Vita-Mix 5000 variable speed fix/repair

I'm writing this blog entry because Vita-Mix is now officially on my shit list.  The story will follow below, but the bottom line is that I want You The Owner to be able to fix your property yourself, and not have to pay Vita-Mix outrageous amounts of money to do a simple job like changing out a simple electrical component that really anyone could do.  Bear in mind that what I show below voids the warranty.  If you decide to open up your machine, it's your decision and your warranty.  But I know this fix works for the indicated problem, and if you have this particular problem it will be worth it to you just for the feeling of empowerment it will give you to fix your own machine.  The offending unit:

My wife bought this particular Vita-Mix 5000 at the Iowa State Fair about 10 years ago.  She loves the thing, and it served us well until recently when the motor began running very erratically on the variable speed setting.

More disclosure:  Fed Up Airline Pilot I may be, but my college degree is as a Laser Technician, and along with optics classes came a huge amount of electro-mechanical classes.  In fact, just a couple of extra classes and I could have earned the Electronics Technician degree.  The point is that I'm over-qualified to fix a blender, but it's really not rocket science, and I believe that anyone can do the same thing with proper guidance.  You can do it!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ2HcRl4wSk

Tool list, all available at Radio Shack:

A medium Phillips screwdriver (the star one not the flat one)
A very small flat head screwdriver (the flat one not the star one)
A 13mm deep-well socket with associated ratchet wrench
Soldering iron and solder
Heat-shrink tubing

That's it, can you stand it!?

Parts list:

Go to www.alliedelec.com and order part number 70153162.  It's about $8 plus shipping.
http://www.alliedelec.com/search/productdetail.aspx?SKU=70153162

Just in case the link breaks, what you're looking for is a potentiometer, linear 0-5K Ohm, 312 degree rotation, with .25" diameter input shaft.  The stock Vita-Mix part is only .75 Watt, but this sucker's rated for 2 Watts.  "More power!" - Tim the Tool Man Taylor

For full disclosure, this is just one part out of a thousand different components which will do the same job, but it's the one I chose and it works just dandy.  Don't mess with success!

Troubleshooting the problem:  Our Vita-Mix 5000 was acting like the variable resistor (potentiometer) was only making intermittent contact with the speed control board.  The motor ran fine on the "High" RPM High/Variable switch setting, but randomly turned on and off when in variable speed mode and the knob was turned.  After the fact and with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, I can now say with certainty that the following was indeed the fix for this particular problem.  The faulty part that this whole posting is about (the potentiometer) is shown below:

To test my diagnosis, I began disassembling.

Here's your starting point:

First, I loosened the power cable restraining screws in order to expose the motor fan shroud screws:

Next, remove the four (4) screws which hold down the top half of the motor fan shroud and remove the top half of the fan shroud, noting for later that there's a little notch at the top to help alignment during reassembly:

Then remove the bottom half of the fan shroud assembly.  It should come right off.  Again, note the notch on the top for easier reassembly later:

Next, remove the four screws at the four corners in the picture below:

Just to be sure, these are the screws you're removing - I show them below in the "loosened" position:

Remove the screws, and you're ready to separate the two halves of the base:

Separate the two halves of the base.  It may be sticky, but just apply gentle pressure around the edges until it comes apart.  Note also the little rubber vibration dampener.  These are shown separate in the next picture.  During reassembly it's important to get them back on the edges.

Rubber vibration dampeners:

This is the part we're looking for - the potentiometer!  Unfortunately, I decided to do this blog posting only after I'd already de-soldered and removed the leads.  Note that initially this part had three legs, but the one on the right has been cut off by Vita-Mix before assembly - the third leg is not needed for this machine:

Before unbolting the potentiometer from the housing, unplug the leads (wires with little connectors on them) from the circuit board.  The two closest connectors in the picture below are the ones you're looking for:

Next, using your small flat head screwdriver, loosen the small screw holding on the knob:

Remove the knob (this is the new Honeywell component already installed; as I said earlier I decided to do this blog post only after the fact, just imagine it's black instead of silver, ok?):

Using your 13mm deep-well socket, remove the nut holding in the potentiometer:

Now back inside the housing.  This is the new component, already installed.  This is where the soldering comes into play.  Using your soldering iron, remove the two leads from the old potentiometer.  Cut three pieces of heat-shrink tubing to length and slip the pieces over the wires before re-soldering the leads to the new component.  !!!VERY IMPORTANT!!!  Use the same left two terminals on the potentiometer as were used on the old part (the left two as you look down on the potentiometer) and leave the third (right) leg unused.  Use a match or cigarette lighter to shrink the tubing onto the leads, using a shorter piece to protect the third unused leg:

Note how beefy and strong this Honeywell sweetheart is, compared to the weak sauce plastic original POS!  Rated for 25,000 cycles, baby!

