have you ever had one fail? Mine is the $10 plastic special from 20 years ago still toasting it's heart out.
The simpler a toaster is, the more likely it is to have eternal life. If you can buy a modern toaster that's just the knob and levers (no digital controls or whatever) then there's really no reason it won't last decades.
Tempting fate here but I don’t see any reason why my cheapo spring loaded toaster won’t give me another 10 years of life. There’s nothing to go wrong if used correctly.
Back when I was a kid in the 80s toasters would break because we shoved in hacked up pieces of bread or bagels where the food touched the elements and caught fire. And knives were poked inside to extract burnt remains from the heating elements.
I was shocked to see there are toasters with motorized lifting mechanisms. Is there any practical reason why this is better than a spring?
Actually toasters need to be able to switch off a huge current, which causes arcing. This arcing may slowly burn the PCB and desolder the metal contact mounted on the PCB. At least that's what happened with my last toaster after >5 years. Repaired it once, then after a year it broke again, but this time the PCB through hole was severely burned and it wasn't trivially fixable anymore.
Motorized mechanisms... hmm. Well, sometimes toasters pop up toasts too hard making them land on the floor.
> switch off a huge current, which causes arcing
This isn't really true. The heating elements are pretty much entirely a resistive load, which do not cause arcing when switched off. What desoldered your PCB might be the heat itself.
There was visible arcing every time the toaster popped up the toasts though. Now that you mention it, I'm kinda curious what exactly was causing it. (Too late of course.) It's not the first toaster I've seen that produced a flash of light every time it was done though.
Here's a pic BTW: https://imgur.com/tZadj6N
The nice thing about AC is that 120 times a second there is no current. Shutting off at that point is as easy as using a thyristor.
There’s no need for a PCB in a toaster.
> there any practical reason why this is better than a spring?
Depends what you mean by “practical”. Motorised avoid the jump scare and don’t risk launching light pieces out of the toaster.
I’d also assume (but don’t know as I’ve never been much of a toaster person) they can have a longer movement range and limit crumbing through lower acceleration stress.
> Is there any practical reason why this is better than a spring?
People are propagandized to pay more money for them, then do it again when they break.
I bought one from 1965 last year. Got it cheap on eBay. Seller said it didn't work. Seller just didn't know how to turn the knob on the side. I have to buy bread that isn't as wide as I was getting but it's totally worth it. Perfect toast every time.
got a 1930s toastmaster single slice for $30 on eBay. new carbon switch contacts, new nichrome wire, new cord. functions great and really looks nice. there are a lot of broken toasters in the world.
Even other more complex appliances get tossed too easily. My spouse’s desire to get rid of our 15yo microwave was replaced a while ago by the satisfaction of being able to keep it going. I’ve fixed it twice with a few bucks of parts (waveguide cover, door switch).
The thing is with something like this, if you're clever with the design you could make a device that packs flat, but isn't entirely flat.
So imagine you make the depth of the toaster greater than the height (easy with those feet). You put a quarter inch radius on the top plate, make the front and back plate a half an inch shorter so they nest inside the top plate in the box. And in fact if you put locking tabs on the two plates to keep the front from oil canning, those would also fit in if you flip the plates the right way 'round in the box.
You can tell from the bolts in the picture that there are already right angle bends in the sheet metal. So they're already using the third dimension just not with as much flair.
I had similar thoughts. It’s already quite handsome for a project of this nature but there’s still a lot of low hanging fruit for aesthetic improvement without negatively impacting other aspects.
it's not just aesthetic, you don't want to encourage misuse with a large flat top surface to place things on.
I didn't even think about that. But when I started reading your response I had a sudden flash of cutting my forehead with a falling can of beans and suddenly wishing that cans weren't so sharp.
Sharp edges on appliances aren't that good either.
Can someone draw what hinkley is talking about?
I tried to find pictures of boxes with rounded corners and they're all rounded on the vertical corners, like a box of mints. Or the polar opposite of a bread box with a lid with a >4" radius of curvature on the lid.
