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FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

nytimes.com

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Re: FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

#61

Post by datavirtue »

icegreentea2 wrote: post #13
bell-cot wrote: post #2

However much you can "save" by outsourcing...in a sufficiently fraud-plagued business environment, it's seldom worth it longer-term. Conveniently, modern businesses and their leaders are judged and rewarded purely on short-term metrics.

What was the problematic outsourcing decision here? Buying your titanium from a titanium supplier? Is Spirit supposed to be refine and foundry all their own metal alloys? I agree that it's a little bonkers that Boeing spun off it's own aerostructures, but since it seems like Boeing has it's own problems with internal fraudulent inspection reports, this sure doesn't seem like an out sourcing problem per-se.

They certainly have to perform their own metallurgical analysis and certify the parts. Like, WTF?

This is just hillbilly mom-and-pop bullshit.

Re: FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

#62

Post by everforward »

pfdietz wrote: post #60
caminante wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the point. The parent is blaming quality control steps of outsourced materials at Boeing (not third party). "Outsourcing = bad" is missing the point.

If sufficiently intense oversight is needed at the boundary then outsourcing becomes uneconomical. This is something SpaceX found (and also because external sources were often slow and expensive.)

Are you sure that applies to commodities with extremely high capital costs like mining and refining ore?

It sort of makes sense to me with SpaceX. They’re presumably buying fairly boutique parts that likely already require custom manufacturing, so someone is spending capital either way. I can see how it might make sense for them to build a custom manufacturing line instead of paying someone else.

That seems odd for commodities like titanium, though. Even if Boeing were to do it themselves, that oversight process is already a subset of the mining and refining process. They’re going to have to build out their QA lab either way.

Re: FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

#63

Post by datavirtue »

therealpygon wrote: post #52
stn8188 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this goes for personal life too. My particular problem du jour: some parts internal to my lawn mower engine crankcase self destructed and the engine needs a total rebuild or replacement. I replaced the camshaft 2 years ago with a cheapo Amazon part and I'll forever be kicking myself wondering if saving $20 on that destroyed a $1k (new price) engine.

Don’t beat yourself up…you’re probably right. Joking aside, with Amazon, you just never know whether you are going to get a hardened forged steel item, or pot-metal. You can’t even count on that “stainless steel bowl” actually being stainless at all these days. That whole marketplace is a grand example of the exact problem with outsourcing. These days you can’t even rely on price or brand being an indicator of what y…

Amazon has turned into WalMart. Literally all of your choices for a product are a variation of the same cheap crap with different brand names. I would love to have a midling priced item of better quality. Not available.

The retailers job used to be offering the best value to their customers by filtering out the crap that was too cheap or overpriced.

Re: FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

#64

Post by whymauri »

Marazan wrote: post #5
JSDevOps wrote: post #3

How the fuck do you counterfeit titanium it’s one of those things that is either or it’s not.

If I show you a lump of metal and I tell you it is titanium how do you know I am not lying?

Inspections for aerospace parts are, in theory, a bit more involved than just 'looking at it.'

Re: FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

#65

Post by sofixa »

ramses0 wrote: post #24
Simulacra wrote: post #21

Do aviation parts have traceability? Like a serial number or qr code that can be used to identify suspect components?

LoL, I think aviation traceability goes down to which licensed individual installed each screw down to the date, time, hour, and minute. Further traceability goes back into the parts inventory, where I'm not sure of the commingling requirements on something like screws, but (eg) brake pads would almost certainly be traceable to the supplier and then manufacturer. https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fdis…

Supposedly, anyway. You also have the lovely incompetent folks at Boeing who can't even tell you who worked on removing a plug door and who forgot to put back the bolts holding it down. Thankfully that's a crime though, so hopefully someone (ideally both the fools who did this, and all their managers and managers' managers that cultivated such a culture to allow for such a thing to happen) will go to prison over it.

Re: FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

#66

Post by reaperman »

constantcrying wrote: post #32
Simulacra wrote: post #21

Do aviation parts have traceability? Like a serial number or qr code that can be used to identify suspect components?

>Do aviation parts have traceability? Like a serial number or qr code that can be used to identify suspect components? Are you kidding? I doubt there is a single industry which empathizes traceability more than aerospace.

Maybe biomedical devices or pharmaceuticals. I'm not sure but they're at least competitive in that ranking.

