
Fridge Condenser Fans – Old and New [video] - userbinator
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CO5UjO0ZmUQ
======
chomp
Yes but refrigerators back then were around $2-3000 in modern currency (for a
no frills ice box). You can get a cheap fridge now for like $90 (mini fridge).
Much of our modern lifestyle was created by accessibility of home appliances
like washing machines, refrigerators, and air conditioners, and that
accessibility was driven by companies making things cheaper (but easier to
break).

You’re free to buy appliances like the stuff that used to exist. They are
found in the commercial realm, and you’ll still be spending about $3000 for a
no-frills entry level fridge.

~~~
secabeen
The other interesting question to consider is: how long do consumers want to
run the same fridge? How likely is the fridge to be damaged in some other way
that causes the extra life of the 50-year fan to be wasted away in a refuse
dump or recycling center? There's a balancing act to do, between too short a
lifetime, wherein the customer is not ready to replace the fridge yet when it
dies, and too long a lifetime, where resources are spent to make something
last a long time, and it gets thrown away anyways. The original video didn't
estimate a lifetime for that motor, but I would expect about 15 years is a
standard lifetime for that motor, and that about fits with people wanting to
replace their fridge at about every 15 years. Sure, some will go to 20 years,
and others will fail at 10, but putting a 50 year motor in a fridge is a form
of waste. (There's also the angle of increasing efficiency, that also pushes
towards a more frequent replacement cycle than 50+ years)

~~~
DaiPlusPlus
Considering that fridges today have built-in 24” touchscreen displays running
Android and cavity cameras so you can see inside your fridge when you’re at
the supermarket - the useful life of a fridge is probably on the order of 1-2
years before Google obsoletes the firmware and Samsung shuts-down the video
feed relay service.

~~~
nkozyra
I've messed with these in stores and just been blown away at what a useless
feature this is. Ah, yes, an appliance running Android Cupcake what a fabulous
idea.

It's clear that some items have hit peak functionality and manufacturers are
just bolting on nonsense to keep up the facade of "luxury."

But I'm sorry, running Spotify on my fridge is hokey, gauche and entirely
unnecessary.

~~~
tobr
I wanted to buy a new microwave oven recently. Every single model I could find
committed at least two of the following crimes:

\- Loud, ear piercing beeps on every opportunity. Why would anyone need to
hear a beep every time they press a button? Imagine if an iPad did that.

\- Speaking of buttons: over-complicated controls, for something that should
be two dials and one button

\- Ugly, spaceship like industrial design that has no place in a home

\- Inner surfaces with holes and protrusions that would be difficult to clean

\- Bright glowing green or blue LEDs that are always on, contributing to
indoors light pollution

There were a few expensive models that were less terrible (red lights, softer
beeps (still beeps, mind you!), OK controls) but they were all too big to fit
in my kitchen.

My conclusion is that these manufacturers have no clue and no culture to
figure out what a “luxury” product would look like today. They still think
people find LED screens, chromed plastic and digital buttons impressive.

~~~
spditner
Regarding the piercing beeps - I popped open the case on mine and put a piece
of tape over the piezo buzzer speaker, which brought the volume down to just
the right level.

~~~
tobr
I’ve had the same thought, but dismantling a microwave radiation emitter
doesn’t seem like a bright idea unless you know what you’re doing.

------
whalesalad
The noise that my brand spanking new high efficiency Samsung fridge makes is
completely unbearable. It’s not the fan, but the compressor itself. I’ve tried
coating the entire compressor compartment with dense material, like you would
find in a nice car audio installation, to no avail. The fridge is in an alcove
on top of a dense rubber mat, designed to absorb sound. There are foam
acoustic pads on the wall behind the fridge. Doesn’t matter what I do, the
damn thing is obnoxious.

Worst part is... it’s well within “spec”. I had lots of ear problems as a kid
culminating w/ surgery and ironically my hearing is hyper sensitive, as
opposed to being worse off. My wife thinks I’m nuts to be so annoyed by the
sound (she hears it, though) and technicians who come out say the same.

Fuck I hate this fridge.

~~~
esnible3
Is it possible to even find out the rated noise level before purchase? I feel
like every 'fridge and air conditioner should print this up front with the
capacity and voltage. Noise level is the main thing I look for in an appliance
with a compressor.

