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O Holy Crap

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Re: O Holy Crap

#161

Post by mikestew »

oblio wrote: post #134
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #95

Carrot peeler? What nonsense. Back of a knife does a fine job. Still, lots of crappy 'appliances' out there. If the labels aren't peeling or fading, then the knobs come off or there's too many parts to keep track of, and one falls behind something and, well, throw it away now. Our fancy dishwasher had a soap flappy thing in the door. Convenient location! Fill and fold shut and... the manufacturer didn't think beyond…

> Carrot peeler? What nonsense. Back of a knife does a fine job. It does, but it's both slower and less safe than one of these things, if you know how to use it right: https://www.ikea.com/nl/en/p/ikea-365-vaerdefull-potato-peel... Personally I'd recommend that style over the "default" peelers that look like this one: https://www.ikea.com/nl/en/p/ikea-365-vaerdefull-peeler-blac... The vertical one is much faster.

The 2nd one is "default"? In the U. S., I don't I've ever seen a peeler that wasn't like your first link. That, or I just never recognized the second link as a peeler. Looks kind of like a cheese slicer to me. :-)

Re: O Holy Crap

#162

Post by nosianu »

crystaln wrote: post #148
nosianu wrote: post #82

I don't quite know what to say to what I found near the end in this article: > Recently, my wife needed a carrot peeler. She needed one rather quickly. Off to Target. The one she bought (the only one on sale)... I stopped at the phrase "the only one on sale". Inevitably the next part reads: > looked handsome enough, and the brand was one she recognized, but it failed in the useful department, miserably. It wasn’t sha…

So a high quality brand on sale should be presumed to be low quality?

You should look at the specific appliance and not just the brand. Even known "good" brands mess up.

For example and speaking about grinders, I had a Mahlkönig Vario at first, 370 Euro (https://www.mahlkoenig.com/de/products/vario-home). Mahlkönig is a brand for professional-grade coffee grinders, with some few expensive top-consumer-grade ones in the mix. It's their cheapest coffee grinder.

That particular model wasn't their own, I think they got it from Baratza (https://baratza.com/grinder/vario/), probably to extend their presence in the top-segment of the household market.

Too bad, that model is not a good fit for them at all. Lots of issues. I had mine repaired and it went so badly they sent me a brand new one after I complained with pictures. It's not bad per se or terrible, it just does not quite deliver what one expects from that brand. For example, the seal that prevents the espresso-grade finely ground coffee to get into the machine is just some barely attached rubber ring. Leakage into the machine is an issue. Also, lots of plastic. Very hard to disassemble, soooo many steps and parts, bad for repairs and maintenance.

Re: O Holy Crap

#163

Post by JKCalhoun »

blueblob wrote: post #66
JKCalhoun wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My KitchenAid mixer ate a gear many years ago. They would lead you to believe they are a high quality brand, no? After disassembly, it turned out to be perhaps the only plastic gear in the thing. It occurred to me that it was perhaps designed to fail rather than the mixer continuing to break the bones of the person who got their hand caught in the paddle. So, I throw the engineer a bone for that one. I was bummed tho…

I had the same gear fail. It's called a worm gear and is, indeed, intended to fail before damaging the other gears. They're much cheaper if you buy a non-oem part. I bought one from amazon for ~10 USD.

Yeah, this was a time when Amazon was in its infancy. :-(

Re: O Holy Crap

#164

Post by carapace »

> Potemkin pens, mere props.

I got a wire cutter/stripper recently that gave me that exact feeling: "This isn't a real wire stripper, it's a non-functional replica."

(It's the kind that has a little adjustment screw/slider to set the diameter of the wire you're stripping. Only it's impossible to set the screw correctly because turning it to tighten it forces the slider to shift position. I wrestled with it for an hour and then ordered a different one. The handle plastic is weird too, it feels "icky" somehow. BTW, the new one, which works great, was the same price as the unusable one.)

The unusable one is not worth returning. And what are they going to do with it if I did return it? Throw it away? Sell it to someone else?

> And the world took the loss. A small one, but they add up.

Again, that's exactly how I feel about it. What a waste, to dig up the materials, forge them into this device, send it who knows how far back and forth over the Earth, just so I can throw it back into the Earth because it's not worth fixing it. It's fucking depressing.

I've got more anecdotes: a brand new soldering iron that doesn't solder; an aluminum folding beach chair that broke when unfolded for the first time; an air fryer with a custom grill that rusted in less than a year and can't be replaced; etc...

