Videos of self-destructing washing machines

Bit of a hitch in the drive to get other countries to adopt plastic currency…

It is a little bit sad to see such marvels of design and engineering come to such a wasteful death. Of course, there are probably countless others that will just rust away in a junkyard somewhere or be otherwise crushed and crowbar’d, and in that sense at least these ones provided some entertainment before they went. But the ideal would be a careful disassembly in which all salvageable components are gently removed and repurposed in new machines.

If the robot overlords don’t hold these up for exhibition in the distant future, the destitute masses will crowd around some flickering cracked display and marvel at our wastefulness. Or not.

In some way, true.

However, reusing parts brings certain risks; everything is subject to wear and tear, from corrosion to material fatigue (parts are usually rated only to limited fatigue life, as making them more robust would take more material or more expensive grade) to plain old wear (bearings, especially). Even the motor and solenoid windings aren’t entirely immune, the enamel can rub off if the part is subject to vibrations.

The fatigue life is why aircraft hulls have limited flight hours of life in them. (And why that Hawaiian airplane lost its top, after it went to a short-haul service and the pressurization-depressurization cycles that provide most of the load got much more frequent, so the material fatigued faster than in the same amount of flight hours in long-haul duty.)

With some care, however, and repair/replacement (or even redesign - here’s place for opensource designs) of the parts that fail, the thing can run for an arbitrary amount of time.

That said, I agree in principle.

But the brick dance is the second best option!
(Would somebody do that with a higher-speed camera, and with a post-mortem analysis of what failed and why?)

It looks like the mounting goes on the sides first, then the back. In many cases, the machine seems to function long after the housing is destroyed and only dies when the vibration disconnects the cable or belt at the back. This one continues to spin long after any application with water would be impossible:

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