Officially Approved Nonsense

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We had a new machine which had rubber feed roller and a separating rubber roller turning in opposite rotation. The surfaces which would actually contact papers were at the bottom of guide plates which kept the paper stack restrained. Since the machine's introduction we had only a preliminary manual for service. One of the newer techs was the first of us sent to school with the understanding that he would teach the rest of us. Class day came and the official presentation for changing one of the rollers was removal of bearings, shafts, clutches and guides requiring approx one total hour. Since I had more of the machines in my territory than the others, the manager asked why my feed roller replacement time was so short. I went to the machine took hold of the aluminum lower plate, flexed it so the guide pins disengaged their side slots, pulled it out exposing the guts without all of the extra parts removals. I was told what they had just seen was impossible.
 
At the office I found that one of our laptops had a CD-ROM drive that would not work.

I looked in the manual and it said for that kind of situation to take the Windows installation CD and use it to reinstall the CD-ROM driver.

Okay, but the CD-ROM drive does not work....

On the other hand sometimes people can get too clever. I was helping a friend adjust the nosegear on Cessna 177RG last weekend. We finally got the uplock and downlock forces within spec and then found that the amount of strut extension was too much. So we adjusted the strut length to be within spec and then re-ran the uplock/downlock tests and measurements. We next found the uplock latch was WAY too far away from its required position, far, far, out of adjustment limits. Turned out someone had custom manufactured a new uplock/downlock hook (out of AL rather than steel) that was exactly the right width to enable the out of spec strut length to work.

And this airplane has been landed gear up four times. My friend found that there were NO straight tubes left in the entire engine mount; every one had been bent and he had to send it out to be rebuilt. That history probably had a lot to do with the "custom" NLG installation.

By the way, he was trying to use the the emergency hydraulic hand pump to raise the gear so he would not have to run the hydraulic pump. That would not work; the hand pump only puts the gear down. Getting the gear UP is not an emergency, which makes sense. I told him that I only airplane I ever heard of that had an emergency gear UP system was the B-52, and of course there is ONLY ONE situation where that is a necessity.
 
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GrauGeist said:
I used to encounter situations where installation instructions were evidently written by engineers with no hands-on experience with their product.

One example was a new line of onboard video systems for LEO vehicles, that were model specific (in this case, for a 2011 Chevy Tahoe). The system came with a custom overhead console and while it was well designed, the assembly process indicated in the manual was insane.
So I called customer support and they had to transfer me to the tech department.
After explaining my situation, the tech put me in hold and went and got an instruction manual. He tried to go over it with me, gave up and transferred me to the engineers that designed it.
The guy in the engineering department told me "oh, it's very straightforward, sir! There shouldn't be any problem".
I asked him if he has installed one and he said no, he hadn't.

I hung up.

Long story short, I figured it out and it looked and worked fine - after using every single expletive in the English language (and several in other languages).

I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I have years of experience doing technical installation including design and fabrication, and this was most certainly not "straightforward". :lol:
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I am a mechanical designer, and I have assembled my stuff. I have an article on DFMA (Design For Manufacture and Assembly) up on my personal website.

You are up against bureaucracy, office politics, and design philosophy. I have seen any number of people take components to a work bench, hack around with them, and hand everything over to production, once they (think they) have gotten it working. There were no assembly drawings or BOMs (Bills Of Material). In many cases, the fabrication drawings were badly prepared, and riddled with errors. Good drafting of fabrication drawings and assembly drawings, is like good writing. It is well organised, and it is understood to be communication.

Assembly and service process instructions ought to be written by the designers, and brought to the design reviews. If the instructions suck, the design sucks, and it needs to be fixed.
 
Howard Gibson said:
I am a mechanical designer, and I have assembled my stuff. I have an article on DFMA (Design For Manufacture and Assembly) up on my personal website.

You are up against bureaucracy, office politics, and design philosophy. I have seen any number of people take components to a work bench, hack around with them, and hand everything over to production, once they (think they) have gotten it working. There were no assembly drawings or BOMs (Bills Of Material). In many cases, the fabrication drawings were badly prepared, and riddled with errors. Good drafting of fabrication drawings and assembly drawings, is like good writing. It is well organised, and it is understood to be communication.

Assembly and service process instructions ought to be written by the designers, and brought to the design reviews. If the instructions suck, the design sucks, and it needs to be fixed.
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Several years ago, I designed a dual-mic system for Patrol vehicles.
This allowed for a secondary microphone to be mounted on the passenger door of the vehicle, so the officer didn't have to lean across the interior to use the microphone mounted on the center console.
It was a neat modular system that could be adapted to any radio (Motorola, Kenwood, Bendix-King, etc.) using RJ45 connections for the input & split.

Once I had all the components finalized, I had one of the lead installers do an install in a Crown Vic, noting how he installed it and the steps taken.

Between his results and how I would have installed it, I came up with an easy step-by-step guide for the manual.

There's several manufacturers out there that could save installers a considerable amount of time (and grief) if they would do something similar.

And it's not just electronic systems, either - I encountered the same issue with products like K-9 partitions, push-bumpers and more. And it seems that the newer the product, the worse the instructions!
 
I was said in the 60s that the big advantage the 707 had over the DC-8 was that Boeing insisted that system designers had an A&P and time as a line mechanic as that way they would make things easy to get at to service and to replace on tarmac.
I don't know if that was true or urban legend but the 707 was definitely far easier to work on even tho it was aerodynamically inferior.
 
One other example of lack of field experience, was a removable film unit from a microfilm machine. The operator had to wind a handle at the end to remove all film from supply and again wind when reloading new film. The handle had an internal (within the case) very stiff nylon antibackup pawl to allow winding rotation only one direction. I had three service calls where reloaded film had rolled off track and balled up in the film chamber. Upon further investigation it was discovered this only happened with one operator who happened to be left handed. Because she was petite she turned the film unit upsidedown while changing film for easier handle cranking. This problem was solved on all my installations by a large sticker arrow showing direction of rotation. Since the original arrow printed on the equipment side was only about 1/4 inch or 7mm in size I used our suggestion system to say a larger arrow was needed. It was refused because winding the handle the wrong way would split the case open. About a year and a half later, I was sent to a trouble shooting seminar on this equipment held by the engineer. During discussions I mentioned my suggestion and he again said it would split the case. I removed the panel on the mech side and told him to watch the pawl and turned the unit upsidedown and wound the handle with my left hand. The pawl deflected to the side out of the ratchet allowing wrong rotation. When next reloaded upright by a right handed person, the pawl jumped back into position. Evidence gone.
 
No no no no ........................................................ no

And he lives in the USofA and just visits here. Being a celebrity he naturally is able to come and go as he pleases both here and NZ while people born in either country must wait for a "slot" and almost beg to come home. Took my son over 15 months to get home.

And naturally the local health officials do not recognize his San Francisco Pfizer covid jab so he was triple vaccinated long before boosters were allowed here.
 
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Many of our parts lists and manuals had the notation on washers at shaft/bushing AR. Not being taught engineer geekspeak I had never inquired until one class where the instructor/engineer asked if any one had questions. Any questions at all? About anything. Although I had about 20+ years in at this time, and since he really wanted questions on any thing, I asked what kind of washer was an AR washer. Answer: as required.
 
A guy who had been a technician in the USN said that one day he was told that a something he had ordered had come in, downstairs. He replied, "Okay, send it up." They replied they could not. He went down and looked for it. A huge crate blotted out most of one wall. Examining, it he found that an antenna they ordered for a T-28 was not available, so they shipped the next higher assembly:

The Wing for a T-28.
 
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