Re: FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

#67

Post by Brian_K_White »

Arnt wrote: post #31
jordanb wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Improper alloying, improper heat treating, improper rolling/forming. Trying to back out what you actually have (if you don't trust the supply chain) can be expensive metallurgical analysis involving destructive testing, spectrometers, and electron microscopes. The real way industry solves this problem is mill test reports produced by the suppliers and careful documentation of chain-of-custody. Unless you don't care,…

Oddly enough, this one seems to pass at least some testing even despite the phony documentation. This seems to be about this titan: «Boeing and Airbus both said their tests of affected materials so far had shown no signs of problems.» I read this as implying that Airbus has been buying other things from the same source and done its own tests on samples: «“Numerous tests have been performed on parts coming from the sa…

You can't really test. The tests you can do don't actually tell you what you really need to know.

You can't prove the material is good, you can only trust that the material is good, and 50 years later observe how it held up.

You can't find out the distribution of the alloy ingredients, or detect voids, or crystal structures, or traces of other elements, except by sawing the part in half and looking at the cut surface.

You can't find out the critical properties by looking at it. All you can do is be sure you know the full truth of the history of the material and the part. You only know that if a certain recipe is followed, then the material will be good. You have to trust that the supplier did do the recipe exactly as specified. You can't look at the part after the fact and tell that. Even stress testing to failure doesn't tell you that because the material may pass the test today but fail from fatigue over time.

The only empirical test is actual use in actual conditions for the full actual time.

You can accelerate some tests, and failing an accelerated test obviously proves the material was bad, but it doesn't go the other way. Passing an accelerated test does not prove that the material is good for actual use in actual conditions for the full normal time.

The end of the article has it right, if the parts seem ok from what testing is possible, then they are probably ok for this minute, and it's probably good enough to just replace them at the first opportunity during routine maintenance.

Re: FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

#68

Post by caminante »

pfdietz wrote: post #60
caminante wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the point. The parent is blaming quality control steps of outsourced materials at Boeing (not third party). "Outsourcing = bad" is missing the point.

If sufficiently intense oversight is needed at the boundary then outsourcing becomes uneconomical. This is something SpaceX found (and also because external sources were often slow and expensive.)

> If sufficiently intense oversight is needed at the boundary then outsourcing becomes uneconomical.

1. That doesn't make outsourcing "bad" before the cost benefit analysis. Commenters above are broadly blaming outsourcing.

2. As a thought experiment, specialized suppliers could be able to manage risks and costs cheaper due to absolute advantages. That's the whole point of outsourcing.

3. Mitigating the consequential and indirect damages to Boeing from this identity crisis could easily (my SWAG) justify hundreds of millions of dollars (another SWAG) in spend on better quality control audits.

Re: FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

#69

Post by albrewer »

jordanb wrote: post #10
JSDevOps wrote: post #3

How the fuck do you counterfeit titanium it’s one of those things that is either or it’s not.

Improper alloying, improper heat treating, improper rolling/forming. Trying to back out what you actually have (if you don't trust the supply chain) can be expensive metallurgical analysis involving destructive testing, spectrometers, and electron microscopes. The real way industry solves this problem is mill test reports produced by the suppliers and careful documentation of chain-of-custody. Unless you don't care,…

> expensive metallurgical analysis involving destructive testing, spectrometers, and electron microscopes

I used to work in a pressure vessel fabrication shop (for customers like Shell and Exxon). We had a few handheld mass spectrometers for exactly this purpose. Destructive testing was achieved with what we called a "coupon", a piece of metal that ostensibly went through every treatment the base part did. The coupon was destructively tested, then etched and examined with a metallurgical microscope. This level of inspection is achieved by every ASME BPVC VIII compliant fab shop in the US and Canada; many of which are very, very small.

Boeing is outright negligent here if they didn't qualify their parts.

Re: FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

#70

Post by pfannkuchen »

caminante wrote: post #34
josefx wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What was the problematic outsourcing decision here? Buying from an untrusted source without any verification of your own in place. > Buying your titanium from a titanium supplier? For all we know they bought it on wish.com. > Is Spirit supposed to be refine and foundry all their own metal alloys? Random sampling of materials to determine if the delivery is fit for purpose should be the absolute minimum.

That's the point. The parent is blaming quality control steps of outsourced materials at Boeing (not third party). "Outsourcing = bad" is missing the point.

Other countries in some cases seem to have much less enforcement of anti fraud. In the US if a company is knowingly selling fraudulent material, I’m guessing they can get in legal trouble for fraud? Does that happen in e.g. China?
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