As far as I can see, you have to go out of your way to find the manufacturers and retailers that care about quality (and repeat business) and patronize them exclusively. Don't give any more money to the folks who are ripping you off. Instead, reward the folks who are doing the right thing. You're going to pay the overhead anyway either by doing your homework or by throwing away time and money and garbage items.

Re: O Holy Crap

#165

Post by yourapostasy »

crystaln wrote: post #147
robinsonb5 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difficulty is that the abundance of cheap crap often makes finding the good stuff like finding a needle in a haystack. Yes, price is the first indicator, but there are plenty of chancers who are quite happy to sell the cheap crap at the premium price point.

Also the expensive stuff is often built to last a few years instead of decades.

Carefully buy b2b and you can still get to decades of service life for many types of equipment. It is also much more expensive than the most expensive "prosumer" grade offerings you see. But for some of this type of equipment, that's because they staff competent technicians supporting 24x7x365 service calls coming in from shops hiring certified technicians rolling repair trucks any time of the day or night for the right fee.

Re: O Holy Crap

#166

Post by Damogran6 »

I think there are a LOT of societal ills with sending too many people to College...who then get MBAs.

You're going to want to use what you earned, right? So you're gonna maximize profit and shareholder value.

Individually, none of them are particularly egregous. A little less sugar for your dollar, a sticky subscription on your credit card, A Washing machine that doesn't QUITE live as long as it should.

But in aggregate you end up with /gestures broadly at everything.

Re: O Holy Crap

#167

Post by eternityforest »

mikepurvis wrote: post #118
eternityforest wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reliability now isn't done with the same methods as it was then. Back then, the good stuff might have been good because the motor was big. The modern good stuff probably has a brushless motor that can prevent stalls. It doesn't matter if it's big or small, the computer won't let it overheat, so they can make it smaller to save money that they can spend on whatever part is the actual failure mode. The trouble is findi…

100% agree, but I think the issue here comes with a typical phased design process: - Mechanical: "Here's the physical specs, no need to account for A, B, or C, as it's been handled in software" - Electrical: "Here are the physical constraints and electrical spec. No need to account for X, Y, or Z, as it's being handled in software." - Firmware: "You need to handle A, B, C, X, Y, and Z, but if you run out of time or d…

The other issue I see is when mechanical and electrical don't actually give firmware the data or control they need.

You'll see stuff like a lack of battery level monitoring, or relays without current sensing.

I'm not sure why we don't do things the other way, have firmware people present at every step. Some things can't be fixed later.

If mechanical puts a weak link gear designed to fail before the motor, firmware might not have enough margin to not wear it out with auto-stop.

Re: O Holy Crap

#168

Post by JKCalhoun »

aidos wrote: post #88
JKCalhoun wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My KitchenAid mixer ate a gear many years ago. They would lead you to believe they are a high quality brand, no? After disassembly, it turned out to be perhaps the only plastic gear in the thing. It occurred to me that it was perhaps designed to fail rather than the mixer continuing to break the bones of the person who got their hand caught in the paddle. So, I throw the engineer a bone for that one. I was bummed tho…

For those who want to see a teardown, AvE has one on his channel here; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qKp-0h9P18

Interesting — it is the "Professional" version and appears to have different internals than my consumer-grade one.

Re: O Holy Crap

#169

Post by jollyllama »

eternityforest wrote: post #73
groovybits wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spot on. Even at the 'nicer' grocery stores in the US, can openers are made of the cheapest materials I've ever seen. At the moment you pick it up, you just know its going to break before a year from now. By now, you'd think we'd have reached a minimum viable quantity of products that have been ubiquitous for so long.

In store shopping seems to be a great way to pay more for worse stuff these days.

You get screwed either way. Buy something on amazon and it's quite likely to be just as bad, counterfeit, etc. - how many times have people complained about that?

Re: O Holy Crap

#170

Post by oblio »

mikestew wrote: post #161
oblio wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Carrot peeler? What nonsense. Back of a knife does a fine job. It does, but it's both slower and less safe than one of these things, if you know how to use it right: https://www.ikea.com/nl/en/p/ikea-365-vaerdefull-potato-peel... Personally I'd recommend that style over the "default" peelers that look like this one: https://www.ikea.com/nl/en/p/ikea-365-vaerdefull-peeler-blac... The vertical one is much faster.

The 2nd one is "default"? In the U. S., I don't I've ever seen a peeler that wasn't like your first link. That, or I just never recognized the second link as a peeler. Looks kind of like a cheese slicer to me. :-)

Over here (Europe) the second one is all over the place.
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