Re:Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks ...
by sokoloff on Monday September 26, 2016 @04:04PM
(#12585088)
The seal that fails is the small seal on the back of the drum that keeps the grease on the outside of the tub and the caustic wash water from the bearing. It runs (with a spring backer) between the fixed part of the machine and the tub at full RPM, with hot, slightly caustic wash water in it. Those simply aren't lifetime seals and can't reasonably be made to be so.
It's the seal here: https://www.amazon.com/Front-Washing-Machine-Bearing-Repair/...
Not the tub seal, nor any other place where accurate tightening of screws can influence.
PS: I agree with you to a point on the second hand market value keeping some amount of tabs on the pricing pressure in the brand-new market, but I also don't think that very many people actually cross-shop brand-new and second-hand to really keep those markets' prices linked.
Re:Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks ...
by pbhjpbhj on Monday September 26, 2016 @06:13PM
(#12586056)
Ah, presumably then that's the main source of the bearing failures? TIL, thanks.
Re:Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks ...
by sokoloff on Tuesday September 27, 2016 @02:04AM
(#12587755)
Yes, I believe so, in that the typical failure mechanism is the failure of that seal, letting wash water (inherently full of degreasing agents) against the bearing, where it eventually (over perhaps hundreds of wash cycles) washes out enough of the lubrication in the bearing to get steel on steel in the bearing.
From there, the rumble and looseness quickly follows.
The bearings themselves I believe would run for fifty of years in the typical washer duty cycle (~8 hours a week, 400 hours a year, 20,000 hours in a half-decade), if they were running in a typical (non-washing) machine setting.
Whilst the first consumer saves €20, or whatever, the item can't be repaired by an onward buyer either making its second-hand cost approach zero. They save €20 off the purchase and lose €100 of the sale at the end of their ownership.
Moreover the societal cost is vastly increased as the machine gets dumped (or possibly stripped for reusable parts but less likely as there are fewer machines that are repairable; maybe parts will be recycled for the metal).
Also as there's no second-hand market pressure to reduce prices is removed. Good news for launderettes! Meaning the original saving probably just gets shifted in to profits for the company owners.
Probably if the seal and washer are a common failure mode then the company need to spend a few more pence on the washer or accurately torquing the screws -- there's a good chance this fault mode has been designed in. IME of trawling for second-hand machines bearings are a more common failure (machine overloading?). The most common appear to be "computers" and other control modules; then it seems to be pumps and motors (eg brushes).