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A Cozy Mk IV light aircraft crashed after 3D-printed part was weakened by heat

bbc.com

81–90 of 223 posts

Re: A Cozy Mk IV light aircraft crashed after 3D-printed part was weakened by heat

#81
correction to the title: the plane crashed because the owner is a moron, not because he bought a 3d printed part but because he failed to ensure his provider is trustworthy and instead used a fly-by-night nobody to fit a machine that can kill him at any moment.

Absurd what people will do to save a buck.

Re: A Cozy Mk IV light aircraft crashed after 3D-printed part was weakened by heat

#82
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way is this like vibe-coding -- or do you just mean both are bad? According to the report: > The aircraft owner who installed the modified fuel system stated that the 3D-printed induction elbow was purchased in the USA at an airshow, and he understood from the vendor that it was printed from CF-ABS (carbon fibre – acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) filament material, with a glass transition temperature3 of 105°…

I think by vibe coding he means taking these things at face value instead of rigorously looking if they are up to the standard. When coding you would rigorously look if the code is good / produces any bugs. With vibe coding, you give a prompt and just accept the output, which might be full of errors and blow up (or melt). The analogy is that, yes you can print airplane parts, but they were sloppy and just accepted th…

>I think by vibe coding he means taking these things at face value instead of rigorously looking if they are up to the standard.

Yeah, exactly -- which is why it's a stupid phrase for what happened here.

Not every negligence is somehow equatable to an AI pitfall, it's just on parents' mind so it's the only metaphor that gets applied.

A poorly fit hammer in a world of nails.

I say this as an engineer/proprietor with years of additive manufacturing experience, it's insulting. A poorly chosen and wrongly used process conveys nothing about the underlying fundamentals of the process itself -- it conveys everything about the engineer and the business processes that birthed the problem.

Similarly if I came across a poorly vibe-coded project I wouldn't blame Anthropic/oAI directly -- I would blame the programmer who decided to release such garbage made with such powerful tools..

tl;dr : it's not vibe-coding itself that makes vibe-coding a poor fit to rocket science and brain surgery -- it's the braindead engineer that pushes the code to the THERAC-25 without reading.

Re: A Cozy Mk IV light aircraft crashed after 3D-printed part was weakened by heat

#84
post #57

This is the mechanical equivalent of vibe coding. 3D printing itself isn't exactly to blame but the negligence of the company that created and sold this part and omitted it's use from an inspection. Just because a part has the shape of an engineered part does not make it compatible, strong, safe, and fit for purpose. This part could have likely been fine if it used a different material such as Ultem.

In what way is this like vibe-coding -- or do you just mean both are bad? According to the report: > The aircraft owner who installed the modified fuel system stated that the 3D-printed induction elbow was purchased in the USA at an airshow, and he understood from the vendor that it was printed from CF-ABS (carbon fibre – acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) filament material, with a glass transition temperature3 of 105°…

[deleted]

Re: A Cozy Mk IV light aircraft crashed after 3D-printed part was weakened by heat

#85

Taken at face value, this is engineering negligence. I've done industrial design with plastics and 3D printed parts. Regardless of the forming techniques, with plastics you still need to consider properties like minimum melting temperatures, tensile stress, and so forth. Then you must test that rigorously. This is all standard procedure. That information is in the data sheet for the material. I did a quick search and…

Also, strictly as a combo 3D-printing and engine enthusiast: Never with a GUN to my head would I install 3D printed parts in a CAR engine, let alone in an aircraft engine. This is spectacularly poor judgement on the part of the owner.

Re: A Cozy Mk IV light aircraft crashed after 3D-printed part was weakened by heat

#86
post #62
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way is this like vibe-coding -- or do you just mean both are bad? According to the report: > The aircraft owner who installed the modified fuel system stated that the 3D-printed induction elbow was purchased in the USA at an airshow, and he understood from the vendor that it was printed from CF-ABS (carbon fibre – acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) filament material, with a glass transition temperature3 of 105°…

Well how confident would you be that this part isn't exposed to temperatures above that glass transition temperature? It is installed near the engine.

