Hello, I am here to unfortunately declare that my laptop, after a little over a year of use, has suffered mysterious cracking by the lower left side expansion port. The stuff by the crack was my attempt to superglue it.
1 Like
That’s metal fatigue
1 Like
Yeah, I was probably a bit rough on it 
I bought one of the original FW 13’s and on my most recent opening of the chassis, one of the housings for the captive screws has completely disintegrated. Luckily…the others are holding the bottom cover in place. Never been abusive/rough with it, just think the plastic housing could be a bit stronger. Definitely showing some weak points in the chassis over time.
Then why do you claim “normal usage”?
I dont consider that normal usage.
Let’s see how many other people chime in. Maybe its something worth looking into.
I wasn’t being rough, I never did anything out of the ordinary, but I said I was being rough as in somehow it fatigued as Charlie6 said.
I’ve had the same issue but on every single one of my ports. The sharp angle is a stress riser on top of an already thin area.
It sucks that they don’t sell the chassis. I’d appreciate if I didn’t have to buy new speakers and such alongside it.
You would think that Framework would avoid forcing plastic components to be sold unnecessarily. Maybe there’s a reason, maybe there’s room for improvement.
1 Like
Thats what I’m thinking. Repairable != only selling components in assemblies.
I understand they are probably trying to keep the inventory they need to stock low bc they are a newer / smaller company but I still think its a little silly. I’ll reach out to support and see if they are willing to sell me just a frame.
How old is your chassis? What do you think is causing the stress at those points?
Heavy hands, on the palm rest area. There’s nothing directly underneath the chassis in that area. The feet are near the front, and the back…so that’s just bending/flexing the chassis over time.
When I look at the design and think about failures in other things I repair the first thing I think about is an impact to the bottom of an expansion module applying force to the inside of the corner.
Then the internal rails that the module slide along didn’t do a good enough preventive job…and should also have been deformed / damaged.
It all depends on if there is enough room for the module to move in the rails enough to put pressure on the stress point or not. It’s more complicated than you would suggest as it would be tolerances on rails both on modules and the chassis, clearance in chassis module bay, etc.
Are you looking at your unit at the moment? Mine has a gap and doesn’t touch the chassis even when pushed up. Might be the differences in the resulting manufacturing tolerances. Or are you saying your unit has very poor tolerances along the rails?
If I push on mine I am pretty sure there is no gap left. It kind of looks like there is a gap but I believe in my case it may be the rounded profile of the top front edge. I would have to get some slip gauges to be 100%