M9 on tripod - bottom part broken anyone else ?

[mac11]

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Well, I got the reply from Leica about my camera with broken bottom plate.

Talked to the importer today, and they quoted Leica HQ's repair estimate at

 

NOK 6,726 plus VAT = NOK 8,407.50 ( equivalent to USD 1,553.11)

 

Quite a bill... Includes labour NOK 5,636, material NOK 840, shipping NOK 250 plus VAT (25%). Comments were "Impact damage. A piece of the camera housing is broken off." Also got the same on the snail mail today. I knew it would be frustrating when the 'repair charge' would be quoted, since the 'impact damage' all happened while the camera was swiveling on the tripod, and I consider this to be of normal use. The camera was never dropped so the body shell is scratch free. My Norwegian importer says this was 'the first such case' they have seen. Well, I tried to be as impartial as possible on my reporting to the forum of what happened. So there. Think need to cool off my head.

 

oslo terry

 

I was one of the four who did list our experiences with base plate failure. This was done to add information to the forum with no ulterior motive. At first, I had no intention to share my problem with this forum, but as I came across this thread by chance, and saw 1st poster's photo showing the EXACTLY SAME breakage in the base plate, I felt it was bit more than a coincidence. It's impossible to gather how many had this problem as not all M8 users frequent this forum, and not every member cares to share their problems.

 

Please take my post without alarm, make what you will, but the exact same nature of my problem with the 1st poster did surprise me quite a bit, and the thought of possible repair charges that may incur depending on the reply from Leica is a bit frustrating. For those who are reading with concern, please take extra care when M8 is mounted on the tripod, and don't let the camera swing while on the 'ball', as this kind of impact I think will be the greatest cause of base plate failure. I was lucky as I caught the camera on its free fall from the tripod... with 90mm 2.0 lens on it.

 

oslo terry

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[wlaidlaw]

Well, I got the reply from Leica about my camera with broken bottom plate.

Talked to the importer today, and they quoted Leica HQ's repair estimate at

 

NOK 6,726 plus VAT = NOK 8,407.50 ( equivalent to USD 1,553.11)

 

Quite a bill... Includes labour NOK 5,636, material NOK 840, shipping NOK 250 plus VAT (25%). Comments were "Impact damage. A piece of the camera housing is broken off." Also got the same on the snail mail today. I knew it would be frustrating when the 'repair charge' would be quoted, since the 'impact damage' all happened while the camera was swiveling on the tripod, and I consider this to be of normal use. The camera was never dropped so the body shell is scratch free. My Norwegian importer says this was 'the first such case' they have seen. Well, I tried to be as impartial as possible on my reporting to the forum of what happened. So there. Think need to cool off my head.

 

oslo terry

 

Terry,

 

A strongly worded letter from your lawyer to the importer or possibly the dealer from whom you bought the camera if they are not the same. This depends on Norwegian law for whom your contractual relationship lies. In the UK it is with the dealer from whom you purchased the camera, not the importer or the manufacturer. I think you need to make it absolutely clear that the camera broke in normal usage in accordance with the manufacturers manual and that you expect them to repair it free of all charges.

 

Wilson

[Guest DuquesneG]

Another look at the photos and it appears to me that some sort of rigid connection joining the two halves of the casting near the lip (top of the "wall") would distribute the force such that it would be much less apt to tear a piece from the forward wall. Perhaps our engineer could comment on that...I'm just a physicist.

[diogenis]

And how can someone proves that there was not a high G impact involved which cause the joint to break? It looks pretty firm to me, if used as intended, that is on a tripod.

[Guest flatfour]

Surely it is not the base plate that has failed, but the rim of the casting. Under all normal cisrciumstances this takes no loading at all but it may experience a slight vertical pressure from the base plate when it is clamped down. It will only be excessively loaded when the base plate is clouted so hard that it tries to move sideways putting a load on the flange. That's just bad use not a structural fault. IMHO

[diogenis]

The clamp's pressure is nothing for that joint.

Things can get rough though if for instance, you place the camera and a very big lens like 90mm+ on top of a tripod and then you lift the whole set with an forced move to rest it on your shoulder and start running for whatever the reason. That might stress the whole thing yea, but its nowhere meant as "normal use". High G impacts can kill magnesium alloys.

[wlaidlaw]

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Another look at the photos and it appears to me that some sort of rigid connection joining the two halves of the casting near the lip (top of the "wall") would distribute the force such that it would be much less apt to tear a piece from the forward wall. Perhaps our engineer could comment on that...I'm just a physicist.

 

Any torque applied to the base plate, when for example, the base plate is attached to a tripod either upside down as when taking a very a low level shot or in the vertical and/or portrait positions and there is a heavy lens fitted to the body, this load has at least in part, to be transmitted from the camera to the base plate via the moulding to which the brass rubbing plate attaches. This will exert a tearing force on the clamshell just under the moulding on the open rear edge of the front clamshell. This is a pretty thin piece of magnesium diecasting and will struggle to resist either torsion and/or tension. The other action which would cause a lot of tension/torsion would be to have a high friction on a tripod ball head and as I am sure all of us have done from time to time, use the camera body to realign the tripod head.

