Alan Liefting, Author at Ecotech Services

Robots and e-waste

Alan Liefting

25 March 2016

Robots are used a lot in manufacturing and I have been thinking about using them for e-waste processing. In most cases it is not a goer because set up costs are too high and the volumes are too small, but one thing that they could be used on is audio and video cassettes. We accept them for recycling and I was thinking of getting one of those cheap desktop robots to take them apart. More for fun than as a commercially viable operation. There is no money in processing tapes.

Anyway, what prompted this train of thought was the announcement of Liam, Apple’s iPhone dismantling robot. Good on you Apple for doing a little bit of product stewardship and making a start on automating the recycling process.

Liam – An Innovation Story

No Description

Apple, e-scrap, e-waste, recycling
Will the new safety laws do anything?

Alan Liefting

18 March 2016

This is a previously unpublished article that was submitted to news organisations.

In April the Health and Safety at Work Act will come into effect and it will be the first major change to workplace safety legislation in over twenty years. If we can use the number of fatalities as a proxy measurement for workplace safety overall we can look at some of the available data to see what effect the new law may have. Based on comparisons with other countries, a very difficult exercise for various reasons, we are doing slightly worse than some of the EU countries but much better than the litigious United States.

At present there are about 50 workplace fatalities per year, and according to data from 2009 the rate was about five deaths per 100,000 employees per year. Putting it another way it will take workers 20,000 years on the job before they have the statistical chance of being killed. Being a statistic they would of course have just as much chance of getting killed on the first day on the job as they would after working for 20,000 years.

In the period from 1993 to 2009 the average number of workplace fatalities did not actually change very much. The Health and Safety in Employment Act passed into law in 1993 but it had no effect on the recorded workplace fatalities. Also, over the 1993 to 2009 period there had been an absolutely huge change in workplace health and safety culture and policy. This also had no obvious effect. A similar situation happened when bicycle helmets became mandatory. Even though there was a huge uptake in the use of bicycle helmets there was no corresponding stepwise reduction in head injuries due to cycle accidents.

So are we seeing the long tail of the law of diminishing returns on the number of workplace fatalities? If this is the case then no matter how much policy is put in place there will be no effect on the fatalities. One reason why there will always be fatalities is the concept of risk compensation, where we will always aim for the same level of risk. This means that is does not matter how many health and safety procedures are implemented workers will always take risks with some risks leading to fatalities.

Another thing to consider is the effect of what may be onerous health and safety compliance on the cost of doing business in New Zealand. While larger companies can absorb an increase in compliance costs small businesses, on which the New Zealand economy is built, will feel the financial pinch. Businesses that are only marginally profitable will shut down. All else being equal, the work carried out by these businesses, which may need to be done in some cases and in all cases would be a contribution to the New Zealand economy, will shift to a country with less restrictive health and safety policies.

If any work currently done in New Zealand is forced to shift off shore to a country with less strict health and safety policies we should consider the ethics of this from a global perspective. Is it really ethical to allow some of the more dangerous industries to move off shore where foreign workers are killed instead of New Zealanders? Based on what has already happened with sourcing cheap labour, cheap recycling, and cheap waste disposal this is a likely scenario. So it the global workplace fatality rate remains the same would anything have been achieved with the new law?

The best piece of health and safety equipment, which some either choose not to or cannot use correctly, is the grey matter between our ears. And so how do we legislate for the use of our brain?

safety
A lot of packaging for a small screw

Alan Liefting

20 February 2016

I was sorting a consignment of recycling in one of our e-crates when I came across this:

Can you see the screw?

So here we have an M2x3 mm screw with part number DP/N OHCN8P or SG-OHCN8P-M0287-27C-1TRF REV A00. And it is quite a lot of packaging and quite a lot of part number for such a small item! Welcome to the 21st century I guess.

I think the screw is for a bit of Dell computer gear. Now Dell is normally quite good with their environmental policies but in this case it is not so good. This screw is probably used for mounting accessories. I would have thought a better way of supplying a screw for this sort of thing would be to incorporate it directly into the product. This idea is nothing new. In the old school XT’s and other desktop computers the screws used to hold in the expansion cards were part of the case (and held the blanking plates in place). Later models of desktop cases just had integral blanking plates that had to be broken out before putting in an expansion card. And there were no screws supplied!