But look at the lid on a metal tin. The lip around the edge is often not a perfectly sharp bend. There's a small radius to it. So imagine the 'lid' was a single piece and the other sides were flat pieces that bolt together. If you size the pieces right they should fit into the 'lid'.
When I was a kid we had an two-slice electric "Side door Toaster" when we stayed in our caravan on holiday.
It had two spring-loaded fold-up doors on each side which you put the toast on. Then they folder vertically to put the toast near the elements. Half way through you pulled down the doors, flipped the slices over and toasted the other half.
https://www.ronebergcairns.com/2006onwards/home06_026.html
Probably easier to construct that a pop-up
common to see that in conveyor toasters as well
This brings a smile to my face after just rough assembling laser cut sheet AL which forms the enclosure for a water circulating pump system I built. Same style of raw sheet metal and external screws. It just needs to work and look decent.
edit: I'd buy one of these.
The control knob looks like the one off a Dualit toaster (their Classic model is also extremely repairable), as do the heating elements: https://www.dualit.com/collections/toasters
(I bought a Dualit after using one at a B&B many years ago -- I absolutely love it, though it really is a little overkill for making a few slices of toast each day. But it's a pleasure to use.)
This is excellent work. I like everything about this project - user assembly and repair (repair is much easier not only if the item is designed to be repaired, but if the user assembles it in the first place); flat pack for efficient shipping/storage; the overall focus on reuse and waste reduction. Perhaps, with more projects like this for a wider range of items, it'll be possible to pull manufacturers to a more right-to-repair, cradle-to-grave kind of world.
>Two participants changed their views about toasters in general because how toasters work was not as complicated as they first thought
We really do need to acknowledge that spending time taking things apart is a critical life skill. If you don't do it, you're forever a slave to buying new things.
Agreed. I take apart stuff that is dead, partly to see how it comes apart and gain skills in finding hidden screws(under stickers et al) or non-destructively popping plastic clips (80% success rate...).
But also once it's apart to see how it functions, what good design choices were made vs what was a bad choice because it broke. How could it be improved? Are all the design choices for the consumer? etc etc
Aside: I have a lot of HDD platters sitting around.
My toaster is from the 1950s and works fine. Also it's not ugly as sin.
I don't understand. Toasters go bad regularly? I am using a Krups toaster I bought in 1995. I guess I should get it a birthday cake.
I guess feeding the toaster a cake is one way to break it.
If you have an Airfryer, it is possibly the most consistent method to make toast. 150 degrees at 3 minutes makes perfectly crunchy toast.
Air fryer dries out the entire bread to a coaster.
A toaster blasts the outside of the bread with massive radiation, with thin wire element that goes from dead cold off to 100% instantly, so that the outside gets toasted before the inside gets dry.
Air fryer is way too slow and the moving air makes it even worse.
Larger toaster-oven air fryers are even worse. Way too slow to heat up and way too much of the wattage wasted radiating away in other directions being just 2 or 4 quarts tubes inches away from the bread, and with splatter shields covering them besides, instead of a veritable cage of thin wire filaments all around the bread and right next to it.
I have not found the air fryer to cook in the same way as my toaster.
The AirFryer is essentially still an oven (at least mine is) with the heat coming predominantly from the top, leading to some form of "double baked" bread, which IMHO isn't the same as toasted (where the bread can be crisp on the outside but still soft in the middle)
Perhaps it depends on your air fryer. Mine just dries the bread out, and toasts one side sorta..
This reminds me of this book I read a few years back -https://www.thomasthwaites.com/the-toaster-project/
How much work actually goes into the cheapest toaster the chap works to make every element from scratch into a toaster.
I find this thread fascinating because even people's "long-term durable" idea of a toaster is way below my experiences and expectations. I would expect even cheap ones to last atleast 20 years. And whats with people replacing their toast cords? What are you doing with the cord that it doesn't last decades?
I wonder if this is a case where spending more money results in a worse product because the cheapest versions are essentially a solved design without any gimmicks or unproven design changes made to try justify a higher price/markup.
