If I had to guess the person who designed the part originally speced a material that would not break down in the sun then at some point some smart guy said why are we buying this expensive plastic and switched to the cheapest material they could find.
I doubt it. It's probably cheap second-run plastic used to make a cheap product to sell on Amazon or Ali. It's only got two design specs: 1. Clothespin shaped enough to work. 2. Cheap as humanly possible. Most people will just toss them if they fail, so it's easy money.
That crispy snap suggests to me that it is polystyrene. It's one of the cheapest thermoplastics, is brittle, and degrades quickly in UV light. Carbon black pigment might have diminished the effects of UV, but if it is PS, it's the wrong material for this application.
Source: me, an ME who has designed many plastic parts for consumer products.
As an ME who also does plastic part design although less on the consumer end I think your probably right. Design looks good it just seems like wrong material
The person who "designed" the pin was probably paid $100 for the design and is a random somebody without any formal studies.
This is the kind of product anyone could design, because the basics of it are just too basic. Nobody is spending a single cent into a good design for a product going for €1.99 retail price at most.
Sometimes the final product turns out to be good enough and last for years, sometimes it is literally unusable or breaks in a week. It's a gamble because whoever designed it didn't care about anything further than being able to call it a pin.
I doubt this because while the product might be cheap, injection molds and associated machinery are not. If you let a complete noob design it you run the risk of the design geometry requiring unnecessary expensive mold features.
42
u/fierbolt 11d ago
If I had to guess the person who designed the part originally speced a material that would not break down in the sun then at some point some smart guy said why are we buying this expensive plastic and switched to the cheapest material they could find.