Installed _on_ an engine that operates at 200ºC!

Re: A Cozy Mk IV light aircraft crashed after 3D-printed part was weakened by heat

#87
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way is this like vibe-coding -- or do you just mean both are bad? According to the report: > The aircraft owner who installed the modified fuel system stated that the 3D-printed induction elbow was purchased in the USA at an airshow, and he understood from the vendor that it was printed from CF-ABS (carbon fibre – acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) filament material, with a glass transition temperature3 of 105°…

I think by vibe coding he means taking these things at face value instead of rigorously looking if they are up to the standard. When coding you would rigorously look if the code is good / produces any bugs. With vibe coding, you give a prompt and just accept the output, which might be full of errors and blow up (or melt). The analogy is that, yes you can print airplane parts, but they were sloppy and just accepted th…

This is more like adding a third party dependency to your project without vetting it.

Re: A Cozy Mk IV light aircraft crashed after 3D-printed part was weakened by heat

#88
post #62
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way is this like vibe-coding -- or do you just mean both are bad? According to the report: > The aircraft owner who installed the modified fuel system stated that the 3D-printed induction elbow was purchased in the USA at an airshow, and he understood from the vendor that it was printed from CF-ABS (carbon fibre – acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) filament material, with a glass transition temperature3 of 105°…

Well how confident would you be that this part isn't exposed to temperatures above that glass transition temperature? It is installed near the engine.

The report further states that the part included in the original design (part of the kit) was made of a carbon fiber composite where the epoxy had a listed glass transition temperature of 84⁰C. If there is an element to be critical of along these lines it's that the part as originally designed is supposed to include an aluminum tube at one end that may stiffen the part - the report makes no conclusions whether it truly would have, but notes that the actual glass transition temperature was found to be much lower than listed, and lower than that of the epoxy used in the original design.

Re: A Cozy Mk IV light aircraft crashed after 3D-printed part was weakened by heat

#89
post #57

This is the mechanical equivalent of vibe coding. 3D printing itself isn't exactly to blame but the negligence of the company that created and sold this part and omitted it's use from an inspection. Just because a part has the shape of an engineered part does not make it compatible, strong, safe, and fit for purpose. This part could have likely been fine if it used a different material such as Ultem.

In what way is this like vibe-coding -- or do you just mean both are bad? According to the report: > The aircraft owner who installed the modified fuel system stated that the 3D-printed induction elbow was purchased in the USA at an airshow, and he understood from the vendor that it was printed from CF-ABS (carbon fibre – acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) filament material, with a glass transition temperature3 of 105°…

In the report they tested samples of the part and found that they actually had glass transition temperatures of 52.8°C, and 54.0°C... so sounds like the owner fell victim to false advertising.

Re: A Cozy Mk IV light aircraft crashed after 3D-printed part was weakened by heat

#90
post #57

This is the mechanical equivalent of vibe coding. 3D printing itself isn't exactly to blame but the negligence of the company that created and sold this part and omitted it's use from an inspection. Just because a part has the shape of an engineered part does not make it compatible, strong, safe, and fit for purpose. This part could have likely been fine if it used a different material such as Ultem.

In what way is this like vibe-coding -- or do you just mean both are bad? According to the report: > The aircraft owner who installed the modified fuel system stated that the 3D-printed induction elbow was purchased in the USA at an airshow, and he understood from the vendor that it was printed from CF-ABS (carbon fibre – acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) filament material, with a glass transition temperature3 of 105°…

> Isn't this simply a part that shouldn't have been allowed to be sold based on it being both faulty and also misleading?

"Faulty and also misleading" pretty much describes the code output by vibe coding. And don't get me wrong: I use LLMs daily to help me write functions / write test cases / find bugs / find edge cases / explain error messages etc. But I don't vibe code entire parts like that part that melted.

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