One obvious thing is that some people are probably toasting a slice a week and others half a dozen a day. The parts don’t time out, they wear out, so that really matters.
Another is that being cheap, there’s probably quite variable quality.
So it’s not that surprising that experiences vary.
"Wear" is exactly right; most toasters have a pretty crude design involving hot glowing wires, springs and an electromagnet that jolts the whole thing pretty violently when it's finished. Just the glowing wires will fail after a while, even if you make them extra thick.
(That said we have a basic model secondhand toaster that gets used multiple times a week for the past six years and it's still fine... although some of the glow wires don't work).
How does the coord wear out though? Surely it's not getting hot enough for that so the only wear would be if you constantly bend or pull it.
Toasters are one of those appliances you unplug when not in use (classically, anything that gets hot must be unplugged when not in use or supervised). They are a large source of fires, my mother knows someone who just lost their house to a toaster fire. So all that cord manipulation can take a toll on it.
Just put the toaster behind an additional switch? Extension coords with switches (either one for the whole strip or one switch per plug) are readily available. And the biggest heat generators (stovetop and and oven) can typically not be unplugged so clearly heating elements can be made relatively safe.
Sure but that's not really what people want in their homes. Switched appliance circuits were never a thing in the USA likely because it's not hard to pull a plug that's literally staring you in the face. So pragmatically it just evolved this way and honestly it's not a big deal.
You bring up a good point in that at one point it is also about ensuring the quality of materials and construction processes so that everything lasts by default. On top of that, repairability is another factor. I have a fancy kettle that I am sure will not last five years, and I regret buying it.
What is "Flatpack" then?
https://haleystrategic.com/flatpack
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatpack_(electronics)
I'm clueless.
Assuming this comment is made in good faith, it's referring to the fact that it can be delivered in a "flat package", so to speak, and has to be assembled by the customer. Flat being a relative term, rather than a specific width.
This is the relevant wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ready-to-assemble_furniture
Also see: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/flatpack
(First sense.)
It's a fairly common word in English.
If you want repairability then you can buy a Dualit. They are unreasonably expensive but very easy to fix. Mine is 25 years old. I replaced one of the elements a few years ago. It's held together with screws and bolts - totally user-repairable.
Fun project, nice write-up, but not solving a problem that needs to be solved.
I recently replaced the timer dial in a Dualit. Super easy since wires have crimped connectors. The replacement part could have been cheaper (~15% of new toaster)
The goal of reducing e-waste is commendable. I really like the idea that if people built their own toaster then they will know how it works and they will feel more comfortable repairing it if something goes wrong with it.
That being said I would have started a project like this with researching why toasters end up in the trash. Is it because they break? (and if so which part?) Or is it because people get bored with the old design and want something new which fits their kitchen decoration better?
My suspicion is that there are garbage toasters not built to last. And then there are good quality toasters where the toaster probably could serve for decades. Maybe even hundreds of years with part replacements. But changes of taste, and design is what limits the lifetime of the second kind of toasters in reality not breakage.
I have a toaster from the 70's. It's a nice toaster, but has a big problem I didn't expect when I bought it:
Apparently most grocery store bread is significantly more wide now than in the past! Most bread won't fit!
If the inputs to a device change, that can also cause obsolescence.
It's a fantastic idea and I love the concept of user assembly and repair of household appliances.
I think the author has done something wonderful and thoughtful here.
However, I think a toaster is probably the least complex and least risky kitchen appliance. There are quite a few kitchen appliances that I would not feel comfortable using if I had assembled them myself. Anything with spinning blades for example. Also I don't think anyone should be assembling a flat pack microwave, where doing it wrong could end in radiation leakage.
But still, it's a great idea for less risky things. I look forward to open source hair dryers. Those things burn out in no time
We had an old toaster which was swinging plates to hold toast against the elements as a central core. Want both sides toasted? flip the toast. It was a 1920s design. Very functional, few parts to break (springs, hinges mostly) and it burned toast very effectively. It also did not accrue crumbs the way modern sealed-box toasters do.
