M9 on tripod - bottom part broken anyone else ?

[frank_dernie]

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Frank,

 

If I recall correctly from the last time I saw a Contax G2 taken apart, how they did it, was to use a fairly simple but robust stamping or maybe hydroforming of titanium sheet for the outside body clamshells. To this was attached a much more complex alloy die-cast chassis, to carry all the mechanisms (motor drive, shutter, electronics printed circuit cards, focusing motor etc etc). I would agree that for its size, the G2 was quite a heavy camera, but I think only fractionally heavier than the nearest Leica equivalent, the M7, in spite of incorporating motor drive and AF. I think my previous Contax RX, would if anything, be lighter than the R8 I had and the RX used a similar method of construction to the G2.

 

Wilson

Quite so, but the problem on the M8 is that the material thickness where the baseplate latch engages is insufficiently thick in Mag, particularly given that it seems to be machined with a sharp corner, so the shell idea would not help as this lug is in the body not an exterior shell. It rather needs a better material for the main body, such as one of the wrought aluminium alloys which are free machining and much stronger and more resilient than mag (but heavier). Alternatively a detail local design change making the mag a bit thicker locally and radiusing the lug on the magnesium with a matching chamfer on the brass friction plate which the latch bears against would be relatively easy, and maybe later M8s already are updated in this way.

I must say that the properties of titanium would be better used as a body machining than a shell, but I expect this will never happen because of cost, and of course Ti is heavier again.

Frank

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[terrycioni]

Thanks Jaap!

 

Indeed a whole edifice on a flimsy foundation: bound to collapse sooner or later.

The resulting rubble then is the materialisation of the hype: rubbish!

 

I agree.

 

Several on this forum and on the Internet spend a good deal of energy bashing Leica and the M8 - it is a crusade of sorts and has become both tiring and sad.

 

We read twists and turns of complaints - many coming from the darkness of the Internet and without qualification or foundation and often a tiny sample of what is really going on.

 

We should not forget some of these anonymous faces do not own the M8 - and feel because they own a Leica they are somehow qualified to crap all over the M8 and Leica unfettered by the truth. You have read this crap, my uncle's girlfriend's brother has a Leica and told her, etc or the one I like I handled the M8 at the local camera store and the sales person told me.....sigh.

 

The reality is this forum has become the place to go if you want to bash the M8 and Leica without any qualification. Ironic as that maybe....

 

As for this instance - I said this before, the sample is roughly 4 cameras - and I remain skeptical all but for the original poster. I know some here would like to make that 4 sound like 400 but it is not the case.

 

As for defending Leica - all I can say is if some feel they can bash then I will assume the right to keep the record straight - call it defending Leica if you like, but WHATEVER.

 

Deleted by Mod and few others are on my ignore list for good reason.

 

Terry

[Philinflash]

I design racing cars as a profession. In my opinion Magnesium is a poor material for camera bodies, though when I have raised this in the past I have upset many (non engineer) camera owners, because many cameras they like are made of this awful stuff nowadays.

 

Not only this, the detail design of this lug on the M8 is very poor from an engineering standpoint, thin gauge and sharp corners. This is not the first example of this failure that I have heard about. Both were when the camera was tripod mounted. This design is marginal at best, I will not be using my much loved M8 on a tripod, unfortunately.

 

Whoever designed this part was very inexperienced with magnesium!

 

I would not be surprised to find that this is the first item on the list of thing to change for the M9.

cheers,

Frank

 

Frank, first of all it is nice to see you on this forum! Anyone who worked with Colin Chapman in the early days of light alloys on racing cars should be taken seriously on ths subject of materials choices for camera bodies.

 

If Leica Cameras were your client, what would you suggest?

[Guest DuquesneG]

Looking at my M8s with a magnifier and a strong light I see the following:

 

1. Above (camera held normally) the latching ledge, the casting rim is milled-out inside, making it thinner there. Why this was done is a mystery to me.

