"Jim Stewart" wrote in message
.. .
Spehro Pefhany wrote:

Recently I was shown a ~40lb aerospace part that started off weighting
more than 20 times as much. Believe it or not, it made sense to do it
that way, given the constraints.

I worked with a machinist who claimed to have
made a part for the space shuttle landing gear.
He said he started with a 200 lb billet of AL
and ended up with a 3 lb part. I'm thinking
that mistakes would get real costly in that line
of work...

That kind of thing is fairly common now in aerospace and military work. The
ability of CNC milling to carve out delicate skeletons from large chunks of
metal is a cornerstone of a lot of extreme-performance designs.

I've seen helicopter parts made that way, and airplane sub-structures, and
parts for rockets and spacecraft. It's been going on at least since the late
'70s.

The cartoon I commented upon, though, was something else. That was just
about poor planning and a lack of caring about waste -- two characteristics
of the old Soviet Union.

--
Ed Huntress