I think if I was making a toaster I'd be looking to this model rather than the slot model, simply because its simpler. Or, placing toast on a flat bed with a reflecting heat plate behind the element. That would work for far thicker toastable objects, and also refreshing pita &c.
So many ways to die. Very cool project btw.
When I see repairable I also think moddable.
Can it run doom by toasting a new frame per slice?
Any toaster can do this. If you reduce “frame” to “pixel”
Back in 2001, Robin Southgate's toaster ran Java (https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/just-javatm-2/013148211...) and could probably have been able to run doom, one frame per slice!
This has me thinking of the guy who made a toaster from scratch. ‘Made’, as in, made the wires etc.
https://www.thomasthwaites.com/the-toaster-project/
https://gizmodo.com/one-mans-nearly-impossible-quest-to-make...
Funny, my first thought in seeing this headline was The Toaster Project by Thomas Thwaites: http://www.thetoasterproject.org/ (~2010) - more of a reflection about globalism and what is possible to create from scratch. https://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_thwaites_how_i_built_a_toas...
What I don't like about Thomas Thwaites's Toaster project is that I feel the end product intentionally looks bad. I feel the artist could have chosen different paths and could have created a practical toaster just with a little bit of care. The artist just choose to not do that because if the toaster would look practical and usable that would undermine their message about globalism, and the supposed impossibility of the task. Because in a project like this "man sets out to build a toaster, and actually succeeds" does not sounds good. And that just feels like learned helplessness.
He's an artist, not an engineer. I'm willing to believe that the toaster genuinely is his best effort. I know that I could do far better, but I have a lifetime of experience in herding atoms. I suspect that my attempt at oil painting would be equally risible.
> He's an artist, not an engineer.
He is by training an industrial designer.
But also, there is no clear boundary between being an artist and being an engineer. There are artist who show great mastery of engineering in their art work. Either because they studied engineering, or because they picked up enough relevant skills practically to achieve what they want to achieve.
I have a particular taste and not everyone will agree what is and isn’t art. But i consider for example David C. Roy‘s wooden kinetic sculptures both art and engineering. Similarly Jacob Tonski’s Balance from Within (a victorian sofa balancing on a single leg) incorporates both art and excelent engineering. Or Thea Ulrich’s aerial moon sculpture. Where the physical manufacturing of the sculpture is the engineering component, while the aerial dance performed on it is the art component. In each of these they could have said “hey I’m just an artist, you can’t possibly expect my thing to work” or “hey i’m an engineer, you can’t possibly expect my thing to have artistic value”. But they were not satisfied with either of those, and pushed themselves, their art and their craft until they got something wonderfull.
Where there is a will there is a way. And where the will is to make the object look shitty, you will get that result. Which is fine. But i have heard people draw the conclusion from his work that somehow this is the best anyone can do. And that is not fine with me.
I, too, would like if his product was built as well as possible, ideally all shiny and almost too perfect to belive it was made in such a way.
You should try it. I'd love to see what an engineer could do with building toasters from scratch.
and strangely none of the past posts have any comments https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Try https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=673035. The project itself didn't get traction, but an article about the project did
good find! (i have the book)
I’d love to buy one of these.
I would definitely buy one, assuming there was some guarantee on parts availability "for the lifespan of the company up to X decades" or some similarly long time.
I would doubly do so if the design were open-source.
I would triply do so if I could have all my new home appliances this way. I tossed my last fridge and my last washing machine over parts which would have been in the single-digit dollars to manufacture.
If the author is not commercializing this, the design and instructions should be open-sourced (and, ideally, advertised to a Chinese discount company).
> and, ideally, advertised to a Chinese discount company
Do you need to provide the documentation to the discount company? I was always under the impression the best way to get a product made was
a) make a compelling video
b) post to a crowdfunding site and make a lot of PR noise elsewhere
c) wait for the knock offs, if it takes a while, write up some posts about how you're having trouble finding production partners
d) if the knocks offs are decent, send a good knock off to the backers, otherwise refund their pledges.
