So, I decided to mess around with some of those miniature toy home appliances recently. You know, the tiny blender, the little vacuum cleaner, that kind of stuff. Found a set pretty cheap online, figured it might be fun to see what’s inside.
Getting Started
First thing I did was unbox them all. Laid them out on the workbench. The plastic felt, well, cheap, as you’d expect. The little vacuum cleaner looked the most interesting, so I grabbed that one first. It made a whirring noise, but didn’t seem to pick up much, not even tiny bits of paper I put down.
Taking Things Apart
Naturally, I had to see why. Got out my small screwdriver set. Taking screws out was easy enough. The casing popped open into two halves. Inside, it was super basic: a tiny motor, a little fan blade, a battery compartment, and a switch. That’s pretty much it.
I looked closer at the motor and the wires. One wire connected to the battery terminal looked a bit loose. Gave it a gentle tug and yeah, it popped right off. Bad soldering job, probably done in a rush.
The Fix (Attempt)
Okay, so I thought, easy fix. Warmed up my soldering iron. It’s not the best iron, mind you, just a basic one I use for odd jobs. Stripped the wire back a tiny bit, tinned it, and then tried to solder it back onto the terminal tab.
- Cleaned the terminal first.
- Applied a tiny bit of solder.
- Held the wire in place with tweezers.
- Touched the iron to it.
It took a couple of tries, my hands aren’t the steadiest these days, but I got it stuck back on. Seemed solid enough. Put the batteries back in, hit the switch… success! The motor spun up, maybe a bit faster than before, hard to tell. Definitely more noise.
Putting It Back and Testing
Then I just snapped the casing back together. Put the screws back in. Turned it on again. Yep, still working. Pointed it at those bits of paper. It actually sucked a few of them up into the tiny dust compartment! Didn’t exactly clean the carpet, but hey, it worked better than it did before. That felt pretty good, actually.
Also fiddled with the mini washing machine toy. Added some water, watched the little drum spin. It mostly just splashed water around. Found a tiny leak near the bottom seal, but didn’t bother trying to fix that one. Just dried it off and put it aside. Sometimes it’s just fun to see how these simple things are put together, even if they barely work.