The Air Force is having to reverse engineer parts of its own stealth bomber

Post by lambda2001 » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 10:01 PM UTC

Jtsummers wrote: post #19

magtux wrote: post #13

This happens even outside Defense in all specialized industry. I was once asked if I could reverse engineer a part for a 30 year newspaper stacking machine in a printing press. Very interesting stuff and a consequence of being niche.

Exactly. We're dealing with: - Limited production run. These aren't Ford Mustangs or Toyota Priuses with hundreds of thousands and millions being produced. There were 21 built over 13 years. This also leads to the consequence that each one should be considered a bespoke creation and not a "copy" of the others (even ignoring the 20+ years of individual maintenance work they've each had). - Time. It's been 21 years sin…

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 10:02 PM UTC

dmurray wrote: post #3

Reverse engineering seems like a good skillset for the DoD to nurture, anyway. Yes, the US is going to be at the cutting edge of weapons design at least through the medium term, but the leadership isn't arrogant enough to think that all engineering innovations will come domestically. If the US acquired a next-generation Chinese fighter, wouldn't it be handy if someone had the expertise to tell you exactly how its par…

Post by foobarian » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 10:04 PM UTC

magtux wrote: post #13

This happens even outside Defense in all specialized industry. I was once asked if I could reverse engineer a part for a 30 year newspaper stacking machine in a printing press. Very interesting stuff and a consequence of being niche.

Post by mywittyname » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 10:13 PM UTC

banana_giraffe wrote: post #54

nullserver wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dad was talking to an engineer at one of the major airlines manufactures apparently some critical part was foam injection or some such. Anyway the process as such did not work as documented. You had to add strings to the inside of the mold to get it to set correctly. This was not written down anywhere. Part of it may have been job protection. The union was bad about that. New hires would not be able to complete th…

It's also possible it was "Hey! The foam injection machine isn't working, I've tried everything", "There's this string trick I used once, try that", "Great, that fixed it, we should document that", "Sure, once we get all parts made that have backed up" Or, maybe I'm reading bad practices in my industry to everywhere else.

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 10:17 PM UTC

starpilot wrote: post #28

magtux wrote: post #13

This happens even outside Defense in all specialized industry. I was once asked if I could reverse engineer a part for a 30 year newspaper stacking machine in a printing press. Very interesting stuff and a consequence of being niche.

Also in auto repair. A shop told me they wanted to take a gasket from the engine, draw the part, then send it to a machine shop to have it fabricated.