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O Holy Crap

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Re: O Holy Crap

#71

Post by generalpf »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #36
yetihehe wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Metal, vs plastic gears. Sintered metal gears, last only a little longer than plastic and then fail catastrophically destroying half of the device so that you can't repair it. But at least they are much cheaper than proper machined gears.

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…

A worm gear! It is indeed designed to take the fall so the entire machine doesn't shred itself.

I bought an official replacement from KitchenAid for $12 including shipping.

Re: O Holy Crap

#72

Post by logicallee »

People are mentioning survivorship bias. (i.e. we notice old products that work well because they're still working, and don't notice the ones that failed since they're in a landfill.)

I wonder, could the opposite reason account for all the companies selling crappy products? Could it be that all the companies that made the really high-quality products that last generations died out because they didn't have a sustainable business model?

It could be that creating a truly high-value product is expensive and selling one that never needs replacement isn't sustainable. Maybe after a while you run out of customers: the ones that are still happily using the product you specialized in making an expensive high-quality version of for life, just don't have a reason to buy another.

Thus perhaps the only companies that survive are the ones who have customers who keep rebuying after their products break.

How can customers help e.g. a refrigerator company survive, if they only buy one from them ever?

Re: O Holy Crap

#73

Post by eternityforest »

groovybits wrote: post #62
cfeduke wrote: post #42

The thing in this space that has always bothered me was the simple can opener. (For those not in the US, yes, in the US we still need can openers.) The new ones which can be purchased in the grocery store break within a month or two. I don't even want to think about modern electric openers. I found a used vintage can opener from the 1970s on eBay six years ago and use it practically every day; as it was used it cost…

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.

Re: O Holy Crap

#74

Post by ejb999 »

bitexploder wrote: post #28
bambax wrote: post #8

> Many blamed these problems on the government. They believed it had crippled certain products (major home appliances, especially) This is a claim that was already present in Death of a Salesman . Here's the quote: > I am always in a race with the junkyard! I just finished paying for the car and it's on its last legs. The refrigerator consumes belts like a goddam maniac. They time those things. They time them so when…

Check out the history of light bulbs, an actual amazing conspiracy few people know about :)

Yep, bulbs are now all complete crap - they used to last decades.

Was having my house painted a few years back, I have a triple set of spots near the very top of the roof (so about 30 feet in the air) - painter helpfully suggests - do you want me to replace those bulbs up there while I have my ladder up there? I agreed.

Big mistake, the bulbs their were still working 17 years after I moved in - now I have to replace them about every 18 months with the cheap crap the government only allows to be sold.

Not sure how replacing bulbs and throwing them in the landfill every 1-2 years is doing anything good for the environment.

Re: O Holy Crap

#75

Post by empyrrhicist »

rzzzt wrote: post #51
wincy wrote: post #7

My $4000 GE refrigerator has broken twice now in the five years we have owned it, both times in the exact same way. The way the fridge works seems simple: the cold freezer is on the bottom, and then a fan blows air up through a shaft to the relatively warmer refrigerator as needed to keep it just above freezing. Instead, the failure state is that the fan that handles this broke with no warning. I lost a bunch of groc…

We got a compressor fridge from the now non-existent GDR 50-ish years ago, and it finally broke this year. Still cools, just non-stop (the temperature sensing switch gave up the ghost). I occasionally think about cybernetically enhancing it with an ESP8266, a relay and a sensor.

Just grab a Johnson Controls temperature controller. Set and forget.

Re: O Holy Crap

#76

Post by mojo74 »

It's always worth talking to the repairer they send out when something fails. Hopefully they will have seen at it long enough to witness change in the industry. Case in point my washing machine leaked underneath, not all the time, but at one point completely flooded the floor. Talking to the repairer they enlightened me with fact that a container underneath (made of two parts top and bottom) had calcified between the clips that held it together thus forcing it apart because of hard water in our area. This never used to happen in older machines as the part in question was moulded as one piece originally. Money saving was the motive but I failed to to push on this point.

Re: O Holy Crap

#77

Post by mattferderer »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #36
yetihehe wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Metal, vs plastic gears. Sintered metal gears, last only a little longer than plastic and then fail catastrophically destroying half of the device so that you can't repair it. But at least they are much cheaper than proper machined gears.

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…

> 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.

This is a good call out of potential other reasons an engineer team might make something cheaper & easier to break. It would be awesome to read a summary of the trade-offs the teams discuss in their process.

Re: O Holy Crap

#78

Post by BlueTemplar »

PopAlongKid wrote: post #58
theK wrote: post #23

Who was the guy that said "humanity signed its death certificate once MBAs found out that they can literally sell trash as long as it is cheap enough to make it inconvenient to return"? No one? Was it just me then?

What the MBAs "found out" pertains to the consumer, not the product. Discovering that something exists is not the same as creating it.

Invention and discovery were the same latin word in the early modern age : patents were granted for discoveries in the Americas.

Re: O Holy Crap

#79

Post by ejb999 »

wincy wrote: post #7

My $4000 GE refrigerator has broken twice now in the five years we have owned it, both times in the exact same way. The way the fridge works seems simple: the cold freezer is on the bottom, and then a fan blows air up through a shaft to the relatively warmer refrigerator as needed to keep it just above freezing. Instead, the failure state is that the fan that handles this broke with no warning. I lost a bunch of groc…

I have a 2nd fridge in my garage, an old philco one - still running perfectly, 365 days a year for almost 70 years. Never needed a repair in the 25 years I have owned it.

Re: O Holy Crap

#80

Post by yetihehe »

collinvandyck76 wrote: post #38

Under the Christmas tree this year: another Cuisinart electric kettle. Same model as always, this year recommended by wirecutter. They last two to three years and then break in various ways. This is our third one :( My dad gave me the advice "buy cheap now and be guaranteed to buy it again at least once if not more, or wait, save up, and buy the more expensive thing only once" as I was becoming an adult. I've tried t…

My Tefal kettle is 10 yr old now and I have really hard water. Looks like Tefal still maintains some quality, I've bought a sandwich maker 3yr ago and it still works perfectly, their pans are still top-notch.
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