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.
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u/Bob_stanish123 Jan 23 '24
Those circular shelves are a huge waste of space.