Hack Correlation

This is an interesting piece of tech that gets a fair amount of usage. I think some everyday industrial objects hide a complex mechanical layer and present it as simplicity. To understand this piece, think of the single-use paper towel dispensers inside public toilets. This has been raised this to the next level, providing a continuous textile towel - which possibly gets afterwards washed and repaired - guessing around 50 meters in length. You pull the towel piece facing you, from the top, it allows about 30cm to be drawn out, after ~10 seconds it draws the slack (30 cm) back into the unit. This has to be experienced in order to understand the mechanical clockwork hiding inside. There are no electronics involved here. Fortunately, there was a broken unit waiting for repair, complete with refill instructions. The upper roller supplies the towels. The lower roller is the take-up roller. The green cylinder, spring-loaded, flattens up the take-up so that it's as tig...

I recently got access to a broken Siemens Dressman TJ10500. It's a pro-sumer device that helps you straighten shirts without the tedious ironing. It looks like this: The unit was described as "not heating" or "cooling rapidly". The front panel and every other feature seemed to be functioning just fine. I will describe how to tear down the unit, what can go wrong, what I did to repair mine and how well it works. Teardown To get inside the unit, there are many screws that need to be undone: around 5 at the back of the unit (except the air filter ones), two below (left side with the unit facing you). Then you need to carefully lift up the plastic trim that surrounds the LCD and controls, all around, you will have two more screws just next to the airbag. Most of the screws are Torx T20, some of them are Phillips (PH2 I think). With those undone, you can remove the left [metal sheet] panel, that gets you access to everything inside the unit. The m...