7mo ago

YSK: An out-of-warranty battery almost left this paralyzed man’s exoskeleton useless

www.theverge.com

An out-of-warranty battery almost left this paralyzed man’s exoskeleton useless

"Michael Straight, a former jockey paralyzed from the waist down, was left unable to walk for two months after the company behind his $100,000 exoskeleton refused to fix a battery issue. "

“I called [the company] thinking it was no big deal, yet I was told they stopped working on any machine that was 5 years or older,”

A Boring Dystopia @lemmy.world

Moonrise2473 @feddit.it

7mo ago

An out-of-warranty battery almost left this paralyzed man’s exoskeleton useless

www.theverge.com /2024/9/26/24255074/former-jockey-michael-straight-exoskeleton-repair-battery

16 comments

Why the fuck are they treating body part replacements like it’s a phone or another device
- Because to them, it is no different. They aren't making money off what they have deemed 'out of production' equipment, so the search for endless profits means they need a 'new' machine to be bought at a frequent pace.
  It's about profits, not people. Bottom line rather then bottomless life.
- Honestly, the law should be that the batteries need to be designed to be replaced by off the shelf options. Basically, add instructions on how to relatively easily to replace the battery cells with the same ones found inside laptop batteries that can be ordered off Amazon or similar places.
  
  Imagine what smartphones would look like if they still had to be powered by AAA batteries.
  That's a false comparison. We have Lithium and NiMH batteries available off the shelf for common things that aren't phones. The technology is available for a COTS phone battery replacement, as long as it matches a common form-factor.
  And if phones can't work around a common battery form-factor but yet all look like fucking candy-bars, then I call bullshit.
  
  But people don't want that.
  Until something goes wrong and they discover (usually too late) that they actually did want that.
  
  On the other hand, there is a very valid reason why things like batteries are so expensive to replace and why you can't find replacement batteries for a lot of products a certain amount of time after production ends.
  On the other other hand, there are tons of commonly available industry standard batteries that a manufacturer could choose to use, if they wanted to.
  
  I remember learning about this back when I took a smog certification class back in community College. Learned the only computer approved to run the modern smog diagnostic stuff is from 1986 and it's made by like one company to this day.
  Add onto that all the dinosaur lathes and welding machines I've seen over my career and I wouldn't be surprised seeing a commodore running the dmv database for the entire state at this point.
  
  "Ancient" lathes, milling machines work fine. You don't need the newest control software when the old one does the job. And good luck convincing someone to buy a $100k machine just because it is new.
  
  Usually, you're right. But having the actual machine is only half the problem.
  Last place I was at we had this big beautiful ride along mill that was just magnificent. Between the attachments and tooling we had, it was capable of producing any part of itself down to the last nuts and bolts. With the right know how and materials, it was capable of self replication.
  We torched it for scrap. Not me, as a dumb dumb welder, but the business. There was nobody we could find with any combination of a) space to put it, b) ability to pay for it, and c) know how to run it. Best we ever managed was two of the three, and since there was no money in it for the business, they elected to cut it down for scrap value. Got one of the best t-tables I've ever had to weld on out of the deal, but it was still a travesty.
  So yes, while the machines work fine, it's hard to find people with the skills to run them effectively, the space to actually house the machine, and the spare cash required buy and maintain it.
  
  Well, yeah you need people to run em, maintain them and you need the space. Thing is - most people wouldn't be looking for an older machine specifically when needing to buy something. Those machines stay in machine shops and crank out parts since forever.
  Like, a neighbor of mine has three older lathes, one cnc, one larger, one smaller. He had to redo the wiring from scratch on one of them because it was so old the isolation from the wires fell off and it was just copper left hanging in the control box. No company would buy that stuff.
  
  Why not use off the shelf 18650 or 21700 like some electric cars, then you just need to bundle the 18650 in a way that they can be desoldered or whatever
  
  Guess I shoudl've read a bit more, thought the skeleton was the issue not a shitty watch

16 comments