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[OM] Cheap plastic, expensive plastic, intended market

Subject: [OM] Cheap plastic, expensive plastic, intended market
From: Joe Gwinn <joegwinn@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2002 22:11:25 -0400
It's all a matter of intent and design.

One can do a cheap camera in any material.  Likewise, expensive.

Drop resistance:  Metal with a thick rubber shell molded on is very resistant, 
but heavy.  Polycarbonate plastic is also quite good.  In the 1970s and 1980s, 
one could buy voltohm meters (VOMs) built either way.  Metal was expensive, but 
indestructable.  Plastic was usually fragile, but I have a transistorized 
voltmeter built by Weston that was guaranteed to survive a six foot drop onto 
concrete; a major selling point.  That instrument still works.  The case was 
molded of polycarbonate plastic, which is a large part of it, but all the 
internal components need to be tied down stoutly.  I bet the development 
process consisted of dropping the prototype ten feet onto concrete, finding out 
what broke loose, and strengthening it; repeat until nothing breaks loose.  One 
can to this day buy VOMs guaranteed to survive a drop.  Fluke has one 
guaranteed to survive a ten-foot drop, so it probably is designed for fifteen 
feet.  These VOMs are expensive, but cheap, because VOMs used in the !
field are always being dropped.

Do you remember the old black-beauty telephones?  They had plastic shells and 
handsets, but you could drive nails with those handsets, and if you threw the 
phone against the wall, the wall came out second best.  Don't try this with a 
modern telephone, it will shatter.  Most of the difference is in the plastic 
used.  The old phones were made of heavy ABS, while the modern phones are made 
of thin "high-impact polystyrene" or the like, a far cheaper material.

Why were the old phones so strongly built?  Because AT&T was guaranteed a 
rental income of 8.750er year of the cost of the phone, but repair came out of 
their hide.  So, the economic incentive was very much to make the phone strong, 
reliable, and expensive.

Now to cameras.  If enough people wanted (would pay for) a camera that would 
survivive being dropped ten feet to the floor, the camera makers would produce 
such cameras.  It's only slightly harder than VOMs and telephones.  It's all a 
matter of intended market and design intent.  Use of plastic or any other 
material is neither here nor there.

And of course, the real problem with modern cameras is that the ever more 
complex electronics fails for no obvious reason, making the camera economically 
unrepairable.

Joe Gwinn

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