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Cydrome Leader

wrote:
On Tuesday, December 1, 2015 at 2:06:06 PM UTC-5, wrote:

I remember the big stink at the time because I was making helicopter
and turbine engine parts. Really fussy stuff. When it hapened I
remember they started checking all the VSI supplied fasteners and a
whole bunch were below the FAA requirements for strength and proper
plating. I was talking to an FAA inspector who was checking some
shafts I made and he said the FAA was REALLY ****ed off. The parts I
made were small enough quantity that they were 100% inspected and the
FAA inspectors would drop by from time to time to check our inspection
procedure and numbers. VSI made such huge quantities, hundreds of
thousands of parts, that there was no way to easily check for bad
parts intentionally supplied. I'm still ****ed off about VSI because
they risked the lives of the people flying planes with their fasteners
on board.

Back in the day, I worked for a small, family-owned machine shop in Philadelphia that made aircraft and nuclear reactor seals - including liquid sodium pump seals for the French power industry. Each day the Foreman would come onto the shop floor and yell out: "REMEMBER, you are being paid by the HOUR, not by the PIECE!" The message was "GET IT RIGHT, take your time to do so."

Each piece left the shop with the _actual initials_ of every person that handled it on the internal work-sheet. And, the actual signature of the final inspector. The company is still extant (40 years after I left), still paying good, living wages to its workers, still family owned, and still operating on the same philosophy.

It is here where I learned the specific difference between a carbon-stretcher and a sky-hook.

carbon-stretcher?

so what happens in a well run shop when everybody was trying their best,
but the fasteners were bogus? For say liquid sodium pumps for the nuclear
industry does each critical fastener get some sort of proof test?