Re: Cup-O-Matic

I agree that the good old days weren't all that great. I have a "Cory stove" hotplate that would never fly today, with the open coil heating element and a metal body that gets sizzling hot, it must break 10 different laws. Recently the insurance safety institute crashed a '59 Chevy into a 2009 Chevy to see how auto safety had advanced - on the '59 the A pillar sheared off like it was made of cheese and the steering column went right for the dummy's head like a battering ram.

http://blogs.insideline.com/straightline/2009/09/crash-test-2009-chevrolet-malibu-vs-1959-chevy-bel-air.html



As the others have said, the Chinese will build you whatever you pay them to build you (though BTW there are some spectacular crash tests of Chinese market cars available on line in which they perform similar to '59 hevies) - the blame falls strictly with Cuisinart and other US mfgs who ask them to build products for pennies and then sell them at a huge markup to pay for the advertising, executive salaries, overhead, profit, etc. - the $200 you pay goes everywhere but into the product itself which is almost an afterthought or the smallest cost factor.

UL, CE, etc. concern themselves mostly with electrical safety. I suppose the lawyers mandated the Rube Goldberg interlock so that you can't stick your hand into the spinning blades. The engineers are to blame for designing a crappy system to accomplish that goal and their bosses for giving them a budget of pennies to work with. And American consumers for putting up with this crap and being dazzled by once-great brand names. Plenty of blame to go around.

In these photos you can see the thin plastic fingers that are just begging to break off at the point where they join the body. Plastic is not exactly the best material for repeated flexing under load:

http://www.cuisinartrepair.com/media/dlc118bgtx-1.jpg
http://www.cuisinartrepair.com/media/ss_size3/dlc018bg8.jpg





"Mark Thorson" <nospam@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:4AEA1D37.A5F7602@xxxxxxxxxxxx


On the other hand, some products follow
the reverse trajectory. When choosing a
La Pavoni, I looked at many on eBay.
One seller thoughtfully removed the foot
so you could see the wiring inside the
base. It was an older model, and wiring
looked like a 1960's toaster. Many of
the connections appeared to be a wire
wrapped around a bolt and tightened.

The one I ended up buying was built last
year. All of the connections in the base
have proper terminals. I suspect this was
necessary to get the CE approval or meet
some of the other EU standards. Without
those standards, they'd probably still be
making them the old way.

As these standards become more thorough
and demanding, anything sold in the EU
will have to meet these higher standards.
That includes stuff made in China. It
probably won't help you with that plastic
tab that broke off, but there is a rising
tide in areas for which standards can be
designed (chiefly electrical and electronic
components). The Chinese aren't against
quality, but they need to know what
standards they have to meet. They sell
into international markets, so they'll
build to whatever standard they need to
participate in those markets.

.

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