I was immediately reminded of this old gem: https://makezine.com/article/craft/a-homemade-toaster-built-...
No idea what it is about toasters, other than their simplicity, but I really love the effort with the flatpack version.
So cool. From 2009 so there's been some link rot; they had a Tumblr that seems fully disappeared from the web.
Most current site: https://www.thomasthwaites.com/the-toaster-project/
Older site: http://www.thetoasterproject.org/page2.htm
Some videos: https://vimeo.com/3162229 https://vimeo.com/3186135 https://vimeo.com/3186840
They also did a TED talk on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ODzO7Lz_pw
Trying to reduce eWaste as well and was wondering if anybody could recommend repair meetups around NYC, maybe in Westchester?
I find it incredibly frustrating if something breaks and my experience from attempting to repair it is that it's impossible to disassemble. I'm currently sitting with a broken coffee grinder that I can take apart with a brick :(
I frequently dream of openly licensed appliances that are repairable!
A post worthy of Hacker News Hall of Fame.
I guess I'm the only one who thinks it's just not a very good design. Right off the bat there is no excuse for all those screws, and those trays block all the radiation from the elements from reaching the bread! It's a terrible design for accomplishing the task.
What's wrong with the screws? Screws are the king of repairability.
Screws are the king of parts count, manufacturing process (for the screw itself, and it's nut, as well as then using the screw), and falling apart later.
Having the thing be held together by screws is not necessarily the problem, it's having so many instead of having interlocking pieces that need only a couple screws, or maybe none.
The alternative doesn't have to be glue or rivets or welding, just folds and tabs and slots.
And some amount of welding or rivets isn't necessarily anti-repair either, it just depends what, where, & why.
Cool project, also curious about the economics. Have been thinking recently with the increasing quality and affordability of 3d printers and assistive benefits of LLM's it would be cool to basically have the equivalent of lego builds kits for all kinds of consumer goods.
I would definitely confuse this with my NAS and put a couple of hard drives in it.
flatpack | ˈflatˌpak | noun 1 Electronics a package for an integrated circuit consisting of a rectangular sealed unit with a number of horizontal metal pins protruding from its sides.
That is not the correct meaning in this context.
This is the much more commonplace "packs flat for shipping, assembly required by end user" meaning.
Honestly I would buy that. The design just looks cool.
Similar idea for a grill https://boxgrill.de/
I've always wanted toasters to have a lid to keep dust out. That's one thing I would add to their design.
Is there good data on goods that are the largest contributors to e-waste?
A toaster is a great test case for learning about repairable design, but I can only imagine most people will only buy on average 1 or 2 toasters in their life.
Framework seems like they're tackling laptops, which to my gut feel like they're largely responsible for consumer waste.
Not sure where you people are getting these multi decade toasters, I need to replace mine every 5-10 years. Obviously not the worst case of e-waste either way but 1 or 2 seems like a severe underestimate but that could just be my own experience.
Usually a heating element dies or similar. If it were easier to replace the heating elements I'd think it'd help reduce waste, but as you and others have noted, that wasn't the point of the article.
I've only bought two toasters in my life.
The first was a two-slice Kenmore (RIP Sears) which still works. It cost $20 and was purchased close to 25 years ago. I only used this a couple times a week and now the usage is very sporadic, but it always works when I need it to.
The second was a Cuisinart toaster oven, which is not exactly a toaster but has ended up being our primary toaster. I have no idea how old it is since we bought it at a garage sale for $5 about 5 years ago. This is used almost daily, sometimes multiple times a day, and for a lot more than just toast.
I can see buying one more toaster, meaning a toaster oven, in my life, but it will probably be to get new functionality (e.g., air fryer, larger capacity, etc) instead of replacing something broken.
I, too, would bet that your Cuisinart is likely to outlast you and me. That's what I have, and it's been in daily use for close to a decade now. Other than the silkscreened buttons losing their labels (easy fix: cut out some clear labels made with the P-Touch) it's as good as when it was new. We like it so much that we still kept it when we got a drawer-based air fryer 2 years ago which is my favorite kitchen purchase of all time.
