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| Disassembled Philipps Respironics CPAP Machine |
I have been using a CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) machine for about ten years. I was having a terrible time sleeping, went to a sleep clinic, did an overnight sleep study and I was diagnosed with sleep apnea. So my airway would collapse, I would stop breathing which set off an internal alarm and I would wake up momentarily and resume breathing. This was happening over and over every night, which kind of explains why I wasn't feeling rested in the morning.
Doc prescribed a CPAP machine and it made a heck of a difference. I'd wake up in the morning feeling rested. It was a god send. I've been using it every since.
I went back for a check up maybe a year later (maybe more) and doc prescribed a new machine. The one I had had been running for eight hours a night which is like 3,000 hours a year. Ok, no sweat off my brow, insurance paid for it all. The new machine was smaller and started automatically, so I used it.
About a month ago it started acting up. Wouldn't start reliably and sometimes it would just stop. Coaxing it didn't help, so I pulled out the old one and started using it and it's been working fine.
Being mindful of the old dictum that "two is one and one is none", I thought I would see if I could get the new one fixed. Turns out you can't, not without going through the doctor. The CPAP people have got this market sewn up tight, they have the power of the Federal government behind them and the only way you can get one is through your doctor. Quite a racket. Did find that CPAP machines only have a service life of five years, after that they won't even try to repair them. Since mine is ten years old there was no point in even trying to get it repaired.
New machines cost around a thousand dollars, and at least one place has a tame doctor that will prescribe one for you.
Looking for information, I came across some posts on reddit talking about building your own. It should be a fairly simple matter. All you need is a small blower and a way to calibrate the pressure. I think mine is set to around 4 cm of water, with is like 1/20th of a PSI, which isn't very much, and maybe that's all you need. You could get fancy and monitor the pressure and adjust the blower speed on the fly, but you would want some kind of fail safe. You don't want it to start blasting higher pressure air into your lungs. You might wake up before that did any damage, or would you? Not something you want to mess with.
There's also the problem of how you measure pressure that low. There must be a way, after all Philipps does it.
Anyway after I got done poking around on the internet I decided to try taking my new machine apart. The only tricky part was the tiny screw holding the exhaust port on. It was too small for any of my regular Torx drivers, but fortunately one of the bits in my set of security bits was small enough. Three more normal screws and then it was just a matter of bending the locking tabs enough to release the components and now we have the results at the top of this post.
I put it back together and it seems to be as happy as it was before I took it apart. With luck it appreciated my poking around and will go back to working properly. With luck the old one will last for another ten years.
And even if it doesn't, I sleep just fine curled up on my side in my recliner.
P. S. Siemens (which makes Respironics machines) has completely pulled out of the U. S. market after someone complained about the foam they were using to muffle the sound of the fan. I suspect a U. S. company was stirring the pot and Siemens decided they didn't need the headache and just quit.
