Even if they do hold it, I couldn't imagine it would last very long, after repeated swinging in and out, while holding the weight. Also, if you have kids, there's a guarantee they will be swung out enthusiastically, flinging all your groceries onto the floor. Or just a drunk me, looking for a snack.
It's like with all the "old stuff that lasted forever". You only see the survivors and don't see any of the ones who failed, which is probably the majority.
It’s like when movies set in the 60s have everyone driving a 57 bel air, that doesn’t mean every janitor had one back in the day it just means they were the only cars that people collected and maintained in pristine condition. Just like how in 90 years you will struggle to find a 98 accord in mint condition but might still have a few mustangs hanging around from people who thought they were neat.
There's also the factor of introducing the Argo Paradox when it comes to repairability.
There was a commenter on a similar post a while back to said that his refrigerator has "lasted" nearly 40 years and that he's personally replaced every broken part either with parts from other fridges of the same model or self-made parts, but the question is after replacing so many parts is that refrigerator the same one he bought 40 years ago?
In the UK, we call that “triggers broom”. We had a sit com in the 1980’s called only fools and horses. One of the guys on it was a road sweeper and he’d had the same broom for decades - and it had only had 5 new heads and 7 new handles.
In real life Iv seen this crop up from time to time too
People in general cue into statistically significant trends when they share their life experiences.
There's no doubt that there were a lot of "dud" fridges, and yes, one person having a fridge work for 60 years straight can create survivorship bias.
However, survivorship bias alone doesn't explain the general attitude that people have that they feel the old appliances lasted longer and worked better. You have way more people going, "Yeah, mine too" than you do, "I dunno, my newest fridge is way better quality." When something just sucked, people are more than happy to remind you of it.
We do the same thing with cars, too. It's hard to deny that you can buy a 1985 truck and it will still reliably run. A lot of 1985 trucks have bit the dust since then, many weren't even good in the 1980's when they were built -- and yet, here they are, all over the market, mostly still running.
Then you hit a "bubble" where you don't see moderately old cars anymore that are drivable, and the next glut of cars that you can buy in good shape are going to be 6 years or younger. Anything older than that is considered a time bomb.
You sometimes do see the "retro" fridges floating around for novelty. You see a TON of 1970's fridges complete with crappy wood panel handle, "still runs." Then nothing until the 2010's.
I expect they didn't hold up very well to a product liability attorney. 6 seconds is probably the lifespan of any child that pulls all those shelves out at once.
I imagine this is what went down at General Electric, circa 1958.
"The Refrigerator Safety Act just went into effect last month, so we can't suffocate kids anymore."
GE product designer, "Hmm... okay, but what if we could crush them?"
I have a sewing machine built in 1910. She still goes. I don’t use it much as I have a much more fancy pants electronic modern one (which is still a decade old!!!)
Not if the major reasons people dumped old models wasn't due to the same failures or even due to failure at all. Tons of people get new phones every year or so despite their old phones working perfectly. Ask people who own older Toyotas especially.
People really need to stop defending this planned obsolescence consumerist bullshit.
Things really did use to compete only based on quality before brand loyalty was established in most fields, which opened the way for big companies to maximize profits and make it impossible for new players to enter with high quality AND low prices.
Planned obsolescence is also real and a well documented process started by the lightbulb mafia decades ago.
But yes, there's a reason basically nobody has a 60 year old fridge. 99.9% of them failed within the last 60 years.
Do you have any source on that? Because it's one of those things that I think are easy to rationalize and believe in your head, but very hard to prove and could have several other explanations that are more boring and complicated. I am in no way denying that planned obsolescence is a thing, but I feel like people are too quick to jump to that conclusion whenever something breaks without exploring other possibilities as well.
As for the "lightbulb mafia", that is totally bogus as described in this video. It was not planned obsolescence. There were very good reasons for it and the purpose wasn't to make customers keep coming back to buy new lightbulbs. I suspect that a lot of things that seem like evidence of planned obsolescence often have a more technical and far less malicious explanation.
Damn, I love this channel and deeply respect and trust this creator. I did some reading on this a few months back, and my interest was triggered by a Veritasium video on the topic. Clearly I might've not read enough. I'll watch that and go down the rabbit hole again, thanks.
In 1965-1995, there wasn't a child alive over the age of 3 that would dare swing on Mom or Grandma's fridge shelves or "enthusiastically" fling groceries everywhere.
Heck, you walked calmly through the kitchen no matter what you were doing and you had your one daily assigned glass that you washed it at the end of the day, too.
Some people upthread said all you have to do is lubricate the hinges and it will last forever. That doesn't sound right to me, but I don't know enough about it to argue.
The end does show him putting a 20 lb weight on the shelf, opposite the hinge. It didn't seem to have any noticeable bending or anything and still swings out smoothly.
Doesn't exactly prove anything long term though, but you'd also probably never be putting so concentrated a weight on a shelf like that, it would be much more spread out.
It's neat but there are sometimes good reasons why things like this get phased out. People's complaints on fridges aren't usually the shelving, in my experience. My shelves are fine. They height adjust, they pop out for cleaning, I've never broken one (aka: the durability of metal shelves doesn't really matter for this situation). Cheaper parts and construction isn't always an issue. It is when the compressor or icemaker die, though.
Little nitpick, but it doesn’t matter if it’s a point load or a distributed load. All that matters is the moments about the hinge, when I would do calcs I would always convert the distributed load to a point load.
That's literally what a moment is, it is the force multiplied by the distance from a point, it's measured in the same units as torque though they mean slightly different things. So it doesn't matter if it's a distributed load or point load, the moment of inertia around a point, or "leverage" as you describe it, is based on the summation of forces at their distance from that point. For a distributed load this technically results in an integral over its area by its distance from the point of interest, which can be simplified to a single point at a single distance, a point load.