 

2. The latching ledge is attached only to the front half of the body casting, and juts out (cantilevers) past the joint between the front and rear casting halves. Why couldn't the ledge be made long enough to attach securely to both halves of the casting, and/or why couldn't the two casting halves be joined mechanically at the rim? That would disperse the leverage force around a semicircle, much more resilient than the current design. In fact, historically it was the strength of a solid one-piece body that Leica cited over the years as reason to stick with the clumsy bottom-loading system...now that the body is in two halves, that advantage is lost. Finally, the latching mechanism could have been designed to latch an inch inboard of the outer edge and not involve the casting rim at all...similar to the way film-eating Leica Ms latch. There is room in the "traditional" place for a nice, solid latching catch...plus, placing it closer to the tripod socket would reduce the amount of leverage caused by any flexure of the baseplate originating at the tripod socket.

 

Frank...your opinion?

[Shootist]

Looking at my M8s with a magnifier and a strong light I see the following:

 

1. Above (camera held normally) the latching ledge, the casting rim is milled-out inside, making it thinner there. Why this was done is a mystery to me.

 

2. The latching ledge is attached only to the front half of the body casting, and juts out (cantilevers) past the joint between the front and rear casting halves. Why couldn't the ledge be made long enough to attach securely to both halves of the casting, and/or why couldn't the two casting halves be joined mechanically at the rim? That would disperse the leverage force around a semicircle, much more resilient than the current design. Finally, the latching mechanism could have been designed to latch an inch inboard of the outer edge and not involve the casting rim at all...similar to the way film-eating Leica Ms latch. There is room in the "traditional" place for a nice, solid latching catch...plus, placing it closer to the tripod socket would reduce the amount of leverage caused by any flexure of the baseplate originating at the tripod socket.

 

Frank...your opinion?

 

I said the exact same thing many post ago. Not one soul picked up on it, Why did Leica choose to thin out the case at this point? So the base plate locking lug wouldn't hit the body? Why not thin out, make narrower, the base plat locking lug.

[Guest DuquesneG]

I said the exact same thing many post ago. Not one soul picked up on it, Why did Leica choose to thin out the case at this point? So the base plate locking lug wouldn't hit the body? Why not thin out, make narrower, the base plat locking lug.

 

I didn't measure, but to my eye it doesn't look like the locking plate (on the baseplate) comes all the way out into that milled recess. But even with the recess, if the 2 casting halves were joined together, I bet my bottom dollar the baseplate itself would twist and warp before you got enough force on the tripod hole to crack the casting.

[marknorton]

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I can apply much more pressure to that latching edge with my thumb than will ever be applied with a (correctly adjusted) base plate where there is normally just a spring to hold it tight; I've tried it on my "sacrificial" M8 and it's fine. Suggests that if the locking key ever goes tight, stop, don't force it, plus be careful if you walk around with a tripod and the M8 mounted on top.

 

I do think it's down to isolated (maybe batch related) examples of bad metallurgy. Leica should fix such examples free of charge.

[SJP]

Wasn't the question put to Leica by one of the moderators, if they could comment on this? Esp. concerning whether it is a warranty repair or not.

 

I do not recall seeing any reaction thus far.

[trucytru]

I have gone through all this thread – quite interesting indeed.

 

Though I’ve never had an M8 in my hands, based on the images posted here I am lead to back what some other posters have already surmised, i.e., the body shell failure is caused by the clasp that secure the baseplate to the body of the camera. The clasp-induced stresses can be much higher than the additional stresses due to statically supporting the camera – in whichever position – by a tripod.

Consider it this way: if all items involved (body, baseplate, elements of the baseplate locking mechanism) were infinitely rigid, either the baseplate would fit with some residual freedom on the body, or it won’t fit at all. The chances of a backlash-free fit would be zero.

