Throwing away a stereo system because of a tiny broken piece of plastic? Not in this house!

Semi-planned Obsolescence

My kids have a little audio system, on which they mostly play CDs. Yes, we still have CDs. Totally old school. Anyway, there’s this “push to close, push to open” kind of lid for the CD player, and one day it refused to stay closed. It turned out that a tiny plastic peg, as big as an ant maybe, broke off and there was nothing to hold a metal spring from opening the lid. Gluing back the bugger was not an option – too small, too much mechanical stress. Is it time to throw everything away and buy a new system for $50?

Think About It

I assumed that without the plastic peg pressing where it should, the system would not recognize that the lid is closed and will refuse to play CDs even if the lid was forced down. But maybe I could install a different mechanism there instead, such as a microswitch with a lever?

I unscrewed and opened up the entire thing to see. There was no sensor under there! Nothing there was connected to anything, just a small, standalone mechanism to grab the peg. The sensor that told the system when the lid was open was entirely elsewhere! So, with a pair of pliers I bent the arm of the spring that held the lid up, put a CD inside and yes, it totally worked.

The only problem left now was that you needed a flat screwdriver – or to turn the entire device upside down – to open the lid. Quite inconvenient.  What can I use instead? An old little doorknob from a cupboard, obviously. I carefully drilled a hole through the lid and screwed the knob from the inside. How’s that for a funky sound system?

A Lesson To Be Learned

No, the lesson is not that you should be cheap and don’t buy new stuff for your kids. Neither that aesthetics don’t matter. It’s simply that you don’t have to take things for granted. Look deeper. Give things some thought. Find different solutions. That’s what Making is all about.

Oh, and do it quickly. It’s getting harder and harder to find home devices that aren’t all just miniaturized electronics and a touch screen. These are much harder to fix…