We have a toaster with a built in FM radio. That thing is pushing 15 years now. Obviously adding an FM radio to a toaster is idiotic and we don't use that feature, but the toaster part just works. It was a Christmas present from my wife's employer, so I can't imagine it being all that expensive.
But I see your point, we've had multiple other toasters, some toasted themselves to death by melting their own plastic casing.
The saddest failure was a Krupp coffee maker, that thing was amazing, made the best coffee. Sadly I melted the power cord on a stove top. This was before I had a proper set of tools, so I gave up trying to remove the "security" screws, that would have let me open it and replace the cord.
I'd say mobile phones are worse, many more produced so even considering phone size. And harder to take apart even though laptops are getting worse. But this is all anecdotal, don't have any hard info.
Based on my experiences in eWaste:
Tech thats not getting properly recycled is LCD Monitors, was CRT's but they became profitable to mine for copper and gold.
People are too sensitive to scratches on their screen and just throw it out. Once a monitor hits an eWaste bin that only gets worse.
But the much larger problem with eWaste is packaging. Theres more packaging, with different grades of plastic, than there is shit inside of it that can be repaired or recycled.
Phones are collected and recycled. Batteries are collected, sorted and recycled. Ancient Desktop computers are often marked as scrap, "recycled" to a developing country where they are suddenly reborn as... desktop computers and live a third or fourth life. Otherwise desktops are fairly recoverable, they go straight to "ex government" style stores, ebay, what have you.
Laptops are pretty bad too, because of the integrated screen.
Hard drives, some people like to destroy instead of wipe for security reasons. But the metals are fairly recoverable.
Networking gear tends to live on in someones home or study lab, or it goes to developing nations.
I actually find that appliances were quite unlikely to even hit an ewaste bin, likely going to landfill instead.
For contributors to e-waste in terms of quantity of items, I'd assume somewhere in the top 10 you'd for sure find vape pens, cell phones, tablets, and all manner of computers.
By weight there is probably a lot of large appliances, since their PCBs and chips are so unreliable, usually only lasting a couple of years, and people feel like suckers spending the ~$500-700 of labor and parts (mostly labor) that every repair costs on these, both because they feel like 'this one must be an especially bad design, so maybe I should buy a new one / a different brand' and because it seems insane to spend like 70-100% of the purchase price on a repair. So the whole thing is chucked in the landfill. Of course, the replacement will be a P.O.S. too, but what choice do we have?
1-2? I'm on 6 or 7, and I'm hoping to get another few decades in. I've spent as little as $10, and as much as $50. When the last one died, I gave serious consideration to the Dualit, but the slots aren't long enough for my usual bread. So I went with Wirecutter's $30 recommendation and fully expect it to die within the decade as well.
Admittedly, I eat toast for breakfast at least 340 days a year, but I do sort of wish someone would sell a toaster that lasts so I could quit putting crappy ones in the landfill.
Probably a lot in generic household appliances - washing machines, microwaves etc. They've all get electronics in these days.
In my limited experience, things that get hot and or wet as part of their function tends to break more often than those that don't. So basically anything in your kitchen or laundry.
Nice! Although I hope the next project will be a repairable panini grill, those are way more versatile than toasters.
PAT isn't exactly a particularly sophisticated benchmark.
But then again, toasters aren't exactly idiot proof (neither are most things in the kitchen) so I guess as long as that case has a low impedance path to the earth pin, and there aren't any exposed single insulated wires, I'd also be happy.
My first thought was “is it UL listed?”
Then I saw the PAT, looked that up, and it is not near equivalent. Here is a 20 year old version of UL 1026 Electric Household Cooking and Food Serving Appliances for comparison.
http://u.dianyuan.com/bbs/u/31/1121404214.pdf
This is great. I have personally gone through a half a dozen toasters. It such a waste.
