Gooey rubber that's slowly ruining old hard drives

It’s also really hard to make things that last at least X long but hardly event more than Y. I know an engineer who spent two years of his life making sure the new water pump designs would fail at warranty + 50 percent, but only in an annoying, non catastrophic way.

Also, plastics that last very specific amounts of time are common in specific pieces of assemblies in mechanical timers for refrigerator defrosters and the little crossbars that tie the vanes in air vent directors together. Replacement timers use all nylon gears and last “forever”.

The one I personally uncovered is a Honeywell thermostat. It is a direct replacement for a mechanical thermostat that would frequently fail about 10-15 years out due to corroded/pitted contacts. The all electronic replacement does not have this problem, but they still failed around 10 years out, but with remarkable predictability in my friends apartment complex.

I reverse engineered one. It is powered by the 16-24v signal line. It uses a simple potentiometer to set the temperature, no clock, memory or other features. It has a battery soldered on the circuit board. The battery slowly discharges while the unit is on. In about 10 years of operation, the battery voltage drops below 1v or so. The battery powers nothing, but the microcontroller senses it’s voltage and when it is too low, it changes the behaviour of the thermostat to randomise the temperature cut in/out points by about 10 degrees Fahrenheit , making the thermostat annoyingly unpredictable in a way that is very similar to the typical failure mode of the old thermostat it replaced.

One notable difference is that the electronic one will never fail (unless it is in the off position) to come on at 45F or lower, preventing the programmed random behaviour from provoking a freeze-up and damage to structures, so I guess that’s nice?

I was in film school in the mid 00s, when RED was just starting to sell digital cameras to Hollywood studios. I remember a lot of my professors being concerned that we'd lose the archival properties of cinema - you can play back a 100 year old movie with a bright light and a ratchet - the same stuff you need to play back a movie from the 90s. They were concerned there'd be too much churn in digital formats.

Just this weekend, I saw a headline that the Looney Tunes box set I bought then probably doesn't work anymore, because Warner Bros used crappy materials to mint the DVDs and people have had them degrade beyond playability.

> it's really difficult to build things to last.

Having a non-user replaceable battery is a really easy way to ensure a product stops working after 3-4 years though.

And the criticism is typically directed at companies like Apple, who does make things that last physically, but then force you to upgrade by way of battery.

There is a choice to pay 4 cents or 6 cents for a capacitor in your electronic devices.

Obsolescence doesn't exist because a comically evil mastermind designs things to break. It exists because capitalism favors profits over anything else.

A lower quality component is cheaper than a higher quality one that would last longer, so that's what ends up being mass produced, and that's what you, as a product designer with no power over the entirety of the production pipeline, has to work with.

Spending time in a company that designs and manufactures real products will cure anyone of this conspiracy theory. There’s probably an exception for companies that don’t have any warranty and don’t have to suffer returns (e.g. the stuff you buy from Temu). Any company that has to build a reputation and suffer the economic consequences of warranty claims will not be doing anything to intentionally make their products break down over time.

Once you’re close to the engineering side of physical products you also realize how hard it would be to make products that break down precisely after the warranty period is up. Most failure modes get spread out over a very long time (years/decades). Attempts at intentional obsolescence would start cutting into your warranty period very easily.

I'd be fine with planned obsolescence if the mfr had a duty to disclose the means of obsolescence and the Product lifespan.

>it's really difficult to build things to last

A lot of depends on where your price point is. Do you compete with Temu or do you sell expensive things. People rarely expect cheap things to last, but if you don't compete on being the cheapest, than the product is expected to be made to last

Same kind of problem with an old HP LaserJet 1300 we still use. It began by it occasionally picking up multiple sheets of paper and jamming. It gradually got worse until the printer wasn't usable anymore.

The issue turned out to be the solenoid for the pick-up mechanism. When activated it should cause the pick-up mechanism to turn once. The solenoid once apparently had a small rubber pad to reduce noise. This had turned into goo and the solenoid would stick causing the mechanism to turn multiple times.

