Why would you do this?

December 5, 2015 10:40 AM

World's worst tablet computer.
posted by edeezy (73 comments total)

The tone of utter incredulity was awesome.
posted by oddman at 10:49 AM on December 5, 2015 [9 favorites]

And another goon outs themselves.
posted by Samizdata at 10:49 AM on December 5, 2015 [2 favorites]

For those of you who aren't native:

Dog's breakfast: "a complete mess"
Bodge: "A clumsy or inelegant job"
Tricky Dick's: Dick Smith Electronics, the Australian equivalent of Fry's but more expensive.
posted by Talez at 10:58 AM on December 5, 2015 [2 favorites]

I understand it doesn't have the flash of something that came complete out of a chinese factory, but that's what things look like when you have a product built by a small company, using off-the-shelf parts, for a small market. This product strikes me as more of a product of the times + homebrew construction than 'bad'.
posted by Mitrovarr at 11:08 AM on December 5, 2015 [11 favorites]

On the one hand, if I had paid money for that, I'd be pretty disgusted by it. On the other hand, if I had the skills to do that, I'd be pretty pleased with myself.
posted by jacquilynne at 11:10 AM on December 5, 2015 [45 favorites]

>Dog's breakfast: "a complete mess"

Hadn't previously heard this, but understood it fairly clearly from context, and plan to begin using it as soon as possible.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 11:17 AM on December 5, 2015 [7 favorites]

Is there a good German phrase for this? The horror/joy you get out of discovering shoddy workmanship?
posted by [insert clever name here] at 11:21 AM on December 5, 2015 [7 favorites]

While I agree with most of what he says, Serial #11 to me says prototype, and prototype means you're still trying out the concept. He doesn't say that this came out of a customer environment.
When I was trained on the IBM 3033, one of our machines was around #00011, and it would not do anything except power up- someone relabeled the Machine Check light as 'Power On'.
The other machines were all under S/N00100, and the directors were modified 3158's. There were so many trileads coming out of the boards that you almost couldn't see the boards themselves.
The machines that went out into the field were so clean by comparison.

I think I had a worse touch screen that a customer gave us for working up our program on. It was running Windows 2000 (~2005), and you could do absolutely everything on it using the touchscreen except CTRL-ALT-DEL, so you had to attach a keyboard to it to get it up.

It actually reminds me of something I would build. Something that works, but Dog's Breakfast is my prototyping style.
posted by MtDewd at 11:22 AM on December 5, 2015 [3 favorites]

I mean, some of the complaints are stupid. Why are the batteries soldered together in such a weird form instead of using a battery pack? Because that wouldn't have fit into the case, idiot. Why did they put together the custom power board instead of using a commercial one? There probably wasn't one that would work.

In fact, I had some friends trying to put together a custom computer for industrial applications at the time. We were unable to make one, partly due to difficulties involving finding a suitable power supply/charge controller. However, if we had succeeded, I would be willing to bet it would have looked a lot like that - and it would have been fine. Because if it looks stupid, but works, it isn't stupid.
posted by Mitrovarr at 11:24 AM on December 5, 2015 [8 favorites]

If this were sold to a medical end user I promise you they would not open the back.
posted by maryr at 11:32 AM on December 5, 2015 [17 favorites]

This looks like something I'd build for a project where I knew was going to need to use the thing a half-dozen times, tops. Just a jury-rigged mess taped together (literally) to perform a task a few times before eating and shitting itself to death. It would work perfectly until it didn't work at all.

I'd put the Serial # 11 for the same reason I'd designate a fresh stick for roasting marshmallows "Mk VII - 00.2.8"; because why not?

This is the sort of thing you don't give to anyone unless you were trying to dispose of the evidence of having done something you really shouldn't have done, that this specific thing was obviously purposely made to do. You know... deniability. Also because you hate the person.

[I can't imagine what it would have been like to try and get this thing through TSA for an international flight. I suspect you'd miss your boarding call.]
posted by quin at 11:35 AM on December 5, 2015 [7 favorites]

It appears that the company purchased a bunch of old Etch-A-Sketch toys, gutted them and then asked some junior high computer lab kids to build a bunch of computers.
posted by Muncle at 11:36 AM on December 5, 2015 [2 favorites]

It appears that the company purchased a bunch of old Etch-A-Sketch toys, gutted them and then asked some junior high computer lab kids to build a bunch of computers.

