A workbench made from 305,649 repair attempts
The repair bench
See what happens to electrical items brought to community repair events.
Volunteers recorded whether each item was fixed, could still be repaired, or had reached the end of its useful life. The records come from eight repair networks and run through July 2025.
were recorded as fixed at the event
- Attempts
- 305,649
- Item types
- 40
- Years
- 2012–2025
Start with one kind of item.
Choose a category to carry it through every view. The bar separates fixed, repairable, end-of-life, and unknown outcomes.
fixed at the event
25,106 vacuum attempts are in the dataset. “Repairable” means the item was not fixed at that event but was judged capable of repair.
Outcomes vary across the bench.
Longer green sections mean a larger fixed share. Sort by the number of attempts or by fixed share, then choose any row to update the later views.
Showing 12 of 40 item types
These rates describe items people chose to bring to participating events. They do not measure every product sold, every failure, or the skill of one repair group.
Older does not automatically mean harder.
Each card uses only attempts with a usable reported item age. Choose an age band to compare its outcomes for vacuum.
Age is available for 9,075 of 25,106 selected attempts. People may keep durable items longer and bring different problems at different ages, so this view does not show that age caused an outcome.
Reporting grew and changed.
Bar height shows recorded attempts; the number above each bar is the fixed share. Choose a year for exact counts. The 2025 bar stops on July 31.
20247,782vacuum attempts
Fixed4,42856.9%
Repairable1,44118.5%
End of life1,76022.6%
Unknown1532.0%
The participating networks, countries, item mix, and recording practices changed over time. Counts and rates should not be read as a trend in product quality or worldwide repair activity.
A repair event gives an item another chance—not a controlled test.
The dataset is useful for seeing the mix of reported attempts and the barriers volunteers encounter. It cannot tell us how often all products fail, how long a fix lasted, why two groups differ, or whether one brand is more durable.
Data and method notes
The Open Repair Alliance combines eight partner datasets under the Open Repair Data Standard. This project keeps only product category, standardized repair outcome, valid ages from 0 to 100 years, standardized end-of-life barrier, and event year. It excludes identifiers, brands, places, group names, and free text.
The fixed share divides “Fixed” records by all records in the selected group, including unknown outcomes. Age bands use the 102,112 records with a usable reported age. Barrier shares use only the 29,911 end-of-life records that name one of six standard barriers.
Source: Open Repair Data v0.3 aggregate, July 2025. Published by the Open Repair Alliance under CC BY-SA 4.0. Retrieved October 15, 2026. The static source is pinned to SHA-256 364d741b39b40ce955a5a9f83adf9776b3f40f2f857cc2cd96b6ae1818aabe82.