I know there is quite a large thread of people building an expansion card with a magnetic port built in, but they’re all accepting the risk. The main reason that I’m aware of is that the unprotected pins can easily cause a short due to static electricity. The exposed pins on your laptop are now an exposed point that can conduct static electricity directly to your internal components. Source
I also believe there’s some risk involved with the fact that all of the connections (power & data) are made all at once. In USB Type-C cables that are up to spec the ground pin is connected before anything else makes connections. This helps prevent any accidental electricity, static or otherwise, from frying your device. This does not happen when you just snap together all of the pins all at once on a magnetic connector. Source
So, I feel that the possibility of risk may be small, but it has a lot of opportunity to damage the device, hence why I don’t do it and why I caution others to do it. If the convenience is worth the risk to you, by all means, go for it. It’s a very cool concept, just not one that I’m willing to risk at this time.
I had personally contacted USB-IF and they did indeed say that magnetic cables pose a risk to your device and highly discourage using them. I do not care about what a manufacturer says they just want money.
Writing a reply to report that I am now encountering the same problem. System is only 6 months old and I also have a longitudinal tear on the sleeve. May be a design flaw or quality control issue if there have been reports of similar wear patterns. The tear is also getting longer as time goes by.
I had a similar pattern of breakage only 3 months into normal use. Pretty disappointing but after contacting support, they were pretty prompt about offering a replacement. I hope this issue gets addressed though, would be annoying to have to deal with this every few months
Note that folks who are seeing the cable fray after normal usage within the warranty period, you should reach out to Framework Support for a replacement cable. We’ve root caused this with our cable supplier and believe that there was a limited number of cables where molding of the sleeve wasn’t done at the optimal temperature. They’ve since adjusted the manufacturing process to resolve this.
It is still normal TPE-jacketed cable though, so over heavy use over time, there is risk of the jacket wearing at stress points. This is part of the reason we designed the USB-C cable to be detachable and replaceable. Much cheaper and less wasteful to replace a cable than a whole power adapter!
So 2 weeks after the warranty expired my power cable has split apart. The thing is, this laptop just sits there. I’ve coiled/uncoiled the cable at most 3-5 times in the year that I’ve had it. I have 10 year old laptops with cables I’ve abused far more that haven’t split apart.
I hate to say this but if a “repair-friendly” laptop = cheap parts that you HAVE TO replace often with the added expense of time and stress, this’ll be my last repair-friendly product.
EDIT: holy smokes…and this repair-friendly company forces you to buy the entire adapter set of three items for $49 + shipping when I just need to repair the one cable? That’s pretty bad…for me…for the planet…
I know your warranty is up, but I would still contact support. It seems like a lot of people are having issues with the charging cable, and support is doing their best to replace just the cable for free.
I’m just guessing but there may have beenwas a manufacturing flaw with the early cables.
EDIT: I completely forgot that Nirav mentioned an actual manufacturing defect. For anyone coming to this thread in the future, please contact support if you are seeing fraying issues with your charging cable! (thanks to @GhostLegion for the reminder)
My power cord just started to spontaneously unravel after just a couple of months of intermittent use! It sits, unmolested, on a smooth flat surface and hasn’t been stepped on, twisted, or damaged in any other way. Yikes!!
Posts from a couple of months ago suggest other folks are having the same issue. Did Framework respond appropriately? If you had this issue, what are you using now?
Please contact Framework Support. We’ll take care of you. We’ve been in contact with our supplier/manufacturer of this specific part and have provided them returned samples for analysis.
These cables suck mine is spiting on both ends and one side sits on the floor plugged into the charger and never moves, the other side just get plugged into the laptop.