My friend who teaches computer classes at a local high school is always looking for ideas for things to do with the kids. I think I shall suggest this.
posted by jacquilynne at 11:39 AM on December 5, 2015 [9 favorites]

Wow, I really hope this guy never gets a hold of any of my custom-designed lab equipment, it might give him a stroke. I'd lay odds that the "engineer" who designed and built that thing was probably a medical doctor or research scientist with a hobby electronics background rather than a trained electrical engineer.

I have to say, though, the kludged battery pack was hilarious. And while I'm by no means anything like the world's greatest solderer, I would feel more than a little guilty about the soldering job on that power supply board.
posted by biogeo at 12:06 PM on December 5, 2015 [4 favorites]

By the eleventh of these you should have enough practice at soldering to do a better job than that on the power board.
posted by aubilenon at 12:13 PM on December 5, 2015 [7 favorites]

I cringe at the thought of this fellow picking up his offspring from preschool and seeing the children's drawings taped up on the wall.
posted by CynicalKnight at 12:16 PM on December 5, 2015 [9 favorites]

I'm willing to bet that #11 was really #1 but then they thought "we can't just deliver serial #1, that would look unprofessional."
posted by Lanark at 12:19 PM on December 5, 2015 [18 favorites]

It actually reminds me of something I would build. Something that works, but Dog's Breakfast is my prototyping style.

The day I learned that two cookie sheets, a pair of tin snips and a drill could make you any size case that you needed (even odd-shaped triangular or trapezoidal ones), my hacking projects graduated from 'eww' to 'hrmph'.
posted by eclectist at 12:23 PM on December 5, 2015 [9 favorites]

> Is there a good German phrase for this?

Schaddyfreude.
posted by ardgedee at 12:24 PM on December 5, 2015 [28 favorites]

Wow, I really hope this guy never gets a hold of any of my custom-designed lab equipment, it might give him a stroke. I'd lay odds that the "engineer" who designed and built that thing was probably a medical doctor or research scientist with a hobby electronics background rather than a trained electrical engineer.

I dunno, seems like a real company (Esinomed!). Although that website is almost as much of a "bodge" as that tablet.
posted by dis_integration at 12:25 PM on December 5, 2015

The next time I go to the hospital and I see Esinomed on the equipment I'm going to rethink my medical situation.
posted by benito.strauss at 12:33 PM on December 5, 2015 [6 favorites]

I would be unable to deliver a product that looked like this. Take some pride!
posted by maxwelton at 12:37 PM on December 5, 2015

That looks more a proof of concept than a finished product. Outside it looks decent because it might have been the front panel of some existing machine with a die-cut custom back, but inside it's a bunch of wires and off the shelf pieces crammed in.

If anything, that's how far tech has evolved.
posted by lmfsilva at 12:38 PM on December 5, 2015

Ironically whenever I see something like this I'm actually quite impressed by the sheer resourcefulness of the jury-rig job. Like...sure...it looks AWFUL...but then again...it actually works. That's pretty cool to me.
posted by jnnla at 12:41 PM on December 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

I work for a company that builds products that sell in quantities from 1 to 10 units, so basically we sell prototypes. I'm in charge of production and nothing like that would ever make it out the door here. A hand etched board for the power supply? You can buy low quantity boards that you design for less that $10/board, with solder mask and silk screened and get it in 3 days and have a professional looking product. This tablet is a hack of the worst sort, I do better work at home.
posted by Grumpy old geek at 12:45 PM on December 5, 2015 [25 favorites]

My girlfriend works in electronics manufacturing, and I think she just said the phrase "this is upsetting" like eight or nine times over the course of the video.
posted by Itaxpica at 12:48 PM on December 5, 2015 [28 favorites]

I used to work on small run electronic gear like this, there's no way that would have gone out the door. It's not that the parts would be any different but the dressing internally would be ten times better. It's not just aesthetics, when the cable runs are neat and there are some minimum requirements around how you jam everything in there things tend to work a good bit more reliably.