 

If at all possible, one should always try to use magnesium castings in compression rather than in tension. To get technical, magnesium castings tend to have a large number of dissociation defects. If you can imagine parallel rows of atoms and then at a point, three rows become two or four, there is what amounts to an atomic level hole - that is a dissociation. Now under stress these defects can migrate to join up to make larger defects and eventually a crack = failure.

 

Wilson

[marknorton]

The term "base plate failure" is of course misleading, it's the casting that the base plate latches to which is failing as Wilson points out. Need also to distinguish between static and dynamic load - static load, such as would be caused by the weight of the camera acting on the casting, is unlikely to be a problem even if there is a lever arm in play. If it were, you'd be able to break the casting by hand.

 

A dynamic load - where the camera is moving and suddenly called on to stop or change direction can put a much larger force on the casting. If you tried to use a tripod as a hammer with the M8 at its head, you might reasonably expact the casting to fail. I think therefore that carrying the camera on a tripod is dangerous. Inadvertently knock the tripod and the camera suffers accelerations of many g's with the consequent stresses on the casting.

 

Then add the possibility of imperfections in the casting into the mix and it's clear there will be failures. Still a big repair bill - the part is cheap but transferring everything across and setting the camera up again means a big labour charge.

 

It really shouldn't happen.

[ho_co]

Terry--

I'm sorry for the repair quotation. This sounds highly questionable to me.

 

I understand the importer saying the event is a first for him, but it would be nice to know why some such cases have been repaired free of charge and now yours is to be billed.

 

If Leica cites 'impact damage,' I would ask whether the baseplate shows impact damage as well. If you dropped the camera and struck the baseplate with enough force to break the body casting, wouldn't the brass plate show a dent?

 

If, on the other hand, the baseplate remained attached to the tripod, then isn't it reasonable that BECAUSE the casting broke on the tripod, allowing the camera to fall to the floor, there might be signs of impact damage? That is, the estimator may be seeing the broken casting and saying "impact damage," even though the broken casting is actually the cause, not the result, of any impact damage present.

 

I would call Customer Service in Solms. Perhaps another person should look at the camera, and maybe also take a look at this thread. You may need to talk to a supervisor to get to someone able to understand the possibility that the broken casting is cause, not effect, of the problem.

 

To me, this sounds simply wrong.

 

Good luck.

[Hookeye]

I think there could be a potential problem with ball-heads on tripods. When the ball is not properly tightened, the camera can move pretty freely. It could then tip forward and fall until reaching the end of the range of movement of the ball head. Then it would stop abruptly. I guess this c o u l d put sufficient strain on the body casing to break of the corner where the baseplate is attatched. It happened to me once with an M6 and no harm was done. But with the M8 there is a construction weakness that makes injury more likely.

 

Nevertheless, I can feel my anger building over how "mac11 / Oslo terry" was treated by Leica. Frankly, I think they should repair those cameras with this kind of damage that are under warranty - no questions asked. If the problem is as rare as they say - it should not pose a problem for them. The negative publicity they get for charging the unfortunate owners for the repair is probably more expesive and damaging than just repairing the cameras free of charge.

[ho_co]

Mark--

I think I've read in some camera or tripod manuals that the camera should be removed from a tripod before carrying the tripod. Looks like good advice, but I don't find any such warning in either M8 or D200 manual.

 

Hookeye--

I'm also extremely annoyed at the bill Leica has sent Terry. I tend not to think he owes.

 

But it's too soon to say that all such cases should be handled by Leica as warranty issues. Clearly we've got a _possible_ weak point in the M8 body casting at this attachment site, but there are still too few cameras illustrating the problem to know that it's a flaw.

 

I'm beginning to think it is poor design; but I don't think we can make that definition stick. Not yet, anyway.

 

I do think Terry should fight this until he is convinced that the charge is proper; and since he was there when the baseplate snapped, he may not be convincible.

[wlaidlaw]

Just reread my post and came to the conclusion that senility must be creeping up. The atomic level faults in metals are dislocations not dissociations. Just to add to the problem, magnesium diecastings are also susceptible to brittle fatigue failure from repeated sub failure stresses. This is for example, why it is recommended that all magnesium racing car wheels are replaced at 4 to 5 years or sent back for annealing plus heat treatment and the better quality ones use magnesium forgings rather than castings, especially for the rims.

 

Wilson

[PeterP]

Just reread my post and came to the conclusion that senility must be creeping up. The atomic level faults in metals are dislocations not dissociations. Just to add to the problem, magnesium diecastings are also susceptible to brittle fatigue failure from repeated sub failure stresses. This is for example, why it is recommended that all magnesium racing car wheels are replaced at 4 to 5 years or sent back for annealing plus heat treatment and the better quality ones use magnesium forgings rather than castings, especially for the rims.