 

However, the different pieces of material are not infinitely rigid. Thanks to their finite stiffness, the baseplate can be mounted on the camera body with no residual backlash, even in presence of slight fluctuations – from camera to camera - of the dimensions relevant to the assembly (dimensional tolerances). If I got it right, there is no high-compliance element (spring) having the task of making up for tolerances. Accordingly, relatively high stresses can be caused by fixing the baseplate to the body, in the area surrounding the closure mechanism. These high stresses set up only in those cameras where the baseplate locking is particularly tight. On these cameras, a low-cycle fatigue generated by few locking operations can initiate a crack in the body, at the root of the securing magnesium lip, next to the plane were the two half-shells meet. This is the area that bears the whole of the closure force when the toggle of the baseplate starts engaging the body, at the beginning of the locking operation (and towards the ending of the unlocking maneuver).

 

A user fix to prevent the crack initiation/propagation would be reducing the thickness of the anti-wear yellow strip of metal secured to the magnesium lip. This would reduce the pre-stresses of the magnesium lip that arise when the baseplate is secured to the body. Since dismantling the anti-wear strip is very laborious, one would consider inserting a very thin washer between the oscillating cam of the locking mechanism and the baseplate. A third possibility would be bending slightly the sheet-steel oscillating cam to reduce, again, the locking force. Cleary, all this is necessary only in those cameras that have a very tight fitting of the locking toggle.

 

Carlo

[frank_dernie]

Looking at my M8s with a magnifier and a strong light I see the following:

 

1. Above (camera held normally) the latching ledge, the casting rim is milled-out inside, making it thinner there. Why this was done is a mystery to me.

 

2. The latching ledge is attached only to the front half of the body casting, and juts out (cantilevers) past the joint between the front and rear casting halves. Why couldn't the ledge be made long enough to attach securely to both halves of the casting, and/or why couldn't the two casting halves be joined mechanically at the rim? That would disperse the leverage force around a semicircle, much more resilient than the current design. In fact, historically it was the strength of a solid one-piece body that Leica cited over the years as reason to stick with the clumsy bottom-loading system...now that the body is in two halves, that advantage is lost. Finally, the latching mechanism could have been designed to latch an inch inboard of the outer edge and not involve the casting rim at all...similar to the way film-eating Leica Ms latch. There is room in the "traditional" place for a nice, solid latching catch...plus, placing it closer to the tripod socket would reduce the amount of leverage caused by any flexure of the baseplate originating at the tripod socket.

 

Frank...your opinion?

 

I am reluctant to do more than note what I wrote earlier. Magnesium is weak and flexible but light. There are alloys which help with strength but even the best of them are not strong for an engineering material. The detail design of the machining is poor engineering practice, but there may be a manufacturing, assembly or other reason that this has been accepted with the strength, despite the thin material and stress-raiser in the machining, being considered adequate.

For really strong and light carbon fibre would be great (not the short strand reinforced thermoplasic) but would be astonishingly expensive :-)

Frank

[Guest DuquesneG]

I can apply much more pressure to that latching edge with my thumb than will ever be applied with a (correctly adjusted) base plate where there is normally just a spring to hold it tight;

 

I do think it's down to isolated (maybe batch related) examples of bad metallurgy. Leica should fix such examples free of charge.

 

My gut feeling is that given the physics involved, the modulus of elasticity of the baseplate itself would be exceeded (i.e. become permanently deformed) before enough force is applied to crack off that lip, unless there is an inherent metallurgical weakness above and beyond the norm for magnesium alloy of its type and thickness. However I'm in no position to speculate how isolated it is simply because of the small sample of defective units we know about.

[frank_dernie]

Frank, first of all it is nice to see you on this forum! Anyone who worked with Colin Chapman in the early days of light alloys on racing cars should be taken seriously on ths subject of materials choices for camera bodies.

 

If Leica Cameras were your client, what would you suggest?

 

Cost would be a great factor for them, and how much detail could be cast in. In the sort of volumes I am used to everything is machined all over which may be uneconomic for Leica.