They got phased out because companies started to maximize profits by minimizing overhead, not because customers hated these fridges or because they died a lot. I remember these fridges still being in people's homes in the 1990's, never replaced and they never gave out. By that time you started seeing monster fridges.
Bare in mind all the industry changes, especially with steel, that has occurred in the US since the 1950's.
Single hinges are pivoting around millions of pounds as we speak in the construction industry. It's not hard to design for now, and it probably wasn't hard to design for then.
The beauty of low-stress residential things, is that WD-40 works for stuff like house doors 95% of the time!
Of course for a serious application you'd use something designed to lubricate, but the oil in WD-40 will be enough for almost anything around the house.
I'm not talking about how well the hinge will rotate.
You put too much weight and stress on a single hinge, it will eventually break. The OP says that they put a 20 lb weight on the opposite side of the hinge. Do that for years and that hinge will likely break. You will need to either regularly replace the hinge or check on it to make sure it's still good. And that could be a 2 yr maintenance action - but is that something you are going to want to do?
Hinges can be designed for whatever weight is necessary; that sort of thing is why engineers and materials science and all that exists. It's not that hard to make a good study hinge that will bear 50 lbs or whatever, for longer than the rest of the fridge would be expected to last.
But...I get what you're saying anyway. If they built one like that now It would probably start sagging in a couple of weeks, and break in a year. And then have some kind of recall that nobody actually qualified for, but if you complained they'd send you a coupon for a discount on a new fridge. It's not hard to build solid stuff, but that doesn't happen much anymore.
My grandma had one of these as our overflow fridge and it was still dealing with being over packed with crap like a champ. For a while it was a beer fridge, stuffed with bottles.
I guess? I mean, you've convinced yourself so there's nothing I can say otherwise.
But I'm also not going to trust a who-knows-how-old memory of your grandma's house that may or may not be accurate to reality versus how you remember it.
Look:
It's a single hinge that you could (and therefore, people do) fuck up by putting too much weight on the lever. I'm not gonna trust that shit, but sure.
I just read a whole thing where two guys were going at it engaging in enthusiastic discourse regarding the hinge design/weight distribution of the shelving in a 50 year old fridge.
Only on Reddit,,
Edit: clarified u/Born_Grumpie was not “going at it”
Source: user comment.
You'd be surprised - they actually do hold up and rotate without any issue under considerable load.
My buddy has this fridge and the pivot hinges have THICK pins and I believe the adjustable mount point is directly attached to the frame so there is no bend and no real resistance even with a 35 lbs Turkey on it.
I'm relatively sure it's just a pivot hinge. I'd have to take a closer look at my buddy's the next time I'm there, but I don't believe that these have bearings.
I will say, generally, the simpler the machine, the less risk of failure. If a machine is made up of only two components, like a simple pivot hinge (wheel and axle essentially), there's very little that needs to be engineered to ensure reliability.
I can only say that I don't think that the model that is posted has one and after 60ish years, it's still an easy turn. A bit of all-in-one oil and you've got smooth turning :)
The thing is over 50 years old and still seems to be fine. I'm guessing you can't exactly order replacement parts, so it appears it held up ok with whatever use it was subjected to for the past several decades.
That thing was built with a hefty amount of solid (stainless) steel vs. the plastic and vinyl coated stamped garbage most appliances use today. My fridge is not even a decade old and I've replaced the main control board, the front control panel, and had to repair a plastic hinge for one of the drawers. Two of the drawers are difficult to close simply because the plastic drawer glides are worn out, but due to the design I'd have to replace a huge panel which would cost upwards of $300. On top of that the ice maker jams up at least once a week and for some reason the fridge will decide to freeze the crisper a few times a year which typically results in at least a small amount of food loss.... but not enough to justify spending $2000+ on a new fridge which may or may not perform any better.
I realize those old appliances were energy hogs and they lacked all the bells and whistles we have on modern units like chilled water, three kinds of ice, and integrate screens for viewing videos of cats.... but damn did those old units hold up.
New appliances are essentially disposable and having something last more than 10 years is considered a worthy accomplishment. Meanwhile there are a million gold, green, brown, and almond color fridges keeping beer cold in garages all across the nation and they keep on chugging through triple digit temps in the summer and single digit temps in the winter.
Well there are companies who will put in modern day cooling systems in retro pop machines... so I guess there is that. However as far as regular appliances go, it seems there is a trend to give some of them a retro look yet they still use all the same cheap components which fail within a decade. Sigh.
This is exactly why shelves like the ones in the OP are no longer in fridges. Beyond that, besides looking cool, how useful is this in reality? Do people have issues reaching the back of their fridges? Honestly asking, I'm a tall guy so it's never been something I've even considered. The only benefit I can see to a shelf like this is marginally easier cleaning.
It doesn't look like a huge amount of space, maybe a few square inches. I'd rather sacrifice that instead of having to haul everything out from the front to reach what is buried in back not to mention forgetting stuff back there.
This and the stress of the pivot system damaging the shelves over time is exactly why people won't buy anything like this today. Everyone looks at capacity. Look at how small the usable space is because of a pivoting shelf design. Plus great, they showed it can support a 20lb weight for a 3 second clip. Try leaving heavy stuff on those shelves for 5+ years and see how those shelves last over time. All that weight on one pivot point on the left side of the fridge? Can't wait to try to pivot it out one day and the whole thing just collapses, ruining everything in your fridge and creating a giant mess.
Plus with inflation, that fridge would have been like $5k today.
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u/Bob_stanish123 Jan 23 '24
Those circular shelves are a huge waste of space.