Clearly this outcome is very atypical and quite possibly due to usage.
Still its pretty clear the manufacturer didn't engineer in much margin for such things to happen. A catastrophic failure like this in 3 years wow.
Indeed the metallurgy of the casting alloy itself is in question. Being that it is a casting adds the possibility of porosity into the mix. Many alloys of aluminum really aren't all that prone to corrosion, Aluminum is a lot like Core-Ten steel, it forms a passive oxide layer that is protective to the base metal.
As mentioned it would be simple for LG to greatly extend the life of these parts (even when usage is less then optimum) by anodizing or perhaps powder coating these spiders. Simply engineering the casting to be smooth and drain well without any catch pockets would likely help a ton too. But it costs money so that's out the window.
If I were restoring a machine with an aluminum spider I'd smooth all the flash and mold marks on the casting then give it a good bead blasting. Follow this with anodizing or powder coating and it would outlast us all, indifferent to usage.
It is a shame that LG seems to keep coming up with issues, but then again there has never been any company that doesn't have design problems, not today nor in the past.
Still its pretty clear the manufacturer didn't engineer in much margin for such things to happen. A catastrophic failure like this in 3 years wow.
Indeed the metallurgy of the casting alloy itself is in question. Being that it is a casting adds the possibility of porosity into the mix. Many alloys of aluminum really aren't all that prone to corrosion, Aluminum is a lot like Core-Ten steel, it forms a passive oxide layer that is protective to the base metal.
As mentioned it would be simple for LG to greatly extend the life of these parts (even when usage is less then optimum) by anodizing or perhaps powder coating these spiders. Simply engineering the casting to be smooth and drain well without any catch pockets would likely help a ton too. But it costs money so that's out the window.
If I were restoring a machine with an aluminum spider I'd smooth all the flash and mold marks on the casting then give it a good bead blasting. Follow this with anodizing or powder coating and it would outlast us all, indifferent to usage.
It is a shame that LG seems to keep coming up with issues, but then again there has never been any company that doesn't have design problems, not today nor in the past.