What’s up with hinges breaking

GENERAL DISCUSSION
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I may take some $#!+ for this post, but I have to say that my heart is in the right place.
Man… I hate seeing another hinge failure. I don’t have the slightest idea what conditions caused those most recent hinge failure or any other hinge failures. Unless you’re a mechanical engineer, neither do you. I think about hinge failure. I do. I am choosing to use my hinges. What will happen, will happen. I do believe GFC when they say that they have a handle on this. That helps me sleep at night.
Let’s get real here. We’ve all bought a new car. We all know, for certain, that we will eventually have some problems with that new car. They may come in the first year, they may come just when we’re just out of warranty, they may come after 5 years… But we know something is coming. We all manage to sleep at night, and we continue to buy new cars over and over cars like the entire vehicle was a “wear item”.
I’m using my camper. So far, its perfectly awesome. I love it and wouldn’t trade it. I’ve started using 303 aerospace protectant on my hinges. I have one set of extra hinges that will work in a pinch if a hinge fails. I hope this isn’t a slowly evolving systemic issue. If it is, we’ll all know it with time. Worst case scenario is I replace the hinges myself with piano hinges or something similar. My GFC will still be awesome with piano hinges. I don’t think it’ll come to that. We’ll see.
In the meantime, I encourage everyone to stay informed on this forum, but also enjoy your campers. In some sense, we have an advantage here. We know what problem to look for. Hinges. The campers have thus far been pretty bulletproof except for the hinges. We’ll all likely have problems with our trucks in the future and we have no idea what will fail, but that doesn’t seem to worry us as much as our hinges for some reason. I know Toyota doesn’t have my back. If my AC blows up, I’m sure they’ll blame my oversized tires…
Relax, go camping, enjoy the now with your GFC.

I hope that this post is helpful. I’m trying to be constructive. Don’t worry about things that you can’t control.

Peace.

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Waiting for @GFC_Taylor to call this one a one off material failure… :partying_face:

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Haha yeah but imagine if a door fell off your Tacoma…I bet you’d never buy a Toyota vehicle again :joy:

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I know this is terrible for people who have broken hinges and I fret about mine as well, but I think GFC is suffering from having a more or less bomb proof design on their first go around, but they chose a hinge with very little design margin. Moreover, the hinge is a “single point failure” (if the hinge breaks, your camper is basically out of commission), and there isn’t graceful degradation - meaning that when a failure occurs it does so in a way that still provides some level of performance. I used to work for NASA and these were all design primary design principles - have margin, avoid single point failures, and when things breaks, they should do so gracefully. The hinges lack all of these, which compounds with the fact that you, me, and the next guy are all frantically checking this thread twice a day. If it were 10 years ago, we’d all be happily ignorant.

Here are my two cents though about the hinge failures. Let’s assume for a second that the video that @Seekoutbeauty posted is from the actual manufacturer of these hinges. They say in that video that they extrude the hinges, i.e push molten plastic out through a die. This make sense given that they are on a big roll in the video. When you do a polymer extrusion, especially through a small orifice, you get these nice long polymer chains that are aligned with the extrusion direction. Think of them like reinforcing strings taped to a piece of stretchy latex. These extended chains are mixed in with a lot of amorphous molecules as well that look like cooked spaghetti in a bowl, but more or else things align in the extrusion direction. Unfortunately for hinge design, you are effectively doing this alignment parallel to the hinge fold when you extrude, which is why (I think) these cracks propagate so quickly and far. The extended and oriented molecules should ideally be oriented perpendicular to the hinge fold line.

From my previous reading on this topic, I recall an article that discussed how injection molding was the preferred method of manufacturing of living hinges because the injection process (if the feed ports are placed properly) forces the liquid plastic to flow across the hinge line, not along the hinge. This gets those polymer chains oriented perpendicular to the fold. Doing an extrusion may produce acceptable hinges, but when they do fail, they will do so catastrophically. We shouldn’t poo-poo the ideal that “material defects” are causing these failures (@GFC_Taylor). A little bubble may be all that is needed to start a crack that then runs along these polymer chains. My prediction is that GFC will continue to see issues with these hinges on a subset of campers because their supplier doesn’t fab them properly. I think most of us will never have an issue, but an unacceptable number likely will. GCF will continue to say the design is sound even after the rev the hinge design in V2. The design (I think) is sound, but the part used in the design might be insufficient. I personally am trying not to worry too much about it. FYI - just so you don’t think I am making all this stuff up, I am an engineering prof at a university. My lab does some research in polymers processing for building actuators. I am by no means a polymers expert, but have done enough reading on the topic to have some background understanding.

