Why things FAIL - Why don't Manufacturers make them last longer? 

This was a very fun collaboration with Electromagnetic Videos. It was great working with Dr. Jones and It was neat to be able to have conversations and work together even though I live in the Southern US and Dr. Jones lives in Canada. We may not ever get the chance to work together in person, but it is amazing all the things we can do remotely these days. Thanks to Dr. Jones for all the time he has put in to this. I sure learned a lot about MTBF and how manufactures design things the way we find them on the shelf.

The MTBF example of a hypothetical router was helpful, and helps to understand the causal relationship between such a minor-seeming component quality consideration and its major impact on overall product lifespan.

Dr Jones, you explained this complex topic well without pinning the blame on “greed” or “capitalism”, but on the collective decision making that comprises the free market. Thanks. -Kevin from Ottawa

Simple. Money. Back in the day, like in the early 1990s and before, it was normal for major appliances like ranges, refrigerators, washer/dryer to last for 30 years or more and you'd typically replace the appliance only because it looked very outdated, such as the pastel colors or earth colors popular from the 1950s - 1970s (avocado green and harvest gold come to mind). That "outdated " refrigerator was often placed in the garage to keep the beers or what have you, cold. Manufacturers know that if most of their products are trouble free for 25 years or longer, sales will eventually slump. Nowadays if your fancy stainless steel refrigerator lasts 10 years you feel like you hit the jackpot 🙂 My grandparents had GE turquoise blue appliances with chrome handles and knobs, a 40 inch double oven electric range and refrigerator, purchased in 1967 when they brought the house, washing machine and gas dryer from 1968 when natural gas became available, and they were all still working as of August 2022 when we sold the house after grandma passed 4 months earlier. They really built stuff to last, and pastels were about as popular as disco was in the 70s.

product burn-in ,thermal cycling, "Infant mortality " , "bathtub curve" routine preventive maintenance to extend "end of life.."all 3 axis vibration & shock tests, EMI/EMC compatibility test, All these come back to mind of our basic training days😅

I find it "interesting" how a certain tech brand will have their customers line up, even camp overnight, something like twice a year to get the latest model of a device. What I see is, companies like this have had the iterations these "advancements" "new features" planned out for years probably longer. It seems as if people believe there are teams of r&d techs crunching in a lab year-round and somehow coming up with something (samething) newer better faster stronger (enter Daft Punk). Then again, I could be wrong I mean what do I know? 🤔

Large value ceramic capacitors are not necessarily a good substitution for aluminium electrolytics - they can be mechanically fragile, noisy when handling audio frequency ripple, etc. Tantalum capacitors might be a better substitution for your example. But I don't disagree with your fundamental point 😊

I have never used the usb fast charger for my phone. I let it charge at 5 v and usually stop it around 80 %

Cost/benefit is always the case. It's not unusual to find industrial electronics doing what ever it does for 50+ years.

At 2:17 I paused to see if I could figure out the formula myself. let annual survival probability of item 1 = P_1 let annual survival probability of item 2 = P_2 P_1 ^ MTBF_1 = 0.5 probability of surviving for MTBF years in a row is 0.5. P_1 = 0.5 ^ (1/MTBF_1) (P_1 * P_2) ^ MTBF_combined = 0.5 MTBF_combined = logbase(P_1 * P_2, 0.5) solve for MTBF_combined MTBF_combined = log(0.5) / log(P_1 * P_2) change of base formula MTBF_combined = log(0.5) / log(0.5 ^ (1/MTBF_1) * 0.5 ^ (1/MTBF_2)) substitute At this point I figured I was done and watched the rest of the video. I had missed how you can simplify it. MTBF_combined = log(0.5) / log(0.5 ^ (1/MTBF_1) * 0.5 ^ (1/MTBF_2)) MTBF_combined = log(0.5) / log(0.5 ^ (1/MTBF_1)) + log(0.5 ^ (1/MTBF_2)) MTBF_combined = log(0.5) /((1/MTBF_1)log(0.5) + (1/MTBF_2)log(0.5)) MTBF_combined = 1 /((1/MTBF_1) + (1/MTBF_2))

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