~~~
whalesalad
The noise level is less of a concern for me (the volume at least) it’s more
about the frequency or sound itself. You ever hear those sounds that just
bother your ear, and they sometimes are hard to locate? It’s like they become
omnidirectional. Maybe this is at the edge of the human ear’s spectrum or
something... kinda how a UV light bothers your eyes and can be disorienting at
times.

For instance I have a Dell 2U server in my home office. It’s pretty quiet all
things considered, but I wanted to lower the fan speeds manually (possible
with ipmi tool) to make it quieter at the expense of maybe a warmer system.
You’d think the lowest possible RPM would be best... but actually increasing
it slightly from the baseline was the most _pleasing_ sound, despite it being
a tiny bit louder volume wise than the lowest RPM setting. At the absolute
lowest speed the fans created this cacophony as they went in and out of sync,
making a vibration sound. A little bit higher, that individual sound
dissipated and I was left with soft white noise that was more enjoyable.

------
Nition
I have a totally unsubstantiated theory that a big chunk of the stress of
modern life comes from this sort of thing.

People own more appliances and gadgets than ever, but for each one you're
expected to worry about planned obsolescence, often high maintenance, and
treat them as fragile. A world where everything is always threatening to fall
apart around us. Compare with life 100 years ago. It wasn't like this.

The maintenance instructions alone are often ridiculous - you'd probably be
spending 100% of your free time on maintenance alone if you followed what
every manual actually recommends for everything in your home. And it's
impossible to know what's actually important and what's just covering their
ass legally. Like, my garage door manual says to wipe it down every two weeks
- what? No-one's doing that. But the idea that you should be doing all this
stuff still contributes to stress, even if you try to ignore and it just get
on with life until your stuff finally breaks or explodes.

Or things require more work due to fragility, like non-stick pans you can't
scrub clean. Or things are just cheaper or fashionable but they don't work as
well, like touch buttons instead of knobs on cooktops. Or things just get
broken because they're made of cheap plastic.

Warranties are a joke. Two years on a fridge? It should be 15. 10 years on
aluminum window frames for your house? It should be 50. And the waste from all
these obsoleted appliances is ridiculous on its own. There is a case for not
overengineering things that users will want to throw away and replace anyway,
but larger appliances rarely advance so far that you can't at least sell your
old working one to someone (the most recent _true_ obsolescence I can think of
is CRT TVs).

I'd vote for a law that says all major appliances must have a 10+ year
warranty, with minimal maintenance performed. And maintenance recommendations
should be displayed alongside the product.

~~~
jjoonathan
The latest trend I've observed is straight up not honoring the warranty.

In the span of 2 years, I had a $300 fitbit, a $700 acer monitor, and a $300
TCL TV fail, all within their warranty period. All three companies flaked, all
with a dubious excuse, correctly gambling that I wouldn't care enough to take
matters to small claims.

~~~
crgwbr
I’ve run into this too. Earlier this summer I dropped $500 on a new LG air
conditioner on Amazon. Out of the box it was covered in a layer of oil,
probably from the compressor. Needless to say, it didn’t work. Despite that,
Amazon refused to accept it as a return and LG is yet to agree to refund me
the purchase price. Amazing how little these companies are willing to stand
behind their own products.

~~~
e40
On what grounds did Amazon refuse the return? I've returned many things to
them, within the 30 day window and never had a problem.

~~~
jjoonathan
Amazon is usually pretty good, but I did run into an exception recently. I
bought some "green paint stripper" that didn't work at all and the return was
denied because hazmat. It wasn't shipped hazmat in the first place but try
arguing that to the machine :) I bet there are other exceptions like it. Maybe
there are size restrictions or heavy equipment restrictions?

The "green paint stripper" is a fun tangent in and of itself. Based on the
texture (textured cream), coloration (granite), scent (lavender), lack of
solvent smells, lack of flammability, and neutral pH, I suspect it was
actually some kind of cosmetic that failed skin compatibility tests, or
something, and an enterprising fraudster figured out they could get away with
selling it as "green paint stripper." No need to ship it hazmat, because it
isn't, but it's plausible to tell Amazon it's hazmat, so no returns. Clever.

Now my paint-stripping policy is that if I can't find a MSDS listing
dichloromethane, dimethylcarbonate, or acetone, I don't bother.

~~~
crgwbr
“Hazmat” was the same excuse they gave me. Ridiculous considering that they
shipped it to me in a normal UPS box and never warned me during checkout that
it was un-returnable.