Anyway, back to this M2x3 mm screw. Surely there would be a spot somewhere in or on the gear that it is used on where it could be stored? From an environmental point of view two plastic bags and a piece of paper would not be needed. From a job costing point of view there would be less material and less individual operations saving money on the production cost of the piece of gear.

Speaking of small screws I came across a website called LaptopScrews.com, a US based supplier that supplies, well, laptop screws. This is great! A supplier of a very specific product that is sometimes needed by repairers and DIYers.

e-waste, packaging, screws
Good old paint pails

Alan Liefting

24 October 2015

I know that I sometimes bang on about the evils of plastic and the sinfulness of using the stuff but plastic paint pails are heavenly! They are so good I get all evangelical about them.

For quite a while I have used the ten litre plastic paint pails in the garden and in the workshop and for all sorts of stuff. In the garden I use them to carry garden tools, soil, mulch, compost, and weeds that I have pulled out. In the garage workshop I use them as rubbish bins and for sorting out the recycling.

We also use them here at Ecotech Services. As well as for the small amount of waste going to landfill we use them for some of the sorting stages, especially for batteries. The pails themselves are pretty strong and they have a really strong carry handle. Compared to those cheap and nasty and flimsy buckets that you can buy from the supermarket the recycled paint pails are pretty damn good. And you have to actually PAY for the ones from the supermarket. Ok, it may only be a couple of dollars but the paint pails are FREE.

Over the years I have made a bit of a study of the pails. They used to only have paper labels and they used to be hard to peel off. On some of the newer pails the label peels of really easily and you are left with a nice clean looking pail. I don’t usually care much for my own appearance (hey, look at how I dress) but it is always good to have a professional image for the company. I have even painted over the labels that are moulded into the plastic to make them look good.

And that leads to the next thing. I think the in-mould labels are being used more often and I would want to paint over them. Would this make the pails (which are made of polypropylene) harder to recycle?

Since I am talking about paint pails I thought I had better mention the Resene Paints paint and packaging takeback scheme. They reuse and recycle what they can. Good on ya Resene!

plastics, reuse
Patently obvious

Alan Liefting

17 October 2015

I was doing some searching on the internet for images of microwave oven parts when good old Google offered up this patent in amongst the search results. It was a patent for a method of wiring up microwave ovens filed in 1998 by Samsung Electronics.

It is for something that is, well, patently obvious. Take a look at these images from the patent:

Yeah, I agree. They want to patent that? A really simple wiring change? It is like patenting a paper clip. Ah… I see that it has a patent. From way back in 1897. Come to think of it didn’t I hear about some sort of simple clicking on a web page that is covered by a patent?

The good news about the microwave wiring patent is that in 2000 someone had the good sense to throw the patent application out. I now know that I can sleep soundly after rewiring microwave ovens safe in the knowledge that I did not illegally flout someones patent.

humour, microwaves, odd
I’ve done a lot of screwing

Alan Liefting

3 October 2015

I’ll probably get in trouble with everyone about the title of this post but at least it got your attention.

Anyway, as a technician I do a lot of screwing (we are only talking about screwdrivers here ok) so having good screwdrivers is a good thing. Have a look at this CK HD Classic range screwdriver that I bought way back in the mid 1990s.

It is a Number 2 Philips head screwdriver so it has done a lot of work. Look at the tip. Apart from the anti-cam out coating being worn off it is still in good condition. The rough patches on the shaft is where I had a toolmaker mate of mine try and put some knurling on it. The steel is so well tempered and of such a good quality that even the tough knurling tool had trouble with biting into it. I reckon having knurling on a long shaft screwdriver like this one is a good idea. It would be way of getting screws out quickly.

What prompted me to talk about screwdrivers is that I decided I needed a set for Torx headed screws. I am seeing more and more products that use them. The sole Torx screwdriver that I had (a security Torx brand Number 20 specifically for the now old school IBM 8512 computer monitors) and the good old screwdriver bit sets are now not really cutting it.

