Biden orders new ‘right-to-repair’ rules for consumers

[corbe]

Biden orders new ‘right-to-repair’ rules for consumers

Bloomberg  20 hrs ago

President Joe Biden will direct the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to draft new rules aimed at stopping manufacturers from limiting consumers’ ability to repair products at independent shops or on their own, a person familiar with the plan said.


While the agency will ultimately decide the size and scope of the order, the presidential right-to-repair directive is expected to mention mobile phone manufacturers and Department of Defense contractors as possible areas for regulation. Tech companies including Apple and Microsoft have imposed limits on who can repair broken consumer electronics like game consoles and mobile phones, which consumer advocates say increases repair costs.

The order is also expected to benefit farmers, who face expensive repair costs from tractor manufacturers who use proprietary repair tools, software, and diagnostics to prevent third-parties from working on the equipment, according to the person, who requested anonymity to discuss the action ahead of its official announcement.

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https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/biden-orders-new-right-to-repair-rules-for-consumers/ar-AALT0Y5?ocid=msedgntp

[PeteS in CA]

The obstacles to third-party or owner repair, in electronic devices, come in layers. Forcing companies to make public assembly diagrams, schematics, parts lists, and authorized vendors for every part is just a start.

Next comes specialized tools. This ranges from security Torx screws holding things together to the solder stations needed to replace surface mount ICs with scores of "pins" and the whole bottom of the IC being the ground "pin". ICs with .050" pin spacing is not the only difficulty with surface mount devices. How many here have eyesight equal to working with 0402 or 0201 resistors and MLCCs? 0604 or 0805 are about my limit. Assembly microscope time!

Getting parts is another gotcha. Because so many electronic devices are assembled in Asia, Asian sourced parts are used. Some parts, like resistors and MLCCs are easily crossed to parts available in the US or EuroLand. For other parts, equivalents would have to be found, not too hard for MOSFETs and rectifiers but kind of a crap-shoot for magnetic cores. Some ICs are standard and multi-sourced, easy. Others are sole-sourced, and the source is in Taiwan or China, not easy, at best. Some ICs are custom parts, patented by and sold only to the maker of the device - getting those won't be fun!

Next layer deeper ... many ICs are programmable, programmed by customers, or programmed by the maker of the electronic device. So being able to buy a CPLD or microcontroller from Digikey doesn't solve the problem. The repair person has to program it - more special equipment and finding a way to get the firmware code.

Those are just problems for countries like the US or in EuroLand. Parts, equipment, and instruments availability in places like India or Turkey or Brazil sucks!

"Right to Repair" is a nice concept, but fraught with complications.

[thackney]

Driving this is:

John Deere Promised Farmers It Would Make Tractors Easy to Repair. It Lied.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7m8mx/john-deere-promised-farmers-it-would-make-tractors-easy-to-repair-it-lied
February 18, 2021

In September 2018, a trade group that represents John Deere and a series of other tractor and agricultural equipment manufacturers made a promise intended to stave off increasing pressure from their customers and to prevent lawmakers from passing what they said would be onerous repair regulations. They vowed that, starting January 1, 2021, Deere and other tractor manufacturers would make repair tools, software, and diagnostics available to the masses.

This "statement of principles," as it was called at the time, was nominally designed to address concerns from farmers that their tractors were becoming increasingly unrepairable due to pervasive software-based locks that artificially prevented them from fixing their equipment. As Motherboard repeatedly reported at the time, farmers were being forced to go to "authorized" John Deere dealerships and service centers to perform otherwise simple repairs that they could no longer do because they were locked out of their equipment and needed special software to unlock it. To get around this, some farmers had begun hacking their tractors with cracked software from Ukraine.

A host of states were considering "right to repair" legislation that would have compelled Deere and other manufacturers to abandon these artificial software locks, to make repair tools and guides available to the general public, and to, broadly speaking, allow farmers to fix the tractors they owned....

[Potluck]

The obstacles to third-party or owner repair, in electronic devices, come in layers.

I do all that where I work. Repair and tech support. 
Add to the list “hot air”.
Work is done under a binocular microscope… Mantis.

Consumers are not going to repair these boards. Bottom terminated components and BGA are a challenge enough even with the right equipment. 201 resistors are like trying to solder with a tree stump with the finest soldering tip available.

I predict the manufacturing facility where I work will no longer repair failed boards. If it fails, scrap it.