~~~
cr0sh
Something you can try (ymmv, no guarantees):

Do you have a Kohl's retail outlet near you? From what my wife tells me, they
do returns for Amazon purchases now. Just take it down to them and go to
customer service and drop it off.

Again, I don't know what they do at that point - they might scan it, claim
hazmat and refuse to take it.

------
JackFr
A few years ago my children's hamster escaped. We couldn't find him for days.
I figured he had made it outside somehow cause we didn't see him or hear him
or see any droppings.

After about 4 days though, there was an off smell in the kitchen. We tore
everything apart, emptied every cabinet, pulled the stove out from the wall,
moved the refrigerator, etc. and still could not find him (or any evidence of
him.) We scrub everything and out it all back.

But the next day, smell is still there. Then it occurs to me that the
refrigerator back panel has holes to vent the fan. I shine a flashlight and
see some fur. Bingo.

I take the back off the fridge, but I still can't reach him. At this point its
not clear to me what's killed him. I get some tongs to grab him but I see he's
stuck. I wiggle his body free and pull him out, and immediately the fan starts
arts spinning full speed and I nearly retch.

The point of the story is 1) R.I.P. Jordan the hamster, and 2) The condenser
fan was basically held in place for 4 days without burning out - very
impressive as far as I'm concerned. (This was a very old refrigerator BTW)

~~~
userbinator
_The condenser fan was basically held in place for 4 days without burning out_

As the video mentions, this is a deliberate design decision for safety and
robustness --- the motor is designed to survive being stalled indefinitely
without damage. It's known as "impedance protected", because the impedance of
the winding is such that it will never draw enough power to burn itself out.
The downside is low starting torque, which is why they're only used for things
like fans.

(I was referring to the older shaded-pole motor; the newer one might blow the
fuse instead, which is still OK from the safety standpoint but definitely not
robustness.)

------
alliao
I have a whirlpool top loader laundry machine, just under 20yrs old, couple of
months ago it failed, and the part is a plastic sacrificial part and it's
obviously designed so it'd sacrifice itself to save the more expensive motor.
I loved it, $5 part later (or $75 in New Zealand because New Zealand) it is
back up and running again. I loved all the old American white-ware, they were
built with respect to consumer nowadays not so much.

~~~
war1025
Twenty years ago I was entering 5th grade (damn, time flies). In my mind
manufacturing quality hasn't changed significantly since then. Has it? I
though that's when the offshoring of all manufacturing was already in full
swing?

~~~
alliao
I suspect being in New Zealand, this was older stock... I'll try and find
manufacturing dates but I vividly remember at the time we had 2 choices, a
more sensible sized one by Whirlpool that was already made in Korea, or the
bigger one but still made in USA; needless to say we opted for the USA model.
We actually had whirlpool fridge and washing machine in the late 70s and early
80s and was really impressed with them, hence why when we migrated to NZ we
still seek out this brand. I still have a double door whirlpool fridge that's
made in USA, just over 15yrs now too; though I can see it's going to leak some
refrigerant soon with a copper rust spot on the line to an Embraco motor...
_sigh_

~~~
exhilaration
FYI - our dishwasher died and we called a local appliance repairman,
unaffiliated with any manufacturer. He told us it couldn't be fixed and
suggested we buy a Whirlpool to replace it. So that particular brand seems to
command at least some respect.

~~~
mrguyorama
Brand new Samsung dishwashers have a water quality sensor that gets blocked up
and kills the dishwasher. If you figure it out, it's just a $50 part and not
hard to replace.

------
ProfessorLayton
I was recently in the market for a new refrigerator to replace a newish
Samsung fridge where ice built up around the condenser fan, eventually causing
it to freeze still, and spoiling all my food every ~3mos (Avoid Samsung
appliances if you value your sanity) — It came with the house so no real cost
on my part aside from the annoyance.

Now I have a perfectly adequate Whirlpool fridge, but the condenser fan is
obnoxiously loud. It seems to have one setting, off and turbo. I’ve resorted
to taping acoustic pads to the back of the fridge — and no joke, some
hardcover books backed up against the back of the freezer (They aren’t
noticeable and don’t take up a significant amount of space). This helps a lot,
but the thing is still louder than I’d like.

I’ll probably leave this fridge with the house as well.

~~~
userbinator
That's the evaporator fan, and not all fridges have one. The condenser gets
hot, not cold, and is outside the fridge. It almost always has a fan. The
evaporator is inside, and the part that gets cold.

