bad repairability design of vacuum
I have a Shark Navigator vacuum & I'm very happy with it. (was a handmedown from bestie)
But it wasn't shmovin' very well, and I looked, and the roller is wrapped to hell in hair. This is normal. This is frequent. Removing this hair is a regular aspect of vacuum maintenance.
Well it's really hard to do that removal while the roller is in the vacuum. So I decided to remove the roller - something that should be pretty quick & easy - something that is quick & easy in my 30 year old vacuum (which needs a new bag and is much heavier, so its not my goto vacuum).
Well. removing the plate required removing 8 screws. That alone is slightly a nuisance, but not a big deal. Could be better, but not worth complaining about on its own.
But the screws are a torx (star) bit ... EXCEPT they have a pin in the middle. Torx bits are fine - they're superior to phillips, and they're commonplace nowadays. But the ones with the pin require you to have special drivers - which I do have - which adds an extra barrier to both routine maintenance and certain repairs.
Also, there's two tiny little wheels on the the front bottom of the roller-cover. You have to pop those wheels out to access screws underneath them. This was extremely unintuitive and unnecessary, and I was lucky to have a tool (tweezers from my electronics repair kit) that was able to get under them and get the necessary leverage to pop them out. I couldn't get underneath with a screwdriver.
So, like ... that's all manageable ... but it required me to look stuff up (I don't want to go just popping wheels out if I don't have to) & have some non-standard tools in my possession.
Getting the roller out was pretty easy after that. Fiddling with the bottom-plate (which has electronics and a motor attached to it) was kinda frustrating. There was a wire that got in the way when I was trying to put the top & bottom covers back together. I find this pretty forgiveable, but it was annoying. It could have been designed better, but it felt more like a ME issue than an IT issue. But better design can solve that and make this more approachable for people of even lower skill levels than me.
The trickiest part of putting it back together was just snapping the top & bottom roller-covers back together. Neither piece snaps into place on the bottom knob of the vacuum. So you've gotta hold the vacuum precariously with your legs, and hold both pieces precariously, and fit them together, and not let the wires get in the way in the process. It was just super finicky & it didn't need to be.
And that's the point. My skill level is ... probably above-average. I'm pretty comfortable taking things apart & putting them back together. I'm not necessarily quick at it. But most routine maintenance and repairs should be manageable by somebody with a single screwdriver (phillips or regular torx is fine), near-zero skill level, and no manual.
Now - there should be manuals.
But if a manual is required for basic & routine stuff, then the product's repairabality design is insufficient.
It should have been no more than 5 minutes taking apart & putting back together, but it was about 30-45. Next time it will be like 10, I'm sure. And ... hopefully ... next time, I remove the hair before it gets as bad as it was, in which case I might not need to take the roller out.
I will add - the roller had some grooves on it, which made space for my scissors to get in & under the hair. This was a very nice feature. It could have been implemented much better. But it was still a very nice feature. Also, all the screws were the same length & bit-size. Also, the big wheels, which do not need to be removed for the roller repair use a different-sized bit - this was actually a great design to prevent unnecessary removal.
So there were some wins.
P.S. I would support a government department that assesses mass-produced products like these and gives them a repairability score, and increases taxes for lower repairability scores, and requires the score to be communicated conspicuously on containers. Taxes would go toward environmental management, as low repairability would increase waste production.