Outils
Que vous soyez réparateur ou organisateur d'événement de réparation, cette page vous donne une liste des outils et consommables qui vous seront les plus utiles.
Résumé
Les réparateurs.trices apportent généralement leurs propres outils lors d'un Repair Café, mais peu importe ce que vous apportez, il y aura toujours des moments où vous n'aurez pas l'outil précis dont vous avez besoin. Inversement, il y a des choses que vous prenez toujours mais dont vous n'avez jamais besoin - jusqu'au jour où vous les laissez hors de votre boîte à outils ! Souvent, vous pouvez emprunter ce dont vous avez besoin à un autre réparateur ou à la boîte à outils de l'organisateur.trice - mais n'oubliez pas de le rendre !
Si vous êtes un réparateur, vous avez certainement déjà quelques tournevis et autres outils, en fonction de vos compétences et de vos connaissances. Cette page vous aidera à compléter votre boîte à outils avec les articles supplémentaires dont vous aurez probablement besoin, et dont vous ne soupçonniez peut-être même pas l'existence.
En tant qu'hôte ou organisateur d'un événement de réparation, il est utile de constituer une batterie d'outils, en particulier des outils un peu plus inhabituels, ainsi que des consommables, que les réparateurs ne prennent pas forcément avec eux. Ces outils seront également utiles pour prêter à un réparateur en herbe qui se présente sans ses propres outils.
Dans les sections ci-dessous, nous passons en revue les outils, les équipements de test, les logiciels, les pièces détachées et les consommables qui vous seront probablement les plus utiles.
De nombreux articles sont aussi utiles pour la panoplie du réparateur ou de la réparatrice que pour celle de l'organisateur.trice, mais lorsqu'ils conviennent mieux à l'un ou à l'autre, cela est indiqué par les coches dans les deux dernières colonnes des tableaux ci-dessous. Une coche entre parenthèses indique quelque chose de moins essentiel mais qui mérite d'être ajouté à votre collection en temps voulu. Si vous ne cochez pas la case, cela signifie que cet article est normalement fourni par l'hôte.sse ou par les réparateurs.trices eux.elles-mêmes, mais il peut être utile de vous procurer votre propre outil, à moins que votre boîte à outils ne soit déjà pleine à craquer ou trop lourde à transporter.
Les listes sont en gros classées par ordre décroissant d'utilité, mais les éléments connexes sont regroupés. Si vous commencez à créer une boîte à outils à partir de zéro ou à compléter une boîte de base, commencez par le haut de chaque section et travaillez vers le bas en cochant les articles jusqu'à épuisement de l'argent. Cependant, ce que vous devez choisir peut dépendre de vos compétences ou de celles de vos réparateurs, et un ou deux des articles les moins chers peuvent valoir la peine d'être achetés (certains ne coûtent que quelques livres) même s'ils ne sont pas les plus utiles.
Sécurité
- Certains outils sont tranchants ou ont des extrémités pointues qui peuvent causer des blessures en cas de mauvaise utilisation. D'autres peuvent devenir chauds et provoquer des brûlures. Certains produits de nettoyage et adhésifs peuvent provoquer des irritations cutanées ou dégager des fumées malsaines. Assurez-vous de bien comprendre comment les utiliser et suivez toujours les consignes de sécurité.
Outils
Une liste d'outils est sans fin mais voici les choses dont vous pourriez avoir le plus besoin.
| Outil | Réparateur? | Organisateur? |
| La boîte à outils.
L'une des premières choses dont vous aurez besoin est un objet dans lequel vous pourrez ranger tous vos outils, de préférence avec plusieurs compartiments afin de pouvoir trouver rapidement ce que vous voulez, ou repérer ce qui manque lorsque vous rassemblez vos outils à la fin d'une session. Si vous vous rendez à un événement à pied ou en transports en commun, un sac à dos confortable vous facilitera grandement la tâche. |
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| Jeu de tournevis
Plusieurs tailles de tournevis plats, Phillips et Posidrive, ou un ensemble contenant un manche et une gamme d'embouts hexagonaux 1/4" interchangeables. |
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| Pince, coupe-fil, pince à dénuder, couteau de bricolage, petite clé à molette...
