The Renaissance of Repair: A Timely Opportunity for Fabrication Research

TL;DR

This paper advocates for repair-centered fabrication research, emphasizing its relevance and potential within the current right-to-repair movement and sustainable practices, outlining a five-step repair process.

Contribution

It introduces a structured repair process framework and highlights the importance of repair-focused research as a timely and impactful area.

Findings

Defines repair as a five-step process.

Highlights opportunities and challenges in repair research.

Argues for the significance of repair in sustainable fabrication.

Abstract

Through the rise of the right-to-repair movement, along with supporting legislation, we are currently witnessing an attitude shift in favor of repairing. This opens up various opportunities for personal fabrication research. Although the field has shifted more towards sustainable practices, repair is rarely the main focus. In this paper, we want to make the case for repair-centered fabrication research as a timely, relevant, impactful, and therefore meaningful topic. We describe potential avenues researchers could pursue by defining repair as a five-step process, including issue identification, exploring solutions, acquiring materials, performing the repair, and testing, and discuss challenges and opportunities for each step.