That said, as an Australian who hasn't been in Australia since August I had to turn the sound off. Are we all that whiny?
posted by deadwax at 12:49 PM on December 5, 2015 [3 favorites]

I work really closely with cnc'd custom boards, often times with pretty janky hacks and this hurt me on a cosmic level.
posted by KernalM at 12:55 PM on December 5, 2015 [6 favorites]

Seeing a LM7815 linear regulator in a battery powered tablet is a little bit alarming. I also saw a LM2576 which is a switchmode buck regular and seems much more sensible. I guess maybe there's not a very high load on the 15V rail so they could get away with a linear regulator there. Still, that power supply was pretty shameful.

There's absolutely nothing shameful about taking standard AA cells and soldiering them up to make a battery pack. That's more or less what you'd see if you broke open a standard battery pack, except the cells would not have labels and they'd be soldiered with tabs and not wires, but those are trivial differences. Seriously, does this guy thing that a commercial pack is going to use some kind of magical cells that are different from regular cells and that aren't soldiered together? And yeah, they didn't have room for a standard pack which is why they had to make it themselves. The random wires that weren't connected to anything and had taped off ends are of course highly shameful.
posted by Rhomboid at 12:56 PM on December 5, 2015

Grumpy old geek, I remember some hand etched boards being used in the 80's, that I think got sold if absolutely necessary (I was still a kid, it was my dad's business), but since the 90's just nup. Didn't matter if a grand total of one was ever going to get made, the PCB's were shop made, and that's 25 years ago.
posted by deadwax at 12:56 PM on December 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

I was hoping it was going to be the type of tablet I'm currently watching/posting from. I found this thing on a picnic table in the rain in an RV park this summer. It's quite the piece of shit.

But, hey, free, and I guess if this comment shows up it works..
posted by mannequito at 12:59 PM on December 5, 2015 [3 favorites]

Also, it looks like some of the batteries have black wires soldered to both ends, which, just, no.
posted by Itaxpica at 1:00 PM on December 5, 2015

Yeah, this doesn't even strike me as a nice try, especially the part where they soldered bare wires to the back of the mini USB connector rather than using a cable.
posted by ftm at 1:06 PM on December 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

The most offensive part of this is the soldering to be honest. I mean, i'm not great at soldering, but a couple of my friends could solder better than this when we were nerds making stupid shit in middle school.

At the same time, i had an audio interface that took a custom PCI card(it used a firewire cable to connect to said card, but over some proprietary standard). Somehow, i ended up with a prototype one that had a bunch of random shit badly soldered all over the board and traces cut and stuff.

Best sounding audio interface i've ever used, 11/10.
posted by emptythought at 1:11 PM on December 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

but that's what things look like when you have a product built by a small company, using off-the-shelf parts, for a small market.

A large part of the incredulity in the teardown is that they didn't use off-the-shelf components. Like batteries held together with packing tape and paper instead of a battery holder, or a handmade power supply instead of an off the shelf wall wart charger.

With off the shelf parts, this tablet probably would have unremarkable. This was like a prototype done by a non-engineer under a deadline, at 8pm after the local parts store had closed.
posted by zippy at 1:14 PM on December 5, 2015 [8 favorites]

I made a few things that looked that bad once upon a time. And what I learned is that, when it's bodged together like that, it tends to fail really, really quickly. From the look of the soldering job, at some point some of those battery connections are just going to fall off, or something's going to make contact with something it shouldn't, and the tablet just stops. I mean, properly made mass-produced tablets fail all the time. That thing looks like it might survive a day if you don't set it down too hard or shake it.
posted by pipeski at 1:42 PM on December 5, 2015 [2 favorites]

Demonise? Srsly?
posted by Purposeful Grimace at 1:55 PM on December 5, 2015 [6 favorites]

Tricky Dick's: Dick Smith Electronics, the Australian equivalent of Fry's but more expensive.

Maybe 20+ years ago, back when they still sold electronic components & tools. Nowdays, after passing through a few different hands, nobody - least of all the management & staff - is sure what Dick Smith's is supposed to be. Closest US equivalent is probably a low-rent Best Buy knockoff…

That said, as an Australian who hasn't been in Australia since August I had to turn the sound off. Are we all that whiny?