Simply reverse these steps to reassemble the unit.  Only one "gotcha!" left to cover yet.

After reassembling the base, now we need to make sure the dial indicator knob is properly aligned with the appropriate speed setting.  To do this simply twist the potentiometer input shaft as far counter-clockwise as it will go (until it stops).  This will be the "1" speed position.  Then without bumping or turning the input shaft, slide the indicator knob onto the shaft and align the white hash mark with the "1" position.  Tighten the screw down and you're all set!

Now why after this is all said and done would I take the time to pass along all this valuable information to you, my internet friends?  Well here's how my interaction with Vita-Mix went down...

After troubleshooting, I looked online for the Vita-Mix parts and service center.  I saw that they charge $150 to fix pretty much any problem per event.  Since the machine we own is 10 years old, it was not worth it to me to spend $150 on a repair - that's almost halfway to a new machine!

After disassembly and removal of the old potentiometer, I contacted Vita-Mix via email (their preferred method of contact) requesting a price quote on a new potentiometer, making sure to include all pertinent information such as serial number and even the part number printed on the side of the potentiometer.  I received no reply for several days.  I then called them up on their -800 number to order a new potentiometer.  I was given a price quote of $147!  My jaw dropped and I managed to recover my wits about me enough to ask "For crying out loud, why?!  $147 for a simple potentiometer?  Are you nuts?!"  The gal on the other end of the line was nice enough to admit to me that the reason it's so expensive is to discourage folks from trying a DIY fix, and to encourage you to send it in to the repair center for $150.  Bullshit, I say!  Almost two weeks later, I received a reply email from their customer service department telling me I needed to call the -800 number.  They couldn't possibly send in written form their insane price gouging, and they're right about that...  I would have posted it here!

So, as revenge for their price gouging, I did several hours' worth of work here in order to provide you my internet brothers and sisters good information so that you can make an informed spending decision.  Send your Vita-Mix in to be repaired for $150, or do it yourself for about $10.

Asus M50VM Laptop and Linux Screen Brighness

If your screen is too dark when using a Ubuntu Linux distribution on your Asus M50VM series laptop, your light sensor is to blame. Try this:

Open a terminal via >Applications>Accessories>Terminal

Once in the terminal, type (or just copy the next line):

sudo gedit /sys/devices/platform/asus_laptop/ls_switch

It will ask for your root password. Enter it.

Within the gedit window that pops up, change the "1" to a "0"

Save.

Reboot the computer if the screen doesn't go full bright immediately.

This disables the light sensor, re-enabling your screen brightness control.

This technique may work with other versions of Linux, but I don't have the patience to figure out all the different root command equivalents of "sudo" for all the different distros.

Good luck!

Legal Vs. Safe: Part 1 - Rest!

What actually happens on a 9 hour - FAA legal minimum non-reduced rest overnight?

The first (reality-ignoring) problem with scheduling a 9:00 overnight is that it is assumed that the flight will be on time, because scheduled reduced rest is not allowed according to our contract. This is obviously not realistic, as it is certainly anticipated by the company that the flight crews will probably be on reduced rest on a significant percentage of the overnights. Reduced rest will only add fuel to the following fires, and is in my opinion a ridiculous concept. Say this out loud, and listen to yourself: "Oh, one night without adequate sleep is OK. It is completely safe. The FAA says so, therefore it must be true!"

How much trouble would we, the pilots, be in if we were to be honest with the passengers during our "Welcome Aboard" announcements? "Hello, this is Captain Bob. Well, I'm a bit bushed this morning, and so is the rest of my crew. You see, we didn't pull into the gate last night until 8 hours and 15 minutes before our report time this morning. It will be OK in the end, though, because we are being compensated with additional rest tonight after our full day of flying today. So, the bottom line is, we're tired but we're legal. The FAA says so, so don't worry about it! We hope you enjoy your flight today." We'd all be fired, right? Just for telling the truth.

I already know the company response to the above premise: "You, the pilot, are responsible to call in fatigued if you feel you are unfit to perform your duties."