Un assortiment d'outils généraux est presque indispensable. |
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| Security screwdriver bits
An appliance will often contain screws with less common screw heads (e.g. Torx) or security heads of various types. A set of 1/4" hex bits to fit a universal handle is very useful. |
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| Extra long screwdriver bits
Some deeply recessed screws can be hard to reach. A few long screwdrivers or a set of extra long screwdriver bits are needed for these. Sets of 75 or 150mm 1/4" bits are available and worth having. |
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| Precision screwdriver set
Essential for working on smartphones, tablets etc. It should contain a variety of flat, cross-head and Torx bits. For Apple products you will need a pentalobe bit, and if the set contains a SIM tray opening tool you will very likely find that useful. |
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| Case opening tools
An opening tool for plastic cases such as this from iFixit makes life so much easier. The plastic ones as supplied with smartphone repair or battery replacement kits are much inferior for most purposes but are still useful for holding a crack open while you continue to work around the case, and for lifting off snap-on ribbon connectors. |
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| Tweezers
A good quality pair of tweezers or a set of tweezers is very useful. |
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| Smartphone opening tools
These include the plastic opening tools mentioned above but also a sucker for lifting a screen. |
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| Nylon Phone Battery Removal Pry Tool
This is useful for easing out a glued-in smartphone or tablet battery. In the form of a card rather than a tool with a sharp end, this minimises the risk of puncturing or otherwise damaging the battery. |
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| Pill boxes
A set of pill organiser boxes as often used by the elderly are an essential means of temporarily storing screws during disassembly, especially for more complicated items such as laptops, smartphones and cameras. |
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| Soldering iron, iron stand, solder
If you can solder you will probably already have these. If you can't, this is probably the most useful new skill you can acquire! |
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| Solder sucker, desoldering wick, flux pen
These make solder rework much easier, and the flux pen will make life easier if you are faced with a situation where the solder refuses to flow. |
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| Magnifying glass
Most people lose the ability to focus really close up as they age, and if that's you, then a magnifying glass becomes essential. It's worth learning to use a jeweller's eye loupe as this leaves both hands free, or you can get clip-on magnifying lenses for your existing spectacles, if you wear them. See Magnifiers and Inspection Aids for more details. |
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| Small torch
A good light from a torch helps visibility, however good your eyesight, and is especially useful for illuminating dark corners. A head torch leaves both hands free. |
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| Circlip pliers
Removing or reinstalling circlips is not something we need to do very often. It can be done very much more easily with the proper tool, though with difficulty, using other tools. |
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| Hot melt glue gun
You'll sometimes find this useful as a quick and easy way to hold things together when no great strength is required. |
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| Hot air heat gun
This is essential for opening some smartphones and tablets and nearly essential for shrinking heat-shrink sleeving (see Consumables) but unless you find yourself specialising in those then you might find it a bit bulky to take on the off-chance of needing it. |
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Equipment
| Item | Fixer? | Host?
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| Multiway extension leads
You will need to have enough to supply power to each fixing table. |
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| PAT Tester
A high priority item for hosts. It must be simple to operate. A number of groups use the First Stop Safety BattPAT. For informal use it should be calibrated every 2 years. |
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| Multimeter
About the most useful item after your screwdrivers. A simple one is perfectly good, and for the host, probably better than an auto-ranging one which might confuse fixers unfamiliar with it. An audible continuity test function is well worth having. |
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| First aid kit
Cuts and scratches are common in any kind of DIY so it's wise to have some sticking plasters and a few other basic items available. More serious injuries are extremely rare. |
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| Anti-static wrist strap
In conditions of low humidity or where a floor covering is creating static it's highly recommended to wear an anti-static wrist strap when opening sensitive electronic equipment such as computers, tablets and smartphones. |
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| Laptop or tablet
You will need this for researching disassembly and fixing guides, and sources for spare parts. Fixers may rely on their own smartphones. If your venue doesn't provide free WiFi but enjoys good 3G or 4G coverage you may wish to provide a mobile WiFi hotspot. |
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| USB charger
Often useful if the one presented may be faulty. |
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| Multiway spider connector
To go with the USB charger, this will have standard USB, mini-USB, micro-USB, Apple Lightning, USB-C and Apple 30 pin connectors on its several legs (or a good selection of those). |
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| 1/4" male to 3.5mm female headphone jack adapter
Very useful for those occasions when you have a HiFi you want to test which only has a 1/4" headphone jack. |
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| Headphones
A cheap pair with a 3.5mm jack is useful for testing audio equipment as well as smartphones and tablets. Quite often someone present will have a pair. |
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| USB-SATA adapter
If you remove a hard disk from a laptop this enables you to connect it to a second laptop for testing, data extraction or cloning. |
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| Component tester
A simple device costing only aroud £10 from Far Eastern sellers will quickly identify bad electrolytic capacitors, blown transistors and many other types of component. |
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| USB Analyser
Another cheap device which will show you the output voltage of a USB charger and the current being drawn by a device on charge. |
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Spares
The huge variety of items that come in make it completely impracticable to carry spares, but nevertheless, there are just a few common items worth having available.
| Item | Fixer? | Host?