 

Alumium alloys are stronger and stiffer than magnesium alloys and about half as heavy again. A direct aluminium alloy replacement of the existing design would be stronger, even with the same thicknesses.

 

If I were chief designer at Leica, short term, I would simply modify the detail machining of the same casting, as I wrote in a previous post.

 

I absolutely love my M8, by the way, and have had fantastic results from the superb modern lenses, and had fun shooting with some ancient ones...... My film of choice has been Kodachrome 64 for decades so 160asa is super fast for me, whilst low noise at high iso would be nice (I have an SLR for that) I never shoot higher than 320 with my M8 and this is over 3 stops faster than I am used to.

 

Frank

[frank_dernie]

My gut feeling is that given the physics involved, the modulus of elasticity of the baseplate itself would be exceeded (i.e. become permanently deformed) before enough force is applied to crack off that lip, unless there is an inherent metallurgical weakness above and beyond the norm for magnesium alloy of its type and thickness. However I'm in no position to speculate how isolated it is simply because of the small sample of defective units we know about.

 

I think you mean the elastic limit (leading to plastic deformation) not the modulus of elasticity which is a measure of specific stiffness - relatively low for magnesium and its alloys.

Depending on the alloy chosen magnesium castings can be brittle, it looks like it in the failures of this type I have seen, and the snapped off adjacent corner in a different post. These alloys do machine better than the more ductile ones, generally.

Frank

[frank_dernie]

I can apply much more pressure to that latching edge with my thumb than will ever be applied with a (correctly adjusted) base plate where there is normally just a spring to hold it tight; I've tried it on my "sacrificial" M8 and it's fine. Suggests that if the locking key ever goes tight, stop, don't force it, plus be careful if you walk around with a tripod and the M8 mounted on top.

 

I do think it's down to isolated (maybe batch related) examples of bad metallurgy. Leica should fix such examples free of charge.

 

Hi Mark,

 

the two examples of breakage I have seen quoted were both whilst tripod mounted. I agree that this detail should be plenty strong enough for use off-tripod. I will be very gentle with mine when tripod mounted......

 

Frank

[Guest DuquesneG]

I think you mean the elastic limit (leading to plastic deformation) not the modulus of elasticity which is a measure of specific stiffness

 

Yes...sorry...I've dealt mostly with liquids and gasses the past 20 yrs so some of the solids terminology is starting to atrophy in my brain.

[PeterP]

Thanks,

 

frank_dernie

wlaidlaw

DuquesneG

 

At least there is some intelligent discussion of the matter , as opposed to trivializing it or attempting to sweep it under the rug.

I personally don't mind the base plate . I generally change my 2Gig cards and batteries at the same time , consequently not any more inconvenient than changing both on my Canons. However the latching system on the M8 is certainly not as robust as on my M7.

 

PeterP

[Philinflash]

I have no background in metallurgy or industrial design so all are free to discount the following ideas.

 

First, I do not like the idea of the tripod socket being part of a removable cover, regardless of material. Most camera designs sensibly have the tripod socket integrated into the BODY of the camera. That's where it should be on the M8, too.

 

As for the base plate, I would prefer a hinged affair for about 1/3 of the length of the longitude of the camera, with the battery and card access under that. In that way, I think Leica could stick with the TI as cover material, as there would be no stress on this battery/card slot cover.

 

Alternatively, put the tripod socket directly into the body as above but with a hole through the baseplate for access. Snug machining of the socket and the baseplate would be required but in the same range as in the current design. After all, it ain't waterproof and does not pretend to be.

 

Carbon fibre would be nice and in keeping with the Leica image but I can appreciate that it would be very expensive.

 

I will sit quietly whilst you prepare your spitballs.

[SJP]

I was wondering if the Leica grip (admittedly I don't use one + have no intention to) would also be a factor to cause this failure mode? I do not recall hearing any reports of this happening while I assume that one might hold the camera "dangling" from the grip when walking around etc instead of holding the body (or the strap). So you would be dynamically loading the location where baseplate attaches to the body. Presumbly mounting the baseplate to a tripod will cause a more 'impact like' load if you move the tripod around with the camera on top, esp. on a hard surface like a concrete or stone floor.