Ice buildup may indicate a humidity problem.

~~~
jasonjayr
I'm not a fridge tech, but I have a Samsung in my garage after it constantly
gave us this problem. I just removed the cover to the evaporator and let it
ice up, and don't keep much in it. A second thermostat shows that the interior
is still maintaining a safe temperature, with few things inside and a non-
functioning fan.

The (suspected) problem is that the defroster heater is too far from the
circulation fan, and the ice starts where the copper pipe is from the top,
where there is no heater coil. The ice eventually grows to the fan, and seizes
up the fan.

------
jpollock
The engineers who design fridges aren't evil. They do things for a reason. So,
we're left with questions.

Questions:

1) what is the cost difference between the two fans?

2) what is the average first-owner lifespan of a fridge?

3) how long will the fan outlive the fridge in the first-owners house?

4) how big a supply is there of the new fan? Is it in use on more appliances?

5) does a 60% reduction in power draw result in a fan with a longer lifespan?

6) is resale something people care about, or are appliances fashion?

~~~
mrguyorama
How much does the fan cost to buy second hand or from the manufacturer to
replace? It looks like it's a few screws and a single plug and you can have
your fridge run for another 5-10 years

------
csours
I think there are a few problems here:

1\. Durability is hidden, cost and features are apparent. I can see on the box
what features the OEM claims. I can see on the box what it costs. I cannot see
the common failure modes on the box.

2\. People want appliances that are durable and repairable, but often end up
replacing them before end of life of the product, or destroy them some other
way (cell phones).

3\. Survive the warranty. Unless there is a resale market for the product, the
only durability requirement is to survive the warranty.

4\. Efficiency (on some metric). The linked video discounts the increased
efficiency of the newer fixture, but that's not how product engineering works.
If the product has a goal to be more efficient or lighter, then everyone has
that goal. Lighter may mean less durable or less effective overall, but more
portable or useful.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Re 2. and 3., resale market is enabled by durability. If a product still has
plenty of life in front of it but I want to get rid of it anyway (e.g. to buy
a newer one), there's a good chance someone will be willing to buy it off me,
whether to use it or to strip it for parts. Manufacturers don't make money off
secondary sales of used products anyway, so the pressure to make products
barely survive the warranty is always there.

~~~
icegreentea2
The question revolves around how do we ensure that companies that optimize to
maximize long term customer value do not get undercut and out-competed by
companies that optimize to maximize short term customer value.

And it's a very challenging thing to do, since most human's natural instincts
are to apply hyperbolic discounting models, while companies have to operating
on... non-hyperbolic discounting.

~~~
tgsovlerkhgsel
Create incentives for (or simply mandate) longer warranty terms.

In Germany, anything you buy has a 2-year seller's warranty, plus a
presumption that any issues occurring within the first 6 months are a
manufacturing defect unless the seller proves otherwise.

Turning that into a 5-year warranty on large appliances would be relatively
trivial and immediately provide an incentive to make long-lived products.

------
leetrout
I thoroughly enjoyed that. We all have anecdata that “things aren’t made the
way they used to be” but it’s rare to see something explained the way this
was.

A product of our race to the bottom.

~~~
icegreentea2
I think the video makes a clear argument to the increase of number of severity
of failure modes in the more modern part, I don't feel that it does a great
job at a lot of things.

So both designs likely have a life limiting factor of oil. It's clear that the
older design will have a longer life before running into oil related issues.
However, he still needs to modify (punching a hole in the housing) the motor
to oil the unit. He makes no affordances to the modern unit for doing so.
While it might be a pain to have to re-oil more frequently, it's still likely
to be an action that occurs on a multi-year basis. At that point, the
difference between re-oiling every other year, and every 10 years feels pretty
academic.

He discounts the ~6W of energy savings. It's true its not a lot - especially
if you take the perspective of - 'let's try to save 6W of power from a 1970's
fridge'. However, modern units consume the order of 200W, so an increase of 6W
is a 3% increase in energy consumption. Maybe you can justify that for a
single component, but how would you justify that across the board?

Do wish they used better caps though.

~~~
Spooky23
The energy argument is valid, but I think the trade off is a result of poorly
thought out regulation.

For a water heater, there is an energy guide as well as a durability guide.
The good/better/best ratings help the consumer make an appropriate decision.

Energy star should be similar. I’m not interested in saving $4/yr in
electricity if that means buying a new appliance in 4 years, but I have no way
to evaluate the quality of the device.

~~~
icegreentea2
That's a reasonable wish. I imagine the usual thought is that warranty periods
should provide a reasonable proxy for durability information, but I also
understand that it's a pretty imperfect proxy.

