Swiss Innovation Academy
Backstage blog 1 min read

How to repair an Original 8” Time Timer blocked Red disc?

In short: lift the lid of the black dial, unscrew it and take out the plexiglass. Now you can put back the red disc behind the top layer. Voila.

A sketched repair guide for the time timer: 1. life the lid. 2. Unscrew the dial. 3. Pull the plexi. 4. Put the red in the background.

The issue

A friend of my son played with our big Time Timer (which is called the Original 8” Time Timer) and broke the mechanism. Basically the timer stayed all red and it stopped moving.

The fix

I've looked only for repair guides, but there are only guides for other types of Time Timer, and one for my Time Timer but that doesn't show the start:

So here's my own tiny guide of how I fixed it:

  1. Remove the lid on the black dial: in the middle of the Time Timer, there is a black thingy that you turn to add time to the timer. At the top of that thingy there is a sort of lid that you can take off. Take that one off.
  2. Unscrew the dial: now you see a little screw, take it off, and now you can take the black dial thingy off.
  3. Take the plexiglass out: Use a sunction thing to take the plexiglass out. I haven't a fancy one at home, so I just used the thing we use to unclog the toilets. Not fancy put it worked.
  4. Put the red circle back behind: Now you can touch the red circle of the timer. At the top of the timer you'll see there is like a cut. That where you can put back the red circle sheet in the back of the white layer that should be on the top.
  5. Put it back on: now, put everything back in the reverse order.

Take it with a grain of salt

I'm clearly not a good handyman, but I'm happy I could fix it in a good enough way like this. I'm adding this tiny guide here because I feel that if this happened to me with kids, there might be other parents out there who use a Time Timer with their kids and that they might need to fix it.

written and sketched by hand

This article was written on a refurbished Remarkable II tablet with a type folio cover. The illustration was made drawn by hand on the same tablet.