Re:Repair cafés waging war on throwaway culture
by hinkley on Saturday March 17, 2018 @03:40PM
(#16608667)
In the old days the plastic bits were often sturdier and held together by long screws. You had about a 75% chance of getting them all out without stripping them, if you had a long skinny screwdriver.
Thirty more years of practice with injection molding and the addition of better stabilizers means the pieces are thinner.
But sometimes they glue the pieces together. Or they use snaps to simplify the assembly line and reduce the plastic further. They squirt in a bead of silicon to prevent vibration or shorting damage.
And part of me suspect that in The Old Days they used to repair products at the factory. Manufacturing processed have changed substantially starting in the late 70’s to favor more and more detection of problems during the assembly process (see Toyota).
If the defect rate is high you repair things to keep your boss’s boss happy. If defects drop and manual labor prices go up then it’s less of a payoff. Or none at all.
Thirty more years of practice with injection molding and the addition of better stabilizers means the pieces are thinner.
But sometimes they glue the pieces together. Or they use snaps to simplify the assembly line and reduce the plastic further. They squirt in a bead of silicon to prevent vibration or shorting damage.
And part of me suspect that in The Old Days they used to repair products at the factory. Manufacturing processed have changed substantially starting in the late 70’s to favor more and more detection of problems during the assembly process (see Toyota).
If the defect rate is high you repair things to keep your boss’s boss happy. If defects drop and manual labor prices go up then it’s less of a payoff. Or none at all.