Plenty of companies issues “technical service bulletins” for known issues not so serious to warrant a full recall. I am treating this issues like a TSB. It is a known issue with a fix available. I know that GFC will continue to support us and provide replacement hinges if this persists. Oh…and plenty of people keep buying Tacomas even after they issues TSBs :wink: @mode7.

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Yeah, my toyota reference was about customer service. Toyota support can be pretty substandard. Toyota is support averse during the warranty period and a price gouger after the warranty period. GFC, at least, has voiced a willingness to support us owners. Now, I have to agree that the abuse response is a little toyota-esque. Hanging on the hinge like a jungle gym is abuse. Opening and closing (from any angle) can’t credibly be called abuse. While I am trying to close my hinges evenly, I hope uneven closing isn’t a source of hinge failure. If so, that needs to be addressed; either through a new hinge supplier, improved hinge manufacturing, or different hinge design. Anyway, that’s ultimately GFC’s call. One off material flaws are certainly possible. While still disappointing, the up side is that not everyone will suffer through this hinge issue. I’m not claiming to have the answer. I’m just trying to provide some constructive perspective.

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Good question…Mike contacted me yesterday and said it was in the mail so as soon as I arrives I’ll follow up with some photo’s of what it is GFC sends out…

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Hey All,

This is Graeme. If you don’t know me, I am a cofounder here at GFC with Wiley. I want to give you guys some company background here, and share some news I am pretty excited about.

But first, let’s take this back to 2018 when we first started GFC. We gave folks estimated completion dates for that spring and summer, and a lot of you guys booked trips, campsites and even took time off work for installs. You took a leap of faith and purchased a camper, and we were working our tails off. But soon we had way more orders than we knew what to do with. We were desperately behind schedule on production, and it became apparent we had no idea how big a project it was to build out a whole company. We proceeded to not only miss those early timelines by a mile (6 months+), we even dropped the ball on customer service because we just didn’t have the staff to keep up.

We quickly realized that the only way to keep this company around was to take a step back and figure out how to make the situation right. We went to the local Toyota dealership and bought a Tundra. Then we went over to the trailer supply and bought our first deck-over rig for towing campers. We didn’t know how we were going to make it happen, but we knew we wanted to go out and meet everyone who had so much faith in us, apologize in person for being so late, and hand-deliver and personally install campers for every single one of those folks early on.

I only bring this up to say that we know without a doubt that the fate of our company lies in our customers’ hands. If we don’t take care of the people we exist to serve (you guys), we won’t last.

So when we first started seeing hinge failures, it lit a fire under us to solve it. We quickly figured out that the cause of this issue was the crown seal between the spaceframe, the hinge, and the lower extrusion. We created a solution in early 2019 that eliminated the gasket, which resulted in a much more reliable setup, and began planning our first-ever PIT (product improvement tour) in which we’d visit every customer to update their camper as quickly as we could. We were gearing up to hit the road when COVID-19 happened and completely changed our timeline.

While the improved hinge design worked, we still did see occasional rare failures due to manufacturing inconsistencies in the polyolefin hinge material with the riveted attachment system. Any sort of air pocket or change in material elasticity could eventually lead to failure over long term use. COVID completely shut us down for manufacturing and the PIT, but it also gave us an opportunity. Why come out with a solution that while better, still had a random rate of failure that we found unacceptable?

We kept our engineers on staff during the shutdown to work on two things:
Come up with a new solution to the hinge mechanism that prevents future issues
Retool our production line to make it faster, in hopes we could catch back up when the shutdown lifted

The result? We came up with an entirely new hinge material, and should have the first batches arriving next week. The lead times on it are long, since the tooling is complicated, but this is not just a patch for the problem. We’ll confirm fitment when the new material arrives next week, but as soon as we have those details, you guys will be the first to know. We’re getting close, and just got a shipping notification on the new material yesterday.