Yup. Stay away a bit longer and you'll start to notice that it's not just the sound that's whiny, it's the content as well. Basically Australia is the world's Smeagol, which makes you wonder if LoTR isn't a little deeper and more incisive than even the Tolkienologists know…

There's absolutely nothing shameful about taking standard AA cells and soldiering them up to make a battery pack. That's more or less what you'd see if you broke open a standard battery pack, except the cells would not have labels and they'd be soldiered with tabs and not wires, but those are trivial differences.

No, soldering cells like that is bad, particularly rechargeables of any stripe - it chemically & physically damages the cell, so the end result is greatly reduced life & almost inevitable leakage. That's why tabs aren't a "trivial difference" - they're typically spot-welded together & to the terminating wires, not soldered, and even if they are soldered the heat is kept well away from the cell itself.

The general consensus over on the EEVblog forum thread is that yes, it was a quickly hacked-together prototype / 'working prop'.

(The EEVblog forum is basically engineer's disease / male answer syndrome run rampant, but it's occasionally funny - usually when Dave oversteps his fairly restricted knowledge, is gently corrected by an actual expert on the subject, and gets pissy and defensive about it…)
posted by Pinback at 1:56 PM on December 5, 2015 [11 favorites]

Yes, but did the thing actually work before being gutted? That's what I would have liked to see.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:10 PM on December 5, 2015 [4 favorites]

The answer to "why didn't they use a X" is probably that they couldn't get one that would fit. Particularly the bizzarre power supply. I recently had a conversation with an engineer about why his company had to design a switching -5V power supply because there were no standard solutions that did what they needed and met their future availability requirements. Sure the tablet is an ugly hack but it was probably also done under time pressure with a lot of other requirements (*cough* like writing software *cough*) taking higher priority.
posted by Bringer Tom at 2:18 PM on December 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

There was a similar video linked on the SA thread about OSHA stuff a while back. This is a commercially sold power strip for sale in the UK, that basically turns to a fire hazard the minute you plug it in. This guy has a three-part series about how bad this thing is.

I mean, I'm no electronics expert, but I'm pretty sure the cord shouldn't get hot enough under load to melt the exterior sheathing.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 2:28 PM on December 5, 2015 [9 favorites]

edeezy, you just managed to make Mr. Too-Ticky laugh and that's no easy feat. Thank you so much!
posted by Too-Ticky at 2:37 PM on December 5, 2015

Yes, it doesn't matter if this is a one-off or a prototype, it's horrid work regardless. It's a bit like those pictures you see online where someone replaced a blown car tire with a shopping cart and two hundred turns of duct tape.
posted by Herr Zebrurka at 2:44 PM on December 5, 2015 [5 favorites]

I mean, some of the complaints are stupid. Why are the batteries soldered together in such a weird form instead of using a battery pack? Because that wouldn't have fit into the case, idiot.

Uh, no - this is a dangerous and horrible design, even for a prototype. The dude who runs EEVblog is most assuredly not an idiot.
posted by destructive cactus at 3:18 PM on December 5, 2015 [4 favorites]

this is a dangerous ...

Dangerous? What, you think this is the work of clock boy?
posted by JackFlash at 3:37 PM on December 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

>Yes, but did the thing actually work before being gutted?

Yes, it did, though the battery was dead and the touchscreen wasn't fully functional. There's a few minutes of footage at the beginning of the previous video.
posted by yuwtze at 3:54 PM on December 5, 2015

That said, as an Australian who hasn't been in Australia since August I had to turn the sound off. Are we all that whiny?

Whiny? Dave Jones isn't whiny. He's the most enthusiastic guy on YouTube.

I've only owned a soldering iron for about two months, but even if I never build a single Eurorack module, my discovery of the EEV blog videos made the purchase worthwhile.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 3:58 PM on December 5, 2015 [2 favorites]

This is why every engineering group should have a wizened old technician who looks at the engineers' soldering and makes them feel ashamed for it.
posted by underflow at 4:25 PM on December 5, 2015 [7 favorites]

Is there a good German phrase for this? The horror/joy you get out of discovering shoddy workmanship?

I have an old Anglo concertina that says "Steel Reeds" and "Made in Saxony" on it. The outside is nice - leather bellows, bone buttons, pretty good mahogany veneer. Probably made in the 1950's or so?