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| 3.5mm stereo jack plugs
One of the commonest spares needed, for repairing headphones. |
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| Fuses
A selection of mains plug fuses (5A and 13A) will come in handy, plus a few 20mm fuses rated at 1A. |
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| Spare mains plug
May be needed for replacing a damaged one. |
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| Electrolytic capacitors
These are one of the commonest parts to fail and it would be hard to be prepared for every eventuality, but a few values between 470µF and 4700µf and rated at 35V or more and 105°C or more would make a good start. |
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| Thermal fuses
The small wire-ended cylindrical thermal fuses as often found in electric kettles and room heaters etc. are quite often needed. The snag is that they come in a range of temperature ratings and a few current ratings, and it can be hard to determine the ratings of the one you need to replace. If you or someone in your fixing group understands them it will be worth having a selection of spares. You will also need crimp connectors and a crimping tool to fit them. |
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Consumables
In many cases it's more appropriate for the host to provide consumables than for fixers to carry them.
| Item | Fixer? | Host?
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| Wide sticky tape
For sticking trailing mains leads to the floor so as to avert a trip hazard. |
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| PVC tape
For light duty only. DO NOT use this for insulating mains. |
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| Paper towels
For general cleaning. |
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| Sugru
Comes in 5g sachets, this mouldable material cures like silicone rubber. Useful for reinforcing cracked or frayed headphone cables and a host of other applications. |
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| Two-part epoxy resin glue
The rapid setting variety is excellent for a variety of mechanical fixes. |
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| Superglue
Very strong so long as the mating surfaces fit together closely and have sufficient mating area. |
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| Heat-shrink sleeving
Useful for insulating wire joins etc. A range of sizes is useful to have. You will need a hot air heat gun to shrink it, though it is possible to use the heat from a soldering iron, taking care not to let it touch the sleeving. |
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| Isopropyl alcohol, cotton wool buds, old toothbrush
General cleaning, e.g. electrical contacts including corroded battery terminals, circuit boards, and removing excess flux. |
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| Air duster
Useful for blowing dust out of tight corners. The cans are not very environmentally friendly so instead you might consider a squeezy rubber puffer as used for dusting camera lenses. |
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| Light machine oil
General lubrication. |
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| Silicone grease
Useful for lubricating nylon gears and sliding components. |
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| WD40
Useful for freeing seized parts, but note, this is not a lubricant, and for rotating parts you will have to clean it off and add lubricating oil. |
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| Heat sink cleaner and heat sink paste
There are different qualities at different price points, and in the case of a powerful computer it's important to use the very best and to apply it in the prescribed manner, perhaps not what you would want to carry 'just in case'. It may nevertheless be worth carrying some of the mid-price variety mainly for heat sinks in audio amplifiers and power supplies. |
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Software
When dealing with a slow laptop, a few software items are worth having. For the Windows utilities you can put them all on a memory stick as install files, though in a few cases they just come as an executable file.
| Item | Fixer? | Host?
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| Windows Tools:
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| Ccleaner
One of the best utilities for cleaning up a slow laptop. Especially useful is the ability (under "Tools") to show and selectively disable all the programs that are started automatically on boot. |
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| SysInternals Process Explorer
This is an alternative to the Windows Task Manager which gives more details on running processes. Useful for seeing what is hogging the processor or some other resource. |
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| Speedfan
This utility from Almico.com is useful for displaying CPU and hard disk temperatures. The S.M.A.R.T. tab also gives you the health of the hard disk and the ability to compare it with a crowd-sourced database of similar hard disks. |
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| BatteryInfoView
This utility from Nirsoft.net is useful for displaying battery statistics such as charge state and wear level. |
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| Magical Jellybean Keyfinder
This prosaically named utility from magicaljellybean.com is worth running before a full reinstall. It will report licence keys of Microsoft and some other products, which you might need later. A paid version reports licence keys of a wide range of applications. |
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| DoubleDriver
This utility from Major Geeks saves all the device drivers from a Windows system in a form you can save offline. This may be very useful on a full system reinstall if you find not all the manufacturer-specific drivers are still available from the manufacturer's website. |
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| Bootable Tools:
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| Bootable antivirus
Kaspersky Rescue Disk is one of the easiest to use. Burn it to a memory stick and boot it up the night before a Restart party in order to download the latest signatures. |
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| Live Linux boot memory stick
Useful for demonstrating how much faster a laptop would run under Linux or for checking whether a problem is Windows or a hardware fault. You will need a 32-bit version with an undemanding desktop manager such as MATE for older computers, and a 64-bit version for more modern ones. Many people favour Linux Mint. |
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| Clonezilla
This is the standard open-source utility for cloning or copying hard disks. It runs under a Linux system booted off a memory stick or CD. |
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External links
(This list is biased towards UK readers but some of the suppliers listed operate internationally.)
- iFixit has a wide range of excellent repair-related tools and spare parts.
- RS stocks practically everything you could possibly think of.
- Replace Base is another good source of tools and spare parts for smartphones and tablets.
Non-UK:
- GM Electronic Large store in Prague with a wide range of electronic goodies and other stuff.