~~~
Spooky23
I'd argue that OEM extended service plans are the real proxy, at least for a
service call.

Look at Apple as an example, two years is the max service plan for an iOS
device. That's the lifetime of a battery. For Dell/HP laptops, they will have
3 year warranties with up to 5 years of extended, but usually exclude the
battery and often exclude the screen.

------
markbnj
About 10 years ago my parents gave us a Sears horizontal freezer they'd had in
their garage, and had no further use for. It's now around 55 years old and
still running with all the original parts. I don't know what the thing would
cost in current dollars if built today to the same standards. I don't even
know if you could build it today to those standards, or that it would make
sense for anyone to pay for a freezer that will last a half-century. But I
would like to think so.

~~~
chrismorgan
Have you compared its power efficiency with equivalent recent hardware? Watts
turn into dollars quickly—even as little as 1 W more all the time is 8.76 kW
over the course of a year, which, picking an arbitrary electricity price of
20¢/kW, is $1.75 a year.

~~~
crankylinuxuser
What is the cost of decommissioning soon-to-die hardware like this? Right now
companies arent required cradle to grave handling, so quick disposal is
prioritized.

There is no such thing as away, so watch what we put there.

~~~
Paperweight
That's a really good point. Companies being required to buy back their
products when they die should align the incentives to solve the problem, which
is essentially one of unhandled economic externalities.

Has anything changed in Europe since these kinds of laws have been put in
place?

In Canada, we have a fixed environmental disposal fee slapped on certain
classes of electronic products. I wonder if that fee actually makes the
problem _worse_ because it makes high-durability manufacturers subsidize their
planned-obsolescence competition!

------
leonroy
I purchased a commercial freezer for our home basement. We feed our dog raw
and a shelf fully loaded with frozen cubes of meat can weigh a considerable
amount.

I was skeptical that a consumer grade plastic freezer could hold the weight so
I picked up a Williams A400 Commercial Freezer: [https://www.williams-
refrigeration.co.uk/products/cabinets/a...](https://www.williams-
refrigeration.co.uk/products/cabinets/amber/A400)

About £1800 retail, fortunately I found one on eBay for considerably less.

Firstly the thing weighs a tonne, it’s noisy, and it also requires a large
ventilated space all around otherwise its efficiency drops through the floor.

We ended up having to point a pedestal fan at the rear of the unit to keep the
compressor and radiator cool.

Service costs were high at £90 just to have someone look at it and replacement
parts a minimum of £120. So whilst it can be serviced it isn’t cheap.

It also ate 4-5x as much electricity as a consumer freezer of similar size.

What you get when buying a commercial freezer or appliance is a device that
can take a beating and can be serviced. They cost nearly an order of magnitude
more over the course of their lifetime vs their domestic counterparts. So yeah
they’re well made but at a very high price.

~~~
adrianN
I wouldn't consider a freezer that consumes several times the energy to be
well-made.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Different design goals.

A commercial freezer is designed to be able to freeze a larger volume / weight
of goods more rapidly, with the doors being opened more frequently.

So they'll necessarily have a larger cooling capacity, which means a higher
capacity compressor, fan, and heat exchanger.

I think the parent commenter would have been better off with a regular chest
freezer of an appropriate size.

------
spectramax
We need to do something about this. If I buy a washing machine, I have NO idea
how much cost cutting has gotten into it - in fact, companies spend way too
much money in marketing, shiny stickers, features and IoT bullshit than things
like oil bushings that this video is talking about.

We need a review website that hires these experts that take things apart, and
expose the shitty practices and cost cutting that has taken place so that the
consumers are more informed. Kind of like a more formal version of AvE
(Youtube fame). And that kind of review methodology needs to get so popular
that no manufacturer can escape it. What's capitalism when every one is
cheating, lying and depending on the ROI of their marketing budget?
Competition disappears, innovation stops and shiny things propel.

If you go and buy an dishwasher from Miele, you bet your bottom dollar they
are not gonna cut corners like this - because industrial grade equipment needs
to last and live up to the daily abuse or its credibility is lost. In consumer
market, there is way too much marketing noise than objectivity.

