Every month, I try to spend the last Sunday repairing things with a bunch of other people (mostly retirees or engineers in their late 20s), barring any kind of calamity (like oversleeping). Members of the public bring their appliances and we help them diagnose and guide them through the repair process. Given that business is often unpredictable, I’ve started bringing my own items to repair during lull periods. The power switch for my portable charger broke off its board, so I soldered it back on and also added a bit of superglue to secure it more.

A senior citizen fan

A lady brought in a fan and said, “This is over 60 years old.”

You can also see it in its former advertising glory in this eBay listing for a print ad from 1964, looking very fetching and spinning up a breeze 🌀🌀🌀.

This National-brand fan was manufactured by Matushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd – or as we know it today, Panasonic¹.

It seemed to have trouble starting up (but would spin after the blades get a little push). When stuff like this happens, it usually means that the capacitor needs to be replaced.

I didn’t do the capacitor replacement so this is not my repair (someone else did it), but dismantling the fan was a lot of fun because it was just so straightforward. The construction of the fan was also really solid - everything was metal besides the buttons.

They even included a diagram!

You can get a sense of how dated this is by how the capacitor is referred to as a “condenser”.

Take a look at the old 1.2µF capacitor and its modern equivalent :) Hope it gets another 60 years of life.