 

The following may be relevant concerning the mechanical proprties of magnesium alloy. See here, quote "Ductility, A certain kind of magnesium alloy has a higher ductility than aluminum alloys and can absorb impact energy without brittle fracture. Application: Steering wheels and seat flames for automobiles" while here we read "Ductility is a significant process-sensitive parameter with the control of inhomogeneities, defects and process of paramount importance in realising the potential for structural applications." To get any further clearly it would be necessary to know what alloy is being used as this the primary factor for Mg properties. The pictures we have seen of dents caused by dropping the camera suggest that Leica use a ductile Mg-alloy.

 

Although we clearly have much more expert people on the forum I would think that the failures so far were either due to overloading or due to bad luck related to casting defects, which is unavoidable. If it was a poor material choice presumably the failure rate would be significantly higher.

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[wlaidlaw]

I was wondering if the Leica grip (admittedly I don't use one + have no intention to) would also be a factor to cause this failure mode? I do not recall hearing any reports of this happening while I assume that one might hold the camera "dangling" from the grip when walking around etc instead of holding the body (or the strap). So you would be dynamically loading the location where baseplate attaches to the body. Presumbly mounting the baseplate to a tripod will cause a more 'impact like' load if you move the tripod around with the camera on top, esp. on a hard surface like a concrete or stone floor.

 

The following may be relevant concerning the mechanical proprties of magnesium alloy. See here, quote "Ductility, A certain kind of magnesium alloy has a higher ductility than aluminum alloys and can absorb impact energy without brittle fracture. Application: Steering wheels and seat flames for automobiles" while here we read "Ductility is a significant process-sensitive parameter with the control of inhomogeneities, defects and process of paramount importance in realising the potential for structural applications." To get any further clearly it would be necessary to know what alloy is being used as this the primary factor for Mg properties. The pictures we have seen of dents caused by dropping the camera suggest that Leica use a ductile Mg-alloy.

 

Although we clearly have much more expert people on the forum I would think that the failures so far were either due to overloading or due to bad luck related to casting defects, which is unavoidable. If it was a poor material choice presumably the failure rate would be significantly higher.

 

Stephen,

 

Just a few quick points. The magnesium alloys used for seat frames are often much more massive castings than the very thin lip to which the locking lug attaches. They are often bolted to a steel subframe for additional strength. Steering wheels are more commonly made from aluminium alloy diecasting, extrusions or cut rolled sheet rather than magnesium. The crystalline structure of extruded or forged magnesium alloy is quite different to cast magnesium alloy and is far more ductile and crack resistant.

 

I suspect you are right that it is a combination of stress, a casting at the low end of tolerance and maybe bad luck that has lead to the few failures we have seen to date. However due to the age hardening properties of magnesium alloys, I am guessing that unfortunately, we may start to see more. I for one will not stop using the grip, as with my hands, I have little alternative. I do not however, ever carry the camera around with the grip and always carry it with my Luigi neck strap. If I do not have the camera strap round my neck, for security reasons, I keep a wrap of the strap round my wrist. A failure on a tripod is the most likely disaster scenario for me.

 

Wilson

[Stefan Daniel]

Dear LEICA M8 Users,

 

We have registered in our Customer Service in Solms about five cameras with broken body shells so far. In the future, incoming cameras with similar defects will be checked thorougly and repaired free of charge if justified. Our Customer Service will contact the owners of cameras which have already been repaired at the owners expense to issue a credit note.

 

I hope this will clarify the situation.

 

Very best regards

 

Leica Camera AG

Product Management Leica M-System

 

Stefan Daniel

 

P.S. I kindly ask for your understanding that I will not be able to answer to every thread on this forum. Thanks!