most effort you put into saving small sums of money on repairs/prototypes

[coppercone2]

Have you ever put your foot down on the budget and against all reasonable action decided to fabricate or design something extremely cheap where there is basically such a monumental loss of time that its preposterous?

I needed a terminal block jumper, I think they cost 20 cents. I cut, bent and nickel plated old copper to make a jumper. It probobly took 2 hours.
Its been in service for about 3 years. I still think about it sometimes. 

[Vovk_Z]

It may cost 20 cents but you have to go to the shop and back, which takes time and money too. So, I guess it's ok to DIY sometimes.
When I am at the good shop I can spend additional $2-$20 to something 'needed' too. So the less I go to the shops - the less money is spent.

[Haenk]

In Germany, there are almost no electronics stores left, hardware stores usually have a very limited choice (they are usually large supermarkets for all building stuff, so only limited choice of specialized stuff). Unless you are living in some of the major cities, you need to order online, which takes two days (at least) and adds 6 EUR of shipping costs to even the smalles part.

So: putting some work into a part to fix it *now*, instead of spending x EUR and having to wait at least two days is perfectly reasonable. (However I probably would have used some wire instead...)

[BILLPOD]

Isn't this what's called 'Macgyvering'

[Kim Christensen]

I guess this isn't a story of fabricating something cheap, but rather about wasting a disproportionate amount of time vs the money saved:

Had this crappy streaming box. It would lock up if powered on for more than a couple of days. (Glitchy firmware and updates no longer supported)
So I made a DIY SSR out of a FET and an opto-iso so that it's power source would cycle on/off when the TV came on/off. (Sensed a USB port on TV)

Later, a different box started randomly "forgetting" the login for the streaming service. Entering the login/password was a painful process of clicking arrow keys in a menu. So I built a little box with a PIC and IR LED which had a single button you could push and it'd fill in the login/password info.

I guess it was more about the journey than the result. A sane person would have bought a new box.

[Nominal Animal]

Have you ever put your foot down on the budget and against all reasonable action decided to fabricate or design something extremely cheap where there is basically such a monumental loss of time that its preposterous?

Everything I design in electronics is that.

As to fabrication, it depends.  If I have the tools and skills or can develop those to do it, I will.

Then again, I have plenty of time, minuscule budget.

[TimNJ]

Yes, but somehow it also winds up costing more money too. 

[coppercone2]

well it did give me alot of insight in electronics 'straps' I guess

I made this thread because I really wanted to restore some old alligator clips (tiny) that were looking really grimey, but after a bunch of work I noticed their not brand name, and the center hollow pin is messed up, and threw them out.

But the nice big copper ones restored nicely. actually sodium hydroxide did a wonderful job at cleaning it up and making it look new, I tried it instead of citric acid.

but I noticed their actually pretty expensive as far as a part goes, brand name are at least 2 dollars or more, and its fairly complicated

[Nominal Animal]

Yes, but somehow it also winds up costing more money too. 

I dunno.  I've managed with a really tiny budget; less than many people spend on their coffee intake.

One trick is to keep things modular.  I often do bespoke tools out of microcontroller and some interface modules, and tear them down afterwards.   (Unix philosophy saves my butt once again! )

I deliberately buy cheap tools when I'm not exactly sure what kind of tools I might need, so that I build some experience to better choose the expensive tools that work best for me, minimizing the overall amount of money I need to spend.

I do buy components and even boards I may end up not using, but I keep that part of my spending quite low.

[TimNJ]

I’m just kidding around. My response wasn’t quite on topic anyway.

Lot’s of projects start with “what why is this so expensive to buy? It’s just X, Y, and Z put together”. And you finish the project 2 years later at 5x the cost of the off the shelf solution. Not all the times, but sometimes.

These days I don’t even try to convince myself that I can really make it for cheaper. I do projects and sub-projects for the experience.

[coppercone2]

I’m just kidding around. My response wasn’t quite on topic anyway.

Lot’s of projects start with “what why is this so expensive to buy? It’s just X, Y, and Z put together”. And you finish the project 2 years later at 5x the cost of the off the shelf solution. Not all the times, but sometimes.

These days I don’t even try to convince myself that I can really make it for cheaper. I do projects and sub-projects for the experience.

its usually when you realize the product engineering was 5 business people figuring out how to get the price point and 1/3 of a engineer figuring out the performance

[Hella_Wini22]

Plenty of times.

Rationale:

Freedom has its cost. And autonomy is essential part of freedom. Control is another.
If the latest few years have shown us anything is that whatever is out of your control, can and some point WILL be used to control you.

That doesn't mean that one should always avoid using products other's people work but that s/he should strive to be able to if/when needed.

[coppercone2]

I always feel that way with electromechanical things, it seems they really have ALOT of control over you because of some weird shape metal or coating.

The magic seems to be in special contact rivets,hard to obtain in small quantity. All they are is little rivets/staked parts with special coatings on them, or special compositions (tungsten copper, tungsten silver, etc). The other parts are like possible to DIY pretty easily, with light springs being surprisingly easy with minimal investment.

I feel a bit better about connectors because at least some of them are like machined and stuff, but electromechanical moving parts just feel like some kind of distribution lockout scam sometimes lol. Its not like some nano machined ceramic tile that involves a huge factory, its just a god damn part that could be fabricated by ancient egyptians with a anvil

maybe its a lack of education and understanding? You figure regular people would be selling those parts as simple hardware!

[NiHaoMike]

About 15 years ago, I got a cheap 22" Viore monitor. Really buggy firmware but the panel seemed great quality so decided to keep it. Could never get the HDMI to work properly so it was really just a VGA monitor. Should have spent the extra $50 or so on a name brand.

[Smokey]

it's not electronics, but...
I turned a whole chess set out of aluminum on my lathe (yes, minus knights which got mostly milled).  Since I'm a mediocre machinist, it came out okay-ish.  I made my own tools for concave and convex radiuses.  Each piece took me a bunch of hours to make.  It got super tedious making all the pawns, but I was sort of committed at that point so I toughed it out.  That set would have cost me many thousands of dollars in labor had I added it all up.
... and I also don't really play chess. 

[TimNJ]

I’m just kidding around. My response wasn’t quite on topic anyway.

Lot’s of projects start with “what why is this so expensive to buy? It’s just X, Y, and Z put together”. And you finish the project 2 years later at 5x the cost of the off the shelf solution. Not all the times, but sometimes.

These days I don’t even try to convince myself that I can really make it for cheaper. I do projects and sub-projects for the experience.

its usually when you realize the product engineering was 5 business people figuring out how to get the price point and 1/3 of a engineer figuring out the performance

Something like that.

Or, if you need to make a "Rev 2", you've almost certainly blown the "it'll be cheaper if I make it" budget.

[Hella_Wini22]

... and I also don't really play chess. 

It's not about chess. It's about the attitude. 🤣
https://odysee.com/@Velyaminov:a/micro_men_2009:b?r=3rDKfHyFD5vT2ZqGhpGwp5JTvw15gcRi&t=848