If it eats that major housing each time a spring breaks, and the springs are defective, there are going to be a lot of Ryobi whipper snippers on junk heaps before long. The broken spring is trivial, what matters is the collateral damage when it happens. The way the design worked in that Atom edger was just crazy, the machine was a guaranteed write off if the leading end of a spring broke (no real damage if it broke at the trailing end).
