Help, my kickstand broke!Updated a year ago

Overview

Back in mid-December 2022, we started to get a disproportionate number of customers showing us that their kickstand broke without applying a whole lot of pressure. This failure appears to affect around 5% of orders.

What's the problem?

The day I saw these emails coming in I realized that our supplier had let the molding parameters shift over time. The temperature of the plastic was not held at a high enough temperature as it wrapped around the molded metal insert.

This means that as the plastic joined back up again at the other side (traditionally called a "weld line"), it wasn't hot enough to actually meld together with high enough strength. 

This creates what's called a "stress concentration" and when even a really weak force is applied, it causes the plastic to tear apart very easily.

Because this was a manufacturing error, I quickly implemented checks on the manufacturing line to ensure that this wouldn't happen again.

Design fix

Even though it wasn't a design flaw, I also modified the molding tool to strengthen this area even further. Check out below for the difference in the design:

The new design is considerably stronger in this area, and the manufacturing process is now held steady and monitored with every molded part.

This new design change was pushed and implemented incredibly quickly, and now all new inventory has this part fixed in all kickstands.

What now?

As of January 30th, every single kickstand shipped now has the new part in it. If your kickstand broke in this area, you will receive a free replacement with no shipping cost to you. Just email me a picture of your kickstand and I will process the order for you!

By the way, there is no time limit or anything like that. So even if your kickstand breaks a year from now in this fashion, I will send you out a replacement!

Here's what the broken kickstand tends to look like: