I do not pretend to understand thermal expansion and all of the technical stuff you are talking about, but outside of an errant hockey puck from my son as a youngster, in 35+ years of home ownership, I have never had to replace a door window. That includes storm doors and prime doors; wood, aluminum and steel; full glass and partial glass.
Either I am very lucky or you are doing something wrong.
This is an interesting problem. I can offer a comment, which is that companies that produce consumer goods like this really do not want to hear about how to solve problems or change the product. The engineers on staff are there to keep production moving, not to change the product. Not only are they too busy to evaluate a change, they probably do not understand what you are talking about. My suggestion is to find a source of aluminum extrusions that can replace the molded plastic piece, take the door apart, as much as you can disassemble the window part, install the aluminum extrusions using a urethane construction adhesive, and then reinstall the window glass. A heavy bead of the adhesive should allow adequate differential expansion and contraction.
Probably, though, part of the failure is due to the dimensional change of the plastic as it ages. The result is usually a small shrinkage of around 1%, which does not start until after a few months. Since the plastic surrounds the glass, which may expand a bit as it heats, while the plastic shrinks as it ages, the plastic fails in tesion, and the gaps appear. As the aged plastic cools in the winter it shrinks more, which opens the cracks more.
So my assertion is that the root cause of the problem is a very poor choice of plastics, coupled with poor manufacturing techniques. And an "engineering" team that was pleased to get such a good price reduction.
For 3D printing to make the jump from rapid prototyping to manufacturing, engineers will need to find easier ways to move products from their CAD screens to their printers.
Gigabit and PoE are two networking technologies moving ahead in tandem as industrial users power remote Ethernet devices such as IP security cameras at 1,000 Mbps over existing CAT5 cable.
New versions of BASF's Ecovio line are both compostable and designed for either injection molding or thermoforming. These combinations are becoming more common for the single-use bioplastics used in food service and food packaging applications, but are still not widely available.
From Dell / Intel® New Paradigms in Design Work Scott Hamilton, vertical market strategist for Dell Precision workstations, 5/2/2013 5
Early in my career, I worked as a draftsman and remember the days of drawing on vellum with numbered pencils and Mylar with plastic lead. This was a fun experience in the sense that I ...
I've been using workstations for more than 10 years and love finding ways to get more performance from my system. With demanding professional applications that require more power each ...
A lasting memory from my first job as an engineer in an auto assembly plant is standing on hard concrete at six in the morning, vending-machine coffee clutched in hand, listening to ...
For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
To save this item to your list of favorite Design News content so you can find it later in your Profile page, click the "Save It" button next to the item.
If you found this interesting or useful, please use the links to the services below to share it with other readers. You will need a free account with each service to share an item via that service.
Tweet This
2 