So I got hold of Ron Enright Tools in Auckland, which is where I got all of my CK screwdrivers, to see if I can get some for Torx screws. I was recommended the PB Swiss range of screwdrivers by David. He reckons they are the bees knees. Maybe even the PBs knees (sorry, that was lame). He gave me a good deal on the colour coded set you can see in the picture. They turned up yesterday and they look beautiful! Mmmmm…. Nice handles (although I think square is my preference), good looking (but functionality is more important of course), and all with individual serial numbers, something I have not seen on other screwdrivers. It looks like I will get a lifetimes worth of use out of these things.

That is enough talk about screwdrivers. Time to do some screwing.

humour, screws, tools
Dodgy diodes

Alan Liefting

5 September 2015

Here is a story for all you electronics techs. And anyone making assumptions. Most of us in other words.

This is about a caddy type welder that came in for repair, a 180 amp inverter model. Can’t remember the make or model. I checked for weld voltage and there was a healthy 80 odd volts coming out but there was a really pathetic spark from the electrode which meant there was next to no current.

So I took it apart to do some fault tracing. Using a light bulb as a load I was getting 20 volts out on the weld terminals, down from the no load voltage of 80 volts. Ok, so is there a lot of resistance in the output, or maybe the inverter control circuit is doing something funny. Like a lot of these small caddy welders they have a centre tapped transformer and a full wave bridge rectifier arrangement.

The full wave rectifier circuit is pretty basic.
Image: Wikimedia Commons

Even with the load in place I measured 80 volts AC on both sides of the transformer secondary. All the connections were tight with no sign of heating due to contact resistance. So was it a dodgy diode pack? It was a SOT227 package, which looks like the one pictured here.

I could measure the diode voltage drop in circuit of about 0.3 volts, which is what is expected for these Schottky diodes. Now normally semiconductors go short or blow apart and sometimes go leaky but if this diode pack is faulty it is as if it acting like a one way resistor! Odd.

Getting the diode pack off the heatsink was no mean feat with a mains filter capacitor, output current sense resistor, and output current bus bars all in the way. With it out on the bench both diodes measured ok. We didn’t have one in stock and Tony suggested doing a DC check on it. Putting about 30 volts up the anode and a 100 ohm resistor strung off the cathode I got nothing coming out of it! I then remeasured the junction and it was now open circuit! Definitely a dodgy diode (diodes actually). When I remeasuring the junction voltage a bit later it measured ok. Probably heat sensitive.

So the moral of the story is that we cannot make any assumptions about how components fail. Testing at all stages worked in this case in getting to the bottom of the fault pretty quickly. When fault tracing I am sure we are all guilty of sometimes making assumptions and taking longer than it should to fix something.

electronics, repair
Plastics and change

Alan Liefting

13 August 2015

Thanks to Lawrey and Lole, creators of The Little Things, for the use of this cartoon. Visit littlethings.co.nz for more information about their cartoons

And boy, just how things have changed!

Like a lot of good cartoons this one speaks volumes. It highlights societal change over generations. It shows the increasing environmental awareness amongst the younger generation. It shows the cycle from new product to the discovery of a problematic issue with it and then the need to address that issue. This is a cycle that is all too commonly seen by environmentalists.

cartoons, humour, plastics
Exposure of pregnant women

Alan Liefting

30 July 2015

The title will probably raise another “what on earth has this got to do with Ecotech Services” question so let me explain.

I was doing a bit of research on manganese dioxide, one of the materials in alkaline batteries, when I came across this datasheet from that most august of organisations, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

And look at what they are suggesting we do with pregnant women:

I have absolutely no intention of exposing pregnant women. It is up to them as to how much they show of themselves! And besides, I don’t have any pregnant women that I can expose.

Yeah, I know. It is just a bit of bad grammar. But it made me laugh.

batteries, humour
E-waste and volcanoes

Alan Liefting

29 July 2015

Here is another cartoon from Alex Hallatt’s Arctic Circle that is related to the work we do.

cartoons, e-waste, humour

Latest posts

News archives