Bravo, well played! *golf clap* Very nice. Very legal. This statement removes all culpability from the company and puts it smack dab on the pilots. We, the pilots, are now responsible to make a legal decision to fix (or, on the contrary, cause a separate really extremely large problem in the form of a cancellation because of) a problem created by the company through unrealistic scheduling practices.

As I kind of like to poke at sensitive areas, I'll explain this situation from a pilot's perspective. The pilot thinks: "Yes, after a bit over 5 hours of sleep I am kind of tired. Am I too tired to fly? Maybe not. I'll get a large coffee and see how I feel then. If I call in fatigued I'll strand this airplane, my passengers, and my crew here in Seattle, and I will cause untold hardship, misery, and financial loss to all involved. I will be branded as a "troublemaker" by the company and I will probably see retribution. Oh, hell. I guess I'll just fly the damn trip."

This rationalization is what happens most of the time. The flight leaves on time, passengers arrive at their destinations on time, and everyone is happy but the tired crew.

An important item to note is that we are only given 15 minutes between block in and the beginning of legal rest. This is wholly unrealistic and is obviously a complete fantasy. On a perfect day it takes 15 minutes to simply de-plane the aircraft. Wheelchairs, meet-and-assist pax, maintenence items, and other issues come up. We need the definition of the beginning of legal rest to accurately reflect what we know to be reality - the honest truth - in the real world. Rest should begin as soon as we, the crewmembers, enter the hotel room. The reason I use "enter the room" is that I have had too many instances when the room key doesn't work, the room isn't cleaned and ready for me, or there is someone else in my assigned room. It takes time to fix these problems, and I am obviously not resting during this time.

On the other end of the legal rest window, the report time is the end of legal rest! It also happens to be the exact same time that we are required to be at the airplane to perform our preflight duties. What was the FAA smoking when they approved that interpretation of the end of legal rest?! I have many words for the stupidity of this, but it hardly needs saying that we are not resting in the following situations: *deep breath* While getting dressed and packing to leave for the airport, waiting for the van to leave for the airport, riding the van to the airport, going through security at the airport, and walking to the airplane at the airport.

In my example, legal rest begins at 10:29 PM. We are not even to the hotel van waiting area until 10:36 PM. We aren't in our rooms until 10:53 PM. We may be crewmembers, but we are certainly not robots. Even with my definite effort to quickly get ready for bed, I didn't turn the lights off until 11:24 PM. It takes me a while to fall asleep after turning the lights out, and that is reflected in the chart. Again, we are not robots with on/off switches! The FAA and airline management both need to start recognizing this!

Another completely ignored aspect of the biology of humanity is involved in this schedule. Circadian rhythms. Most humans need to be on a regular schedule to obtain adequate rest. The company has proven time and time again that their definition of "Safe" is "FAA Legal". This is patently false, and we all need to quit pretending that we believe otherwise. Scheduling a redeye followed by a sit followed by another leg back to base is complete lunacy, and was in my opinion, a very large factor in one of my company's "pilot error" incidents of last year. If safety is truly the #1 goal of our company, then there should be company policies stating recognition of, and procedures implemented which include a basic understanding of the physical needs of human employees. Embrace the uncomfortable, inconvenient, and expensive fact - legal is not the same thing as safe. Management should be required to repeat this obvious truth as their mantra, as we are required to state out loud during our gate briefings - the common sense logic - that we will not take off with a horn blaring at us. (That's a whole separate idiotic issue...)

The basis of our training as pilots is that whatever is more restrictive, FAA regulations or company policy, will be the determining factor. I propose that the more restrictive interpretation of rest would be based on the recommended 8 hours of actual sleep, with realistic rest regulations built on real-world airline crewmember experience. Therefore, rest should begin 30 minutes after you enter your room, and end 30 minutes before scheduled van time to the airport. If you want to make it easier to track and enforce, just average it out to rest beginning at 1 hour after block in, and ending 1 hour prior to report time. Make it 10 hours, minimum. There should also be no such thing as "reduced rest", because that equals "reduced safety".

*Cue the company screaming* Sorry, folks. That's what it would take to ensure an 8 hour sleep window.

In summary, airlines will always schedule pilots and flight attendants right up to the limits of legality. Therefore, it is the responsibility of the FAA to set those limits to reflect a realistic, safe rest window for all air crew members. The FAA is currently considering re-writing rest regulations in response to the Colgan crash.

Passengers should send letters to the FAA if they are concerned about what I have said in this posting, and want a truly rested pilot at the controls when they are in the back of the plane.