Ralford.net

  [Rants]

Over the years, I've noticed that rubber feet, usually installed on a product to prevent sliding on a smooth surface, are crappily designed into the product, and tend to fall off within the first year of use.

For my old EE classes, my breadboard used sticky glue to keep the feet attached. They lasted up until the breadboard made too many trips in and out of my backpack. At that point the feet fell off and disappeared, one by one, leaving me with a breadboard who's primary supply and ground connections could short, if used on a metal surface.

These days the problem is in my coffee machine. Instead of using the sticky method, Mr. Coffee went with an angled tooth grip on it's FTX29. The teeth operate like those on a ratchet, making insertion easy, with the teeth catching on removal. However, the teeth on the rubber feet are made out of the flexible rubber! On my attempts to move the coffee machine to wipe the counter, they've popped out and disappeared.

My preferred style for installing rubber feet to a product is with a screw in the center. Ideally the screw head should be deep enough in the rubber such that the head does not sratch the surface the object is sitting on.

Comments (0)      Post a Comment