fixing

A couple years ago my SO brought home a big air filter. Their office had thrown it away because it ''didn't work''. We plugged it in, turned it on, and it ran fine. We cleaned the filter and put it to work.

After a few months it started making a noise which worried us, so we stopped using it and I took it apart to see if I could find the issue. I oiled the fan motor where the shaft emerges and it went right back to working well.

Disassembling the thing turned out to be more difficult than it had any reason to be. Some of that is my fault, I started at the wrong end, where you could see actual screws (I assumed if there weren't any screws visible at the top, that was because everything was loaded in and attached from the other side). In reality, everything but the filter was loaded in from the top, all the fasteners were just hidden with stupid plastic shrouds.

To access the motor you must remove what I've come to think of as the saucer section. This is a sort of disk made in two parts, which directs airflow and houses the control electronics. To remove the saucer section you must first disassemble it, as if you were trying to get at the electronics. You start by disassembling the handle, which is held together with plastic tabs (at least one will snap during this process). Then you can access the screws hidden at either end. Then you pry the control panel towards the edge of the saucer section until it snaps free, so you can access the screws underneath it (these connect the top of the saucer section to the bottom). Then you can remove the top half. Next there are six screws which attach the saucer to the rest of the air filter, remove them and it swings out of the way (just attached by the wiring).

(The fan has already been removed in this picture)

I know different people have different aesthetic tastes but I hate this ''pretend there are no screws in our product'' nonsense. On my first time reassembling the thing, I realized I'd have to glue the handle together because I broke the tabs, and I didn't want to make things harder on myself if I ever had to open it up again, so I cut the ends of the top to expose the screws. I also drew an arrow on the case so I'd remember how to get the control panel out of the way.

I wasn't quite ready to make more changes (what if I wanted to give the thing away?) so I left it there. But a year and a half later it started making that worrying noise again, and I had to open it up to fix it, and I realized I didn't care about preserving the original aesthetics anymore. I recently put together a writing resource on fixable tech for solarpunk settings and I guess it felt like a chance to practice what I preached.

This time I marked all the screw locations with an awl and drilled holes so you could access them without fussing around with plastic tabs and unnecessary extra disassembly. I also wrote instructions right on the top to save myself some hassle. The sixth screw is right underneath the control panel (great design there) so I just taped it inside the saucer for now. The lack of it doesn't seem to be causing any issues so far.

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Does it look as good? Probably not. But it's a two-foot-wide, two-foot-tall air filter, there's no world in which it really ties the room together. At the very least the next time I need to oil the motor, it should be a bit easier to do.