I want to buy one for my lifetime
I designed an automotive part that is fabricated out of sheet metal and this article resonates with me because while the completed product looks very simple, the process of getting to the completed product is very complex and has dozens of iterations of designs, failed prototypes, mistakes, etc.
That's what is so infuriating when my products get copied by sellers from China or similar - they are taking all of the hundreds of hours of work that I put into a design and skipping that, going straight to the easy part of producing the finalized part.
Making the thing is the easy part - making up the thing is the hard part!
Apparently you can use LLMs with tools like OpenSCAD now and it not be utterly terrible, so that might save you some time :)
A TV and/or video projector would also be a great target for flat packing!
.. have I missed something, because TVs are already the flattest consumer durable that isn't, say, flooring?
The idea is to make reparable and part of the circular economy.
You could split a TV into a couple parts, but I'm skeptical about how much that would improve repairability over the status quo. If you're able to fix those parts, you can get the TV open.
Getting some manufacturers to use standardized control boards and power supplies, and listing them in the spec sheet, would do a lot more than any ease of access.
Being able to get the panels+frame separately from the control boards would be great. Doubt it's really practical though.
This looks awesome, I definitely want one! Are you selling these too?
My parents are using an electric hand mixer that is 45+ years old. It's still fine.
Products of the past did last longer because they weren't as cost-optimised yet. It seems similar to the story of the vastly over-build Volvo red block engines.
Yet, we don't live in a (global) society that cares about living consciously, to build things that last. If something lasts, we don't consume. And that's our true purpose. To consume the things that are produced.
Do we need 20+ brands of peanut butter? Why do brands even exist? Why can't we just but 'peanut butter'?
The word and our society is actually so strange, if you really think about this. By the way, did I mentioned yet, I really miss David Graeber?
MY first job (in the last 70s) was working in a TV rental store doing small item repair. In particular, repairing toasters was probably my #1 activity. Essentially the failure was nearly always the same -- one of the three toasting elements failed, and so I would replace all three elements, and the customer got a working toaster back.
It was never clear to me (at least I don't recall it being clear) why the heating elements failed. It could be from someone sticking a hard tool into the toaster when trying to remove a small item (and breaking the element). It might be that a piece of bread gets stuck to a portion of the element and catches fire at that point -- maybe that weakens the element at that point. This was, of course, long before toasters got electronics in them!
The heating elements in a toaster are essentially the same as the heating elements in a lightbulb. Eventually, enough heat cycling, the metal fatigues or melts at a certain point, the circuit opens, and your toaster stops lighting up the room. Of course, trauma is always an option too.
Products of the past did not last longer.
Products of the past for the same price point as today (adj for inflation) especially did not last longer, if they even existed at that price point.
that's strictly not true, at least for many segments. my 1960s Kitchenaid mixer has been used since..the 60s, and if you buy a new Kitchenaid today, don't expect that plastic gear to last very long if you actually take it out and use it.
I found an 1969 ad for a kitchenaid mixer. It's cost $125 in 1969 dollars. That's over $1000 in todays dollars. You're comparing a mixer that costs half as much. And, believe me, fixing the skimp issues that kitchenaid introduced to give the execs a bigger bonus can be fixed for a lot less than $500.
Furthermore, you probably can buy a mixer for $1000 that has a similar chance of surviving 60 years for $1000.
> Furthermore, you probably can buy a mixer for $1000 that has a similar chance of surviving 60 years for $1000.
Why don't you provide an example then? Findig one for $1000+ is the easy part, knowing if it's actually better is not something most people can do.
I had a 60s kitchenaid and it was super loud, possibly over 90 db. Additionally, it had square corners where stuff got stuck, couldn't handle some solids well, and to wash it you often had to remove the blade and gasket.
One interesting thing was a gimmick about heating soup with the blender using solely friction.
I eventually bought a modern plastic refurb which has been a dream. I do think it is a shame that it won't last 50 years.
A Kitchenaid K5-A mixer cost $159 in 1960. That would be $1,700 today. I'll bet you can get someone to make you a replacement metal gear for something less than $1,000.