Fixed by removing the left-over goo and a piece of tape. Ten minute fix.

I had the same problem when my previous Brother printer was nearly ten years old, I did the same trick, and it worked. Most components might last almost forever, but things like rubber or glue, not so much.

That's why I've decided that my next mouse won't have any rubber in it, but it's difficult to find a good mouse without rubber. I'm still looking for one.

Generally, I try to avoid buying anything with rubber. It is usually the first part that goes bad. Either it gets sticky and starts melting or it gets hard and dry and breaks up. Also, I avoid using rubber bands. They usually end up damaging objects they hold together.

Here's a good page about conservation of rubbers and plastics for those who like to preserve their vintage stuff for a long time. https://www.canada.ca/en/conservation-institute/services/con...

In some cases, plastic doesn't either. It will "dry" out and either crack or begin to flake off. I've had plastic gasoline containers where the plastic rings that you tighten down to prevent leakage, simply crack down the sides when trying to unscrew them to get to the fuel, especially in winter time.

This is not to say all plastic is this way, some plastics that are more flexible, like on the gas containers themselves, can last for years. But the cap rings are made of hard plastic.

> Rubber doesn't age well.

This morning I replaced the rubber grip on my manual coffer grinder. By my math I'd ground about 40 kg of coffee by hand over 4 years, and the grip had gotten to the point where it just spun around the body of the grinder unless held very tightly.

I assume I could extend the lifespan by wearing gloves when I grind coffee to keep my hand oils off the rubber, but the replacement was only $5.

Some rubber ages very well indeed. Some doesn't.

"Rubber" means lots of different plastics, some of which are very stable and some of which are very unstable. Some are natural; others are synthetic. All they have in common is that they are soft and very elastic—if even that, since sometimes ebonite is called a rubber as well, comprised as it is in large part of natural latex rubber.

Silicone rubbers in particular are extremely stable.

You can use isopropyl alcohol to remove the sticky nasty rubber and at least make the thing usable again.

Yup - my Nexus 5 is all sticky and nasty because they made the back out of rubber.

What are steering wheels made of? That material seems to last longer, and they exist in much harsher conditions.

Remindy me of my Wii remotes with their gross rubber sleeves. I really need to clean them.

I bought a 50MB (yes, megs) Quantum HD from an acquaintance. It was freaking slow connected to my Amiga, like 20-30KB per second. It also made a horrible high-pitched whine.

Figuring I had nothing to lose, I turned it over and squirted some 3-in-1 oil on the motor spindle. The whine started increasing in pitch as it quietened, and slowly the HD benchmark program started creeping up toward a more reasonable 1MB/s or so. I didn't use that drive afterward, and just copied the, ahem, public domain apps and games off it and then threw it away.

I have not before or since sped up a computer by oiling it.

Wow, that was my first PC HDD. (I had a 10MB HDD in my Sirius 1 before that)

Bought at an Egghead somewhere the Computer Museum in Boston while on vacation from the UK -- about half the price of something similar in England at the time due to exchange rate.

Colin from "This Does Not Compute" used the same Kapton tape fix on an Apple tablet prototype: https://youtu.be/OM64l8tZSwY?t=293

I was wondering whether the flat tape makes some cylinders physically inaccessible but it seems like this is not an issue.

By coincidence I found an old Toshiba external USB drive in a drawer last week when I was rummaging for a cable, a black STORE.E one with the (now sticky and nasty) rubberised coating. I just powered it up: happily it still works so I guess no internal rubber bumper. Worst application of rubber so far was on some old Stanley screwdrivers, now unusable unless you want to apply solvent to your hands after use. I got those maybe 15+ years ago, put me off Stanley branded tools. Now I have a perfectly good beech handled Wera set which (sigh) Wera appear to have stopped making.

You should be able to remove the stickiness with lighter fluid.

This soft touch plastic is a plague of early 2000s cars too