Restart Radio: TFix and ‘better than new’ repairs

Today we talk to Tad Vaas from TFix, a repair centre in South London that mixes corporate and consumer repairs with a very interesting twist. TFix performs professional soldering operations that require specialist knowledge and equipment. Tad and his team have developed a way to go deeper into the repair process than other repair shops, using a highly complicated soldering technology called BGA. BGA provides a physical as well as an electrical connection, which allows individual minute components to be replaced on the motherboard. TFix is comprised of three laboratories, one for consumer repairs, one for corporate repairs, and one for R&D. They are so good at what they do that companies will actually come to them to rectify products after they have been released onto the market. At the research level, TFix are constantly working to identify trends in failures, and to develop new ways of addressing them. We talk to Tad about the problem with public perception of repair businesses, and how repair companies might attract a trusting client base by making sure they reach standards of professionalism. We also talk about learning repair, which for Tad has been a very hands-on process of trial and error. TFix see themselves as pioneers in the repair industry, using experimentation and creativity to not just fix products, but to actively improve designs that fail. Their work is underpinned by an ethos of waste reduction that resonates with all of us here at the Restart Project.