Tag: Ebay

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Toothbrush Update

A few days ago I wrote about how my wife’s Philips Sonicare electric toothbrush failed. The brush still turned on, so the battery was not an issue. After taking it apart I was able to discover it was a mechanical fault, a metal piece had sheared off making it so the head would no longer vibrate. 

I was able to locate a new piece on Ebay to replace the broken hardware and it was an easy install to replace the part. The toothbrush is now functioning properly again, and a $10 part has saved us $100+ dollars on replacing the electric toothbrush. 

A few pics of the replacement part and the broken part below. In the first picture on the right you can see the old part with the sheared off piece. The middle image shows the sheared off part with a metal attachment. A screw (not shown) goes through the attachment piece and through a part connected to the brush mechanism, and then screws into the captive nut on the sheared off part (you can see the bottom of the captive nut sticking out of this piece. The photo on the left shows the not tip assembly purchased from Ebay. You simply need to unscrew and then attach to the vibrating mechanism on the toothbrush. 

We may not be able to fix everything, but we should endeavor to fix what we can rather than throwing something away.

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Toothbrush Fix

"If you can't fix it, you don't own it."

I don't recall exactly where I first heard this mantra, for some reason I recall it may have been after watching the movie Maker, but it also may very well be from using iFixit on several occasions for iPhone repairs. Either way, it resonated with me, and is something I continually remind my students each day.

Reminders without context, however, are often fruitless. Our students tend to recognize and implement the meaning of such a mantra when paired with a concrete example. As luck would have it, yesterday my wife's toothbrush stopped working properly.

Additionally, one of my students has been working on creating a electric toothbrush band, and I have spent some time working with them opening and tinkering with different types of electric toothbrushes.

So, instead of throwing the broken brush away, I began a YouTube search on how to fix the maligned equipment. Turns out, there are thousands of videos online showing you how to open up and fix all varieties of electric toothbrushes. After examining several videos, I was finally able to find one that showed similar symptoms as my toothbrush which you can find here, and was able to safely open up the casing, extract the hardware, and locate the issue, which happened to be a shearing of a metal part.

A few dollars spent on Ebay, and hopefully I will have this toothbrush back to working order in a few days. By exposing my students to real life scenarios of fixing rather complicated objects, will hopefully give them the confidence and curiosity to take on the challenge of fixing an item rather than simply replacing it.

Will post an update once finished. For now, here are a few photos of the opened toothbrush and the broken Tip Linkage, which needs replacing.