I agree. Some plastic are superior in some applications and lend themselves
to cheap and expedient assemblies - but they lack the longivity of certain
metals. This is readily observed in various components and fittings in the
automobile industry for example. Heat, cold, sunlight, vibration and other
stresses, and time - they bend, break, fade, distort, crack, crumble, craze.
While uncoated metals can oxidize, parts wear, and poorly engineered parts
fail - a fully developed and debugged system can be made to be repairable,
upgradeable and and a good longterm buy.
Some plastics are extremely tough within their lifespans though .. I recall
working in Germany in the early 80's and watching a retail write-off of a
large quantity of merchandise .. at times that included a number of Braun
hairdryers. All had to be "destroyed" - with a hammer or whatever means
expedient. These were made of some form of plastic (ABS I think), and I can
attest that these were - well almost "indestructible". Full swings with a
very heavy hammer against concrete managed only to gouge the surfaces and
cause some distortion of overall form.
Lee
----Original Message Follows----
From: "William Sommerwerck" <williams@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [OM] "disposable" plastic products
However uncomfortable this statement might make you, it is nevertheless
true: High-quality plastics are structurally superior to metal for many
products.
Plastic can't be dented or bent. It either dampens the shock (which metal
doesn't do), or breaks altogether. So a dropped plastic product is less
likely to be damaged (either internally or externally) than a metal one.
Plastic can be molded to almost any shape, and requires little or no
post-molding handwork. This means significantly fewer plastic than metal
parts are needed to build a camera or CD player, and much less labor is
needed to assemble them, because parts can be designed to snap together.
Unfortunately, these very advantages make plastic products more-difficult to
disassemble for servicing. And because plastic reduces the cost of a
product's structural elements, it encourages the designers to reduce the
cost of other components, sometimes to the point where they are no longer
reliable or of high quality.
So the next time you pull out your Infinity Stylus Zoom Wide 80 DLX to pop
off a few shots, remember that the very things that make such a
sophisticated camera so tiny and light are precisely those things that
render it essentially non-repairable -- and therefore disposable.
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