 

Wilson

 

So are you saying : that although a camera may not have failed in the past it can however fail in the future ? It is not a manufacturing defect rather an inherent weakness in the material ? So by extension the failure rate could be

" (failure rate per year) X (years in use) "

 

PeterP

[Shootist]

If and when I have one of these BODY Locking lug failures and Leica refuses to fix it under warranty, Material defect even if out of warranty, I will still find a way to use the camera.

Until then I will still use both my M8's on a tripod when needed.

[diogenis]

Wilson, guys let's just be more practical on this issue, so before all turning to the atomic and/or subatomic level, that baseplate is locked on place by 2 points. Point A is the joint you all talking about and is responsible for this failure in Bill's camera. However we are all focused on that joint, yet the baseplate is also tied in point B which is a SMALLER lip of something like 0.5 cm and of unknown material. Why is it that point A broke, which looks at least 3x more powerful than point B?

 

And I still insist there is NO metal fatigue coming out from this latch, neither if you place the camera on a tripod with a 135mm lens. On first looking on bill's photo's one would assume there was a sudden impatct that caused this in a way that all force was applied in that joint. But it's still very strange. Why the other point is left intact?

[marknorton]

Do you mean the lip at the other end? If so, it's made of steel and screwed to the other casting, the one making up the back of the camera. It could fail too, I suppose, but the mounting point is more substantial and does not rely on a diecast wall just 1mm thick.

 

I think there are three contributing factors here. First, the latching point could have been reinforced on the inside of the camera; there's plenty of space to do so. Second, there's a question mark over the casting quality; you can dismiss Wilson's explanation all you like but that's what can cause die-cast components to fail; third, tripod mounting the camera can place extreme stresses on the latching point.

 

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For owners of existing cameras, I think tripod use is fine but I'd suggest you dont carry the tripod with the camera mounted and if you do, avoid banging the tripod head.

 

For Leica, I think they should add reinforcement to the casting and look closely at their casting process.

[wlaidlaw]

So are you saying : that although a camera may not have failed in the past it can however fail in the future ? It is not a manufacturing defect rather an inherent weakness in the material ? So by extension the failure rate could be

" (failure rate per year) X (years in use) "

 

PeterP

 

Sadly yes. In my collection of old cameras, I have a 1950's vintage French Foca 3, with a magnesium body. Last year, I snapped a little bit off the very thin rim of the body casting with my fingers when I was cleaning 50+ years of accumulated dirt and dust off the lip, which fits into the dust seal of the bottom cover.

 

Magnesium alloys have another property called age hardening. This is often seen as a benefit, as immediately after being cast, they are relatively malleable and can be forged. Then over varying periods (usually dependent upon the zinc content) they harden up. You can see this process being used at the BBS wheels factory near Schiltach in Germany.

 

The down side of this is that over a long period, this hardening continues and as I said above, mag alloys can become extremely brittle.

 

Wilson

[jaapv]

Well, I got the reply from Leica about my camera with broken bottom plate.

Talked to the importer today, and they quoted Leica HQ's repair estimate at

 

NOK 6,726 plus VAT = NOK 8,407.50 ( equivalent to USD 1,553.11)

 

Quite a bill... Includes labour NOK 5,636, material NOK 840, shipping NOK 250 plus VAT (25%). Comments were "Impact damage. A piece of the camera housing is broken off." Also got the same on the snail mail today. I knew it would be frustrating when the 'repair charge' would be quoted, since the 'impact damage' all happened while the camera was swiveling on the tripod, and I consider this to be of normal use. The camera was never dropped so the body shell is scratch free. My Norwegian importer says this was 'the first such case' they have seen. Well, I tried to be as impartial as possible on my reporting to the forum of what happened. So there. Think need to cool off my head.

 

oslo terry

 

Otoh, making it "impact damage" turns it into an insurance claim.....

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[ho_co]

... Why is it that point A broke, which looks at least 3x more powerful than point B? ...

A couple considerations concerning the two attachment points, subject to validation by Wilson or others:

 

1) Hook end serves primarily as a hinge for mounting baseplate, taking simpler stress pattern than latch end.

2) When stress away from the camera is applied to baseplate at tripod socket, the hinge end pulls inward, pressing the two halves of the casting together; in same situation, latch end will press one half of clamshell outward.

3) Tripod socket is nearer to latch end than to hook end, perhaps causing greater stress at latch end in a case like #2.

4) If M8 is carried with Leica handgrip, the hook end serves as a kind of rest and tends to pull the two halves together, while the latch end will take more complex stress simply because it is closer to the handgrip with its varying stress patterns.

[jaapv]

Howard, the shorter lever applies less torque, not more, so the tripod point being closer to the latch lessens the forces.