I don't think it is planned obsolescence, it is just a race to the bottom on price. At $30, an immersion blender can't have metal gears. Most people value cheapness more than quality, so we get cheap junky products. Nylon gears are a travesty, but most people prefer replacing crap to paying 7x for the Vitamix.
Often the components he designs cost more to manufacture that components that would last much, much longer. . To build a pump that will 99 percent make it to 3000 hours, that means half will make it to 9000 hours or more. Unless you really, really make sure that 90 percent will also fail by 4000 hours. It’s not easy to do.
Some products actually incorporate extra parts such as batteries that serve no other purpose than to cause the unit to degrade after a certain time (honeywell thermostats I’m looking at you … their round thermostat includes a lithium cell. When the lithium cell degrades, the at328p processor switches to a limping mode that regulates +/- 10 degrees, but never less than a little over freezing. The (soldered) battery just goes through a resistor to a GPIO pin. It’s just a chemical timer. It serves no other purpose than to make the unit need to be replaced.)
I could go on and on and on, but stuff is definitely designed to fail in predictable ways in a predermined timeframe. Considerable expense is invested in this behavior.
If the latter, how does it help Honeywell that you have to replace it?
You can't pick up a standard 18650 battery at Walmart either, but that doesn't make it some kind of special battery. It's bog-standard. Availability at Walmart has nothing to do with something is standard or even common. Brake pads for some random mass-market 2015 model year car (GM, Toyota, etc.) are nothing special or difficult to find either, but you're not going to find them at Walmart.
This is exotic enough that replacements are very hard to find. I can either get the 2 cells needed from the manufacturer at about 70% the cost of a new light, or get a new light. It’s technically repairable/user serviceable, it’s just not practical to do. Apple is playing a similar trick with their 80lbs iPhone repair kit to change the battery yourself: technically user repairable, practically not.
Huh? You seem to be contradicting yourself: you say it's a standard 18650 cell. That's not something custom, that's something you can buy from an electronics supplier quite easily. And no, having both poles on the same end isn't something custom either, that's just a variant you can buy. You should be able to find this exact part on digikey.com.
>This is exotic enough that replacements are very hard to find.
If you can buy something on digikey.com, it's not "exotic". They even ship small orders by USPS for cheap. It might be "exotic" to a typical consumer, but those people don't know how to use a soldering iron.
We all know the typical HN reader thinks a fun weekend would be spending 6 hours researching part numbers and getting out the soldering iron, but we are atypical. Most people will assume their product is at the end of its life because the warranty has lapsed and it doesn't work anymore. Companies are apparently betting on that and it's an environmental travesty.
Yes, I know. I said this exact thing above.
The parent said these devices used "custom batteries", implying that Honeywell et al were custom-designing and manufacturing their own special nonstandard batteries just for these applications. This is incorrect, and needed to be corrected.
But it’s rare enough that it’s hard to find. So much so that it actually doesn’t make economical sense to find this (rare, at a premium) variant because it would cost about as much or more than a new light (which includes new batteries, ironically)
Since we had over a hundred of these deployed in an apartment complex, when they started failing I carefully characterized their behavior. It just makes them go wonky when it is removed or dies. The at328p functions fine without it, there is no RTC or anything that needs a battery., and the chip is not powered by the battery when power is removed. In fact, there is no discharge from the battery when power is off. The at328p has nonvolatile eeprom and flash storage.
Interestingly, the wonky behavior it exhibits is the same (but doesn’t go below 40 degrees (f) ) as an old electromechanical one failing lol.
...so the company making parts with them can then extoll the virtues of "biodegradable" in their marketing...?
Also, for those who doubt the claim about the Honeywell thermostat having a battery, I did some further research, and it does appear to be true:
https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/128526/honeywell-th...
https://www.amazon.com/review/R3V5R0MJGEFNXH
But then this video shows that it is relatively easy to replace, it's not soldered in place, although the comments there do mention that the presence of the battery isn't documented anywhere in the original instructions:
Many people add ficituous evidence of their views because they are so sure they are right.
Also, the gears inside of refrigerator defrost timers in the 160 refrigerators we bought for an apartment complex. Shockingly, still mechanical. And one of the gears is date coded and has teeth made of a rubbery, disintegrating plastic around a regular nylon wheel. The vast majority of the timers failed in a two years window. At 7-8 years. The cheap replacement timers have no such nonsense and I’ve never seen one fail. Most people just would have replaced the cheap apartment fridge.
This is just some of what I’ve personally seen.
But you are right, I’m just some guy on the internet, I could be just making this up.
And corporations would never make things with life limitations to make more money. Surely. I mean, that would be like a subscription model! Ridiculous!
Engineering is both easy and incredibly difficult. It is relatively easy to design something that does a particular task (at least for many of the applications being discussed here). It is incredibly difficult to design something that does its job well or last for a long time.
No, that's relatively easy as well. What's incredibly difficult is doing so while keeping the BOM cost under control in a competitive market.
Recall the classic saying, "Any idiot can design a bridge that will stand up. It takes an engineer to design a bridge that will barely stand up."
I have never seen any example of 'planned obsolescence' which was anything more than giving the consumer what the consumer wants. Modern economy is essentially the peak optimization of cost vs utility, i.e. value maximization.
So, yeah, I'd like to see a model number as well.
The plastic tub that contained the rotating drum was hung up on springs just like in any other washing machine.
The holes in the tub where the ends of the springs went through were just that, holes without any reinforcements.
The inevitable happened (because the strain in the plastic where it met the unforgiving steel of the springs was too much) and over the years, the holes wore through the plastic, resembling an oblong shape more and more.
I simply pressed a metal bushing into the enlarged hole on one side and on the other, I used two small strips of steel (with holes in it for the spring) clamped to the tub with bolt and nut.
And voilà the machine easily did another two years (electronics now messed up).
This case is either a pitiable engineering failure or 100 % planned obsolescence.
Merely equipping the holes in the plastic tub with metal bushings would have easily made this part outlive every other failure.
Well, it would help tremendously if costs per month/year/lifetime were more obvious. A lot of people just don't know how long certain appliances are supposed to last at what price points comparatively. 7x is only a hefty price tag upfront when you know it will pay for itself over time, but even that is no longer certain.
I value quality and price. Unfortunately, while price is clearly stated, poor quality is often hidden.
Cheaper things aren't necessarily bad either. You don't want things like fridges and blenders to be items only the rich can afford and less robust things are probably fine if it was clear under what conditions you can use the item to make it last and if the item was easily repairable.
Lastly, I don't think you can blame the manufacturers alone either. I know people who don't like used things even if they are still good and will always buy new.
This is for example why flying commercial is such a miserable experience: people will look for the cheapest ticket that gets them to their destination because the whole thing is like being treated like cattle. Why then should you pay a single cent more for the same shitty experience? Airlines that used to offer a slightly better experience have figured this out and also treat you like cattle now so they can also offer the route for a low or lower price.
This is not unique to airlines, and this is my default mode of purchasing things because I’ve been burnt too many times. Unless I know for sure that X brand is much more durable and repairable than another, I’ll always go for the cheapest I can find that meets my needs.
The high-end blender lines of both brands are made domestically, and rate at the top in Consumer Reports. I can vouch that both are pretty quiet in operation, for what are essentially food-violence machines.
Just because it's a German brand like Bosch doesn't mean it's made in Germany, from quality parts, so, buyer beware.