Viewing profile — kwiens

I guess 2018. I learned about them relatively recently and IMHO they're doing a pretty darn good job.

He's not in this to sell books. Stewart is investigating a way of life, and a means of keeping things working a long time. And he's documenting it thoroughly. https://longnow.org/c…

I was fortunate to read a preprint of Brand's latest. It's magnificent. How and why do things fail? What are the cultures that lead to long-lasting products? The undercurrent here …

We loved writing them, too! Traffic to the photo teardowns dropped and has been replaced by video. If you can help us figure out how to get people to pay attention to long-form art…

Thanks for the feedback! Fellow Tennessean here so I'm a bit embarrassed. I fixed the Make your voice heard embed (we removed a CallPower integration). I'm working on fixing the le…

The Toyota Sienna is the only minivan with all-wheel drive, which matters in cold climates or for the more adventerous families. It's built on the same chassis as the Highlander.

Yes. https://github.com/rashiq/mcbroken-archive

Hot tweezers is a fun idea we've been talking about. How would you like to see it implemented? Yes, we really love the cap. It instantly safes the iron when you're done. We'll post…

Thanks for the feedback! The storage cap indeed makes a huge difference when you have to do something quickly and then put the iron away. In our testing, we rarely need to change t…

The cap has a magnet on it that auto-homes so that really isn't a risk. The Power Station has a 55 Watt Hour battery, which is where most of the cost comes from. It doubles as a ba…

I agree with you. We wanted to use individual 18650 cells so badly ! We designed the whole thing that way. We did exactly what you proposed, and built cell balancing circuitry and …

We're talking with Digikey! Stay tuned. Preorders start today and will ship on October 15.

Good questions! Tips we'll have at launch: Cone, Bevel 1.5, Wedge 1.5, Point, Bevel 2.6, Knife 2.5, Knife 1.4. They'll be on sale in our store on October 15. https://www.ifixit.com…

We didn't lock down the firmware on the Power Station, so go right ahead!

I completely agree and love buttons and knobs. In this case, we didn't think the setting was necessary at all. It's very rare that you need to change the soldering temperature. We …

Here are some other reviews! We'll be shipping on October 15 and you can try it out for yourself. https://www.pcmag.com/news/ifixit-new-soldering-iron-power-s... https://www.tomsha…

We considered having a sensor to detect when the cap is installed, but found that the accelerometer met that need. The default sleep timer is 30 seconds, but I set mine to 5 second…

Schematics are table stakes! https://www.ifixit.com/Device/iFixit_Soldering

Our goal here was to provide workstation-level performance in a portable form factor. Phone configuration: I agree, that would be nice. If we can find a way to do it from a web bro…

Agree. It's kind of like a chef's knife: a better tool makes you a better chef. A sharp knife is also quite a bit safer than a dull knife. By heating to operating temperature in 5 …

We use a TRS connector between the tip and the iron. And yes, it's a lot of amps! It's amazing how versatile a well designed analog connector can be.

The LED on the iron turns orange once it reaches your target temperature. It glows purple while it's heating, and blue when it's safe to touch.

We designed the system to work for people at a variety of price points. If you just buy the iron, you have access to all the settings in our web console: https://www.ifixit.com/fix…

Google depends on it for firmware updates and repairs on the Pixel lineup. https://pixelrepair.withgoogle.com

Thanks! It cost more but I think the outcome was worth it. We really pushed the envelope on every aspect of the hardware to max out the joules we could push into the material. The …