I know that’s a lot of details, but I want to show you that in no way are we pushing you guys to the side to make room for new projects. Without you, we wouldn’t be able to do any of this.

We owe it to you guys and ourselves to solve problems as quickly as possible and stand behind our product. And that’s something we will always do. You bought our campers because you saw they were good, and we have no plans to let you down in that regard.

We have a history of making situations right by first buying a Tundra. And wouldn’t you know, there is one sitting in the parking lot now, ready to head out with Big Mike on the next PIT. We will take care of you. We promise.

And while Big Mike is out doing retrofits, we’re going to keep innovating and making new and exciting tools to help you get out there and have amazing stories to tell for years to come. We haven’t forgotten about you, not for a second. Everything we build is for you guys.

And one more thing: as of today, all of the existing and current polyolefin production hinges will be backed by a lifetime warranty. That way, you know we’ll never leave you hanging, whether you got your camper new or picked it up secondhand.

-Graeme

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This is great info Mike, and what we have found to be accurate. Any “starter crack” or inconsistency is whats to blame with these more rare failures. Thats why we are so amped on this entirely different material manufacturing process for the new solution, and I really think you guys will be as well.

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Thanks, Graeme. I haven’t had a failure, but I was already considering other hinge options, so I look forward to more details on the new hinges.

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@GFC Whoa! This is great great news. High five.

A couple of questions:

  1. Am I understanding you right that are designing your own hinges and using a cross-flow (across the hinge line) injection molding? What polymer are you using?

  2. If you are designing your own hinges, will you be doing life testing before you start installing the new hinges? Will you make the testing conditions (temp, UV exposure, etc.), number of tested hinges, and cycle life results public? I’d love to see a post on this thread about the life testing of the new hinges. That would do a lot to rebuild some trust about the design.

  3. Can you ship the new hinges to existing customers so we have them on hand if we have a hinge failure?

  4. If I happen to be near Bozeman, could we get a preemptive retrofit?

  5. Is there an inspection we can do to look for point defects that may develop into cracks? If you could find one on your roll of existing material and post a photo here, that might help us all determine if our hinges will eventually fail. Those customers should the be prioritize to get new hinges preemptively.

Good work.

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Excellent! This is exactly the news we were wanting to hear…well done! The hinge is literally the only worry point in this whole camper (in my experience) and knowing that is being addressed is really great to hear. Its rock solid bomber otherwise. I havent had a hinge go and do have the new sealant/construction method but others with later builds have and i honestly felt a little nervous about it.

Thanks for sharing the info and staying true to the product!

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With regard to the material and your earlier post about failure modes, I hope that the new hinge incorporates some type of fiber reinforcement. I believe that would arrest a crack prior to catastrophic failure, acting much like the rip-stop reinforcement in cloth. That looks like one of the main benefits of a Carbon-Kevlar hinge.

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That would be nice. I am not sure how the drilling operation would go though. Drilling through Kevlar is not easy. Carbon isn’t too bad, and probably fine when embedded within a plastic.

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Not bad at all, with sharp tooling.

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Nice. I think in the shop it wouldn’t be too bad, but a little more challenging if we are retrofitting in our garages.

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True. Much easier to do with a drill press than by hand. Easier still with a CNC mill.

One benefit of the way GFC has approached production is the ever increasing use of CNC control for as many processes as possible. In many cases, they can already ship out replacement parts with the confidence that they’ll fit, even after a redesign. I’m not sure if the door hole/rivet placement has been, or is currently a CNC process, but if it is, it may be possible to ship pre-drilled hinges to customers.

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Oops. Yeah, hinges at 180°, doors at 90°. Do you have a link to the struts you used?

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these are less forceful

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This is great. This is why I picked GFC over other brands. I have a friend who has owned two and has spoken very highly of GFC. My camper is a ways off but looking forward to getting it. Appreciate the hard work that goes into them.

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Pretty stoked on all the changes coming through the pipeline. Way more stoked to get you guys all taken care of. We will post something more concrete when we can but we won’t go into details until I have had time work with our engineers on getting it just right. Pumped to start the process of getting you all back to 100% in August! :muscle:

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