Do it for 'smart' TVs now.
> Repairable flatpack toaster
Good bad so-so
Nice!
I know a good recipe for toast.
Come on, this is basically what a Dualit Classic is. I really don't see this is much more than an exercise. The problem is asking people to spend 5x to 10x the price of cheap mass produced unmaintainable tat.
I feel that the real thing that this guy is getting at, which I am also a fan of, is "How could we as a society, shift the culture away from disposability and consumption to sustainability and repair?"
As someone without all the answers, it seems like only a heavyhanded degree of regulation could have any chance (e.g. high taxes on whole categories of devices with low/no repairability). Though perhaps in a trade apocalypse situation that may happen sooner than we think (such as total breakdown of trade with China) perhaps repair will suddenly be relevant. This is why, as I understand it, basically every car owner in Cuba is also a mechanic.
Of course, they had the benefit of having 1950s cars when trade barriers went up. We've got houses full of devices built and purchased with the understanding that you throw away anything with a plug or a battery within 5 years max!
I wonder when teenage engineering will sell a 2000 dollar version of this.
Minor point: lots of commenters here are defaulting to male pronouns for the author. In this Dezeen article, for which they spoke to Kasey, they use she/her pronouns. https://www.dezeen.com/2017/07/20/kasey-hou-reduce-electrica...
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She is a cis woman.
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woman posts article
> "nobody cares, we're going to call them 'him' instead"
Yes, absolutely. Why do you think it should matter?
very human
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Probably not intended as such but "actual female woman" is also a bit disrespectful, since it implies that trans women aren't "actual female women", why not use cis? It gets your point across and doesn't imply anything else.
> why not use cis?
Because some people don't use that term to describe themselves either, even if that is what they biologically are. CIS is a pretty good term, because it's very technically correct. Sadly many have been on the receiving end of debates where it is used a a slur, and considers it hurtful.
Do people consider it hurtful, or was it coopted as a slur by people like Musk who just want to erase trans people?
Personally I mostly see it used in anger, so I wouldn't use it, unless doing a biology report.
It also has the weird problem that you mostly see it in a "do you identify as cis", which I at least don't... I am cis, but that's not question. This leads to some really weird situation where you have teams of larger middle age straight, and cis, men, but you have one or two that answer that they don't identify as such.
This is very much off topic, but I'd personally I'd prefer that we just stop labeling people. Just use their name, it's fine, you don't need to know or even understand the gender of the person who makes a repairable flatpack toaster. It's an cool project regardless of who made it.
I 90% agree with you, except that there is nothing technically correct about the word cis.
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There is currently a bill in the Texas house to ban transition for people of all ages.
Also, minors would receive hormone blockers - which are reversible and safe. ...and also still prescribed for cases such as precocious puberty.
> which are reversible and safe
Absolutely not true.
Almost all of the situations involving treatments on minors that are being backlashed against are themselves lies.
The truth is not disrespectful.
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In this world.
I think a lot of people just don't pay attention to the domain name or anything else besides the actual content.
I agree that much of this is unconscious bias. But it still grates.
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I do think it matters that people default to male. I wouldn’t want people to keep calling me “she” because I happen to be in a woman-dominated field. I understand why one would find this grating.
But not that's not the case for many of us. We do know who we are, and an increasingly violent sect want us to bury it and pretend otherwise.
Then why do we even talk about "pronouns" and don't just say: "BTW she's a woman not a man." Simpler times.
> I mean it's bad enough that most people in this thread saw a cool engineering project and made a default assumption of male.
Is your issue with the fact that people assumed the author was male, specifically, or with the fact that people assumed at all?
I see, I guess this is the other scenario where wrong pronouns can be used.
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That's a lot of JS for a static site. For some reason it hijacked my keyboard shortcuts for back and forward.
Welcome to Squarespace.
Fortunately, these sites often work fine with only CSS and images allowed. No JS required.
same. wtf?
am I the only one who read this headline and thought it was a random three-word identifier?
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Howdee doodilly doo! It's begun.