But the inside is a disaster. The reed pans are all split, the reed holders are made out of lead, and very poorly made. The whole thing might have been playable for a week after it left the gift shop in some blighted tourist trap. I like to tell people it was made in the Black Forest by alcoholic gnomes. I think the word is "Scheiße".
posted by sneebler at 4:34 PM on December 5, 2015 [8 favorites]

One of my favorite things about restoring old cars is opening up sub-assemblies and either marveling at the workmanship or literally going "you're kidding, right?"

I do that a lot on modern stuff, too. I regularly take apart things which Man Was Never Meant to Touch, like dehumidifiers (I must be the only person who ever cleans them), and my reaction is always some variation on "making this huge elaborate, fragile injection-molded plastic thing couldn't have been cheaper than..." and, of course, I'm wrong.

I hate stuff designed to only be put together once.
posted by maxwelton at 6:49 PM on December 5, 2015 [5 favorites]

mannequito: "I was hoping it was going to be the type of tablet I'm currently watching/posting from. I found this thing on a picnic table in the rain in an RV park this summer. It's quite the piece of shit.

But, hey, free, and I guess if this comment shows up it works.."

Thanks for reminding me I basically got mugged for my PoS tablet.
posted by Samizdata at 7:43 PM on December 5, 2015

One of my favorite things about restoring old cars is opening up sub-assemblies and either marveling at the workmanship or literally going "you're kidding, right?"

Electronics is the same. I restore old radios as a hobby and its not unusual to stand there looking at a chassis in wonder, flipping between "my god that's elegant!" and "why god, why?".

The funny times are when you're looking at some horror of engineering - and realise the thing that makes it a horror is the exact same thing that others have praised…
posted by Pinback at 8:14 PM on December 5, 2015

Thanks for reminding me I basically got mugged for my PoS tablet.

I don't get why someone would mug someone for a tablet. Not questioning that they feel compelled to steal, but mugging for tablets has got to be the single worst criminal enterprise on the planet. Any tablet worth any actual money in pawn shops (i.e. iPads, high end Androids) have the "fuck you and the horse you rode in on" remote lock and pawn shops check for it. If you keep it there's the GPS tattling back to home base so the cops to come in and bust you later. If you need to steal a tablet to use? An Amazon Fire is like $50 and I'm pretty sure they're free in specially marked boxes of crackerjacks. Just shoplift it from Best Buy or something!

It's literally the most moronic petty crime you can engage in.
posted by Talez at 8:17 PM on December 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

Funny that so many are aghast at the innards. I was immediately aghast at the craptacular case.

The whole thing seems extremely unlikely to be something that ever came close to a paying customer, though.
posted by 2N2222 at 8:33 PM on December 5, 2015

where someone replaced a blown car tire with a shopping cart and two hundred turns of duct tape.

Or as they say on the software side, "runs good, shipit!"
posted by zippy at 9:24 PM on December 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

IT'S A BOMB
CALL THE POLICE

...no, wait, there's no 7-segment display in there. As you were.
posted by flabdablet at 9:30 PM on December 5, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'm a fan of EEVBlog in no small part due to Dave's emotional reactions. I'm not an engineer, but I started working on electronic gear in the '80s. Not everyone will like his style, but Dave knows his shit, and his love for his work shows through each of his hundreds of videos (some of which go deep into teaching circuit design and components).
posted by krinklyfig at 10:27 PM on December 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

dis_integration: I dunno, seems like a real company

Oh, I don't doubt it. It's probably exactly the sort of company I've thought about starting if my science career doesn't pan out.
posted by biogeo at 10:33 PM on December 5, 2015

For those still looking for enlightenment: dogs eat their own poo.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 4:05 AM on December 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

This is a commercially sold power strip for sale in the UK , that basically turns to a fire hazard the minute you plug it in.

I was horrified enough by that to check eBay for all the power strips on sale located in the UK with the plan to report the sellers to their local trading standards. Fortunately it appears that there aren't any being sold from the UK (all the ones on sale give pretty honest looking brand names) any more. Or at least all the sellers are saying they're in China.
posted by ambrosen at 5:53 AM on December 6, 2015

Compare that prototype power supply to the amplifier built by Jim Williams in LT App Note AN86, page 41 (pdf). That amplifier was designed by a superstar engineer at a billion dollar semiconductor company, and shown to thousands of their customers.

