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Soldering, screwing, tinkering: a visit to the Garching Repair Café

2021-11-29T08:00:03.827Z


In the Repair Café, Garchinger make defective items ready for use again. But it is much more than a volunteer workshop.


In the Repair Café, Garchinger make defective items ready for use again.

But it is much more than a volunteer workshop.

Garching

- Georg Zimmermann attached a broken wire to a lithium battery with a fine soldering iron.

A small plume of smoke rises.

Then the wire sits firmly on the battery of the small power bank that is on Zimmermann's repair table in the parish hall of the Laudate Church.

He is one of ten volunteer tinkerers who meet regularly in the Garching Repair Café to fix defective objects.

As he tinkers, he explains each individual work step and thus already fulfills a principle of the Repair Café: helping people to help themselves.

A tip that he gives every tinkerer and DIY enthusiast along the way: “Get contact spray.

The devices are often soiled by dust or oil.

The contact spray is a real miracle cure. "

"The focus is on sustainability and the social dimension"

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The initiators: (from left) Doreen Pietzsch, Silke Hoffmann and Ulrike Haerendel from the “Lebendiges Garching” association.

© Gerald Förtsch

More and more hobby craftsmen are volunteering in so-called repair cafés. There are over 50 of these initiatives in and around Munich alone. Ulrike Haerendel from the “Lebendiges Garching” association founded the first Repair Café in the university town in 2016. The reason for the establishment was a lecture given by the General Director of the Deutsches Museum in Munich, Wolfgang Heckl. At that time he gave a lecture in the Garching City Library on the culture of repair and let the spark of the do-it-yourself principle jump over. “The focus is clearly on the idea of ​​sustainability and the social dimension,” says Haerendel.

The Repair Café is a meeting point where the people of Garching come together, talk shop using the equipment they have brought with them and chat over coffee and cake.

“Unfortunately, due to the mask requirement, there is currently no cake buffet.

At the moment we are more of a service company and social interaction is falling a bit away, ”says Haerendel.

3D printer for spare parts

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Need spare parts?

Kiarasch Kuschki can produce them with a 3D printer.

© Gerald Förtsch

Despite the missing cake, there is a lively atmosphere in the room of the laudate church. Behind Georg Zimmermann's workbench, a tape recorder is being tinkered with. In the middle, a sewing machine rattles in continuous operation. On this day, a toaster, a beamer, a printer, a hand blender and a remote-controlled racing car that an elderly lady and her grandson handed over to wander across the five repair tables. Anja Papenfuß, 32, and her partner Kiarasch Kuschki, 41, bend over a city scooter. The two are there for the first time this weekend. “In contrast to many of our colleagues here, both of us are not specialists, but we are reasonably talented in terms of our craftsmanship,” says Papenfuß.

There is a small 3-D printer on the table next to her. Missing spare parts that are needed in the Repair Café can first be drawn on the laptop and then printed out precisely. Kiarasch Kuschki, who studied architecture, read into the world of 3D printing out of private interest and soon got his own mobile printer. With the associated material, which is made from corn starch, individual parts can now be reproduced. "If, for example, a button is missing on the sewing table, I would need about a quarter of an hour to trace it and another half an hour to print it out," explains Kuschki. However, you couldn't wash the garment too hot with the cornstarch button. “But there are also higher quality materials that can easily withstand this temperature”.

"Then of course you have a feeling of success."

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“Get contact spray,” advises Georg Zimmermann.

© Gerald Förtsch

With 3-D printing, the two people from Garching want to contribute a new technology.

So far there has been no need and the printer is still waiting to be used.

The city scooter can probably also be straightened without the technology.

"Apparently the scooter was delivered without instructions," says Papenfuß.

"Now we have to pull up the spring that is built into the interior so that we can attach the plug-in piston".

Anja Papenfuß and Kiarasch Kuschki both believe that they can repair the vehicle.

"Then of course you have a feeling of success."

The power bank that Georg Zimmermann leaned over, on the other hand, can no longer be made functional that afternoon.

It is completely discharged and so you would first have to reorder the three built-in chips and the lithium battery and replace them at great expense.

But there are plenty of experiences of success in the workshop: the toaster is getting hot again, the city scooter is on the move and the cassette recorder is playing in the background.

The next Garchinger Repair Café is expected to take place in February 2022.

Current information is available here.

by Sabrina Graf

You can find more news from Garching and the district of Munich here.

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2021-11-29

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