Watching this video makes me livid and angry.

~~~
tacostakohashi
That website already exists:

[https://www.consumerreports.org/](https://www.consumerreports.org/)
[https://www.choice.com.au/](https://www.choice.com.au/)

There might be another organization / name for your country, but this is not a
new idea.

It seems that only a tiny minority of consumers value this, and the designs
you see from mass-market manufactures reflect what consumers actually want
when making their purchasing decisions.

~~~
erichocean
> _the designs you see from mass-market manufactures reflect what consumers
> actually want when making their purchasing decisions_

Well, no.

The actual problem is consumers come from a high-trust society, but producers
do not. When producers ALSO came from a high-trust society, consumers were
right to not worry about what "hidden cuts" were being made in the name of
almighty profit, because it simply wasn't done, and in fact, _couldn 't_ be
done because there were too many honest people involved that a bad apple here
or there couldn't get any traction.

That's no longer the case, but culture changes slowly, and in this case, it's
a change for the worst: not being able to trust your fellow man.

~~~
dehrmann
That's an interesting way of looking at it, but I see it more like air travel.
Consumers say they want a better product, but when they actually see the cost,
they pick basic economy. And no one who's flown before in the US is trusting
that the airline will give them good service or legroom; the only trust is
that the airline will get them to their destination alive sorta but not really
on-time.

------
otakucode
There would definitely be a market for 'open source appliances' I believe.
Appliances built to last, based on modular design, and with full documentation
available along with plenty of hooks included to permit third party creation
of modifications and enhancements. Basically, applications as a sort of
durable platform. Want to be able to connect your oven via wifi and see an
image of what's cooking or get a food of its current temperature? That sort of
thing could be added a little addon card or module, etc. Of course, most
businesspeople would look at that and say 'sure, even if you come to dominate
the market, what THEN?' and not like the lack of a built-in way to force
people to buy new product. But eventually you would expect there to be one
person who would be satisfied with making a few hundred million dollars over a
decade even if that shrinks later on.

------
kappi
another interesting thing I found recently is that lot of water dispensers
don't dispense chilled water, just room temperature water. They don't mention
that.

------
bsaul
It's weird that repairability (either right to repair, or simply technical
feasibility) has been a huge topic for at least 10 years in cars, mobile
phones, home appliances, etc. And yet i haven't seen any end-user product
really advertising it.

Worse, the trend seems to be even more toward cheap black boxes that you'll
change entirely whenever they break.

As another example of things going the wrong direction: a few months ago i saw
a video about a Tesla test, and the car's engine refused to start. The owner
had to turn it off and on again so that they could start the engine and begin
the test. As a software engineer, that made me feel so bad...

Is there any solution toward better quality products, aka : having the
benefits of cheap electronics and advanced functionalities, but with the
longevity and ability to repare and customize of the old mechanical technology
? Is it a business model problem ? a technical one ? a supply chain / pricing
one ? marketing ?

I keep wondering.

~~~
kube-system
> It's weird that repairability (either right to repair, or simply technical
> feasibility) has been a huge topic for at least 10 years in cars, mobile
> phones, home appliances, etc. And yet i haven't seen any end-user product
> really advertising it.

99% of people don’t want to repair their appliances. They either “don’t want
it to break”, or want it to be repaired by someone else.

A product labeled “commercial grade! 10 year warranty!” will always massively
outsell a product labeled “user serviceable! Schematics included!”

------
swills
I would love to see how the fan in a Miele or similar brand compared.

~~~
01100011
Based on my recent experience of removing the beater bar on my Miele vacuum,
I'd bet that Miele is not substantially better. I had pretty good feelings
about my German engineered, $600 vacuum until I saw the insides. Lots of cheap
plastic waiting to break, and it was much less serviceable than I expected. My
dad used to work for a janitorial supplies distributor and I occasionally got
my hands on commercial vacs. Those were generally built like tanks. Don't get
me wrong, I like other features of my vac, like the HEPA bags with the flap
that closes when they're removed, but I don't think of Miele in the same way
now.

~~~
Tepix
Small differences can make a huge difference. Like a bit of plastik that's 1mm
thicker in important spots. Or picking electrolytic capacitors with extended
lifetime.

------
pontifier
We're in the uncanny valley of manufacturing now. In not too many years you'll
be able to download a schematic of that old motor, and have one made for you
on your desktop.

~~~
dehrmann
For anything more than a solid plastic or metal part, I doubt it. There's too
many materials, the precision needed is too great, and mass production almost
has to be cheaper.

------
paule89
I hate planned obsolescence. Period.