It's a prototype. It's supposed to be ugly.
posted by ryanrs at 7:44 AM on December 6, 2015

TIL that Australians pronounce the "l" in "solder."
posted by Shmuel510 at 7:45 AM on December 6, 2015

(Actually my two major electronics prototypes were both quite pretty. One was a high density power supply and LED lighting array, and the other was an FPGA on a PCIe card. Both designs forced us to make clean, well-designed boards even for the prototypes because of thermal performance and signal integrity, respectively.)
posted by ryanrs at 7:47 AM on December 6, 2015

Australians pronounce the "l" in "solder."

...and all the vowels in "aluminium".
posted by flabdablet at 8:16 AM on December 6, 2015

...and all the vowels in "aluminium".

Well, yeah, but that's a vocabulary thing. "Aluminum" and "aluminium" are different words, which are pronounced differently.
posted by Shmuel510 at 8:44 AM on December 6, 2015

Pronouncing "solder" correctly isn't unique to Australians; it's only North America that has the weird "sodder" pronunciation.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 8:57 AM on December 6, 2015

I love the handmade, double sided circuit board. That must have taken a ton of work... Hand etched PCBs are something you see in maker spaces and college dorms, not in a professional context ever. It's not a shortcut, it's just ridiculously impractical, like making your car chassis out of wood or something.
posted by miyabo at 12:21 PM on December 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

Well, yeah, but that's a vocabulary thing. "Aluminum" and "aluminium" are different words, which are pronounced differently.

Apparently Americans also have Sodum, Potassum, Titanum, and Strontum.
posted by Talez at 3:21 PM on December 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

"Aluminium" was a spelling change made long after the discovery of the element, by someone who was bad at Latin and thought the name should match some of the other elements.

At time of discovery, the element was coined as "aluminum". That is why the US still spells and pronounces it that way.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 4:06 PM on December 6, 2015

"Aluminium" was a spelling change made long after the discovery of the element, by someone who was bad at Latin and thought the name should match some of the other elements.

At time of discovery, the element was coined as "aluminum". That is why the US still spells and pronounces it that way.

Except that it was Sir Humphrey Davy that named the element, and he named it both (as well as, initially, a 3rd name). When he first coined the name in 1807 he called it 'alumium', then later called it 'aluminum', before settling on 'aluminium' in ~1812.

Note that's 12 years or so before Ørsted &/or Wohler actually produced any of the stuff, and well before the Hall-Heroult & Bayer processes for extracting it in bulk from bauxite. Blame Webster & his dictionary for the US spelling/pronunciation; he used Davy's earlier name in the first 1828 edition & it stuck. The rest of the world had settled on calling it 'aluminium' some 16 years before Webster stuck the US with an outdated word…

(It's a similar story for 'solder' vs 'sodder', by the way - the latter seems to have been the Scottish pronunciation at the time the US was being colonised, and solidified there. In the meantime, the rest of the world either always used or moved to the German-by-way-of-English pronunciation with a voiced 'L'. Also, there's much the same story behind the use of "buss" vs "bus" to mean an electrical / mechanical distribution bar/rail/mechanism…)
posted by Pinback at 4:45 PM on December 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

Apparently Americans also have Sodum, Potassum, Titanum, and Strontum.

You know platinum is a real element and not made up and not actually called platinium, right? Likewise molybdenum? Like goes in steel?
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 4:49 PM on December 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

Thanks for reminding me I basically got mugged for my PoS tablet.

I don't get why someone would mug someone for a tablet. Not questioning that they feel compelled to steal, but mugging for tablets has got to be the single worst criminal enterprise on the planet.

I'm pretty sure that "basically got mugged for" means "had to pay way more money than it was worth", rather than being a description of a literal mugging.
posted by lollusc at 5:37 PM on December 6, 2015

I've been turning this over in my head since my husband pointed out the case is particleboard. Did they use a picture frame for the shell!
posted by [insert clever name here] at 10:21 PM on December 7, 2015