Engineering: how NOT to do it

[PLAYSWITHMACHINES]

I can't believe how dumb some so-called 'engineers' can be.
Here is a prime example, an overhead crane rail had broken loose inside the building, i had to go & investigate.
What i found was that the idiots had put the bolts in from underneath, with the result that the nuts had come loose due to vibration:



In one case, the bolts had fallen out completely, allowing the whole rail to come loose from the pillars;



This is not only inviting disaster, its an irresponsible, unforgivable mistake.

The correct way to do it of course, is to put the bolts in from above, and secure them with 2 nuts, or use 'Nylock' nuts. This way, even if both nuts fall off the rail will still be connected to the pillar by the (loose) bolts:



Next!

[Sgt.Rocknroll]

Yes, I have seen many stupid & potential criminal errors like these.

[Littleenki]

basic knowledge one usually finds out the hard way...

[petrus4]

The entire world is built on what I call ponerogenic, or psychopathic engineering.  That is, things which are deliberately designed to be inferior, usually for political or economic purposes.  Occasionally it can be attributed to stupidity, arrogance, or laziness; but I tend to find that these three things are products of the general psychopathic environment.

[Somamech]

Great Post PWM

I have learnt that its bloody stupid to do as you stated the monkeys did, which is something i have never thought of.  It totally makes sense to put the screws on the side where gravity and vibration may help them hold the structure together more so than those rather scary photo's

There is a Mega Structure type TV program running at the moment here in Oz and only last week i watched a section of some bridge being constructed in that region which makes NO sense in the desert 

Now i feel like watching that episode again to see if they follow what you said 

[Somamech]

The entire world is built on what I call ponerogenic, or psychopathic engineering.  That is, things which are deliberately designed to be inferior, usually for political or economic purposes.  Occasionally it can be attributed to stupidity, arrogance, or laziness; but I tend to find that these three things are products of the general psychopathic environment.

Oddly though for the most part Engineering does improve, designs get better and ways to improve end product do actually occur in some worlds on this planet!

I say that from being someone who has worked in protoyping for nearly 12 years, there are many bloopers in both engineering and manufacturing, but at the end of the day we are advancing in knowledge in a sorta whacked up world. 

[Ellirium113]

Was this a case of poor engineering OR was it an error made by the construction crew. One must call up the engineering prints for the rail and see what the engineer had called for. Personally I think even nylocks would be insufficient, perhaps the similar all metal lock nuts would be even better as they don't seem to work loose. Also would use hardened washers instead of mild steel.

[Sgt.Rocknroll]

I guarantee that the plans did not have bolts upside down. This was minimum wage work and piss poor supervision!

[The Matrix Traveller]

Bolting things together, screwing, welding and riveting, and the like is a monkey practice,
causing all sorts of problems.

Alien Tech. involves none of the above practices, instead they use "Interlocking" Structures.

One of the practices we need to learn about on Earth.

Wherever we have nuts and bolts, screws, rivets, and welding, etc. creates unevenly distributed
pressures, even if a "torque wrench" or other means are used, and you end up with , fatigue,
cracking and other undesirable Stress related phenomena within structures.

[PLAYSWITHMACHINES]

Just an example, as i said.
Petrus, it's not psychopathic, it's just people not thinking about what they are doing

Sarge was right;

I guarantee that the plans did not have bolts upside down. This was minimum wage work and piss poor supervision!

Exactly!

Was this a case of poor engineering OR was it an error made by the construction crew

I think both. The engineer should have been on hand to supervise construction. The construction workers should have been better trained

Also would use hardened washers instead of mild steel.

What washers?
In the first pic you can see there weren't any, some of the bolt-heads on the more heavily loaded parts of the structure had been forced halfway through the hole.
These mild steel ones were all we had, that's why i doubled them up

Alien Tech. involves none of the above practices, instead they use "Interlocking" Structures.

One of the practices we need to learn about on Earth.

Indeed

..creates unevenly distributed
pressures, even if a "torque wrench" or other means are used, and you end up with , fatigue,
cracking and other undesirable Stress related phenomena within structures.

True, but we can at least try to use the tech we have wisely

Thanks peeps, thought you'd like it.
Want another one?

[Somamech]

I would love another one!   

I start work in a few days and can post up an 'Oven' that has moisture in its glazing that is worth about half a mil to buy,  and oddly I have never seen moisture on any oven I have used to cook food with  



 

[thorfourwinds]

Want another one?

YES

[PLAYSWITHMACHINES]

OOO thanks Thor, i thought i was being a bore!
OK some more 'bloopers' on the way

Somamech;

I start work in a few days and can post up an 'Oven' that has moisture in its glazing that is worth about half a mil to buy

Doesn't sound good to me. Parts with moisture in them, like glazing, will shrink and parts that are dry will expand....

I have seen industrial ovens expand by 3 inches or more 

Uploading more bloopers......

[PLAYSWITHMACHINES]

You wanted more, so i've been digging in my archives.....
OK to start off, a few 'bloopers' i filmed while doing my routine inspections:
This truck is not only overloaded;


...But it's also very out of balance.
I can't see how anyone in his right mind would attempt to drive it.....



However, the fun doesn't stop there, this fire escape has come loose from the wall.
This is because the upper part was joined to the wall, but the lower end was resting on the ground, which subsided.
DUH!
So i had to make a support, & fix it to the wall. Something that should have been done in the first place



In the same factory, i found that this cabinet, which should be closed at all times, wasn't.
They could not close it because some moron had placed a relay that was sticking out too much.....
This machine is a sandblaster, only it works with tiny steel balls.
The cabinet was full of them & had a massive short-circuit....



Mind you, i soon figured out how good their electricians were when i found THIS;


If these bare fuses had blown, it would have melted the whole box, and anyone standing near it!!

And now for the best pic, still from that same factory.
THIS is the power supply for the cental fire alarm system, the backup system, AND the glassfibre network!
Unplugging (or just tripping over the cable) will shut down the whole factory


More to come!

[PLAYSWITHMACHINES]

This time, we are at a cheese factory.

There's a problem with the vacuum flowpacker.
This is a machine that places the cheese in plastic bags, which are then vacuumed & sealed.
It does this in a long continuous running process (hence the word 'flow').

The problem was that 60% of the time, the vacuum wouldn't hold.
Something was damaging the packing, no-one could find out what, they had taken the whole machine apart.
Still they found nothing.
So i decided to look at the 'ribs' of the 'forming station' where the plastic (on a roll) is fed into the machine.
I found that someone had been using this (aluminium) part of the machine as an anvil, it was dented & serrated.
It was putting microscopic holes in the plastic before it went into the machine

Ground & polished, it worked perfectly.......


Next, there was a report of a metal detector not functioning, it had already rejected over a ton of cheese.
Having tested the detector (which was working fine) i decided to look further up the production line, and found THIS:

As you can see, a bearing has disintegrated, and left splinters, that slowly found their way onto the conveyor belt.
The machine had been 'inspected' and 'cleaned' 2 days before......Obviously not enough, they had to throw all that cheese away, because it DID have splinters in it!


Then there was a robot that placed metal shelves on a plank.
Problem was, it kept mashing them all up...


This was because the servo-motors had no gradual acceleration or decelleration programmed in (which should have been) it was just 'bang-bang'.
I had already told the 'expert' in charge that this will mean excessive vibration, & that the robot was swaying so much, it couldn't pick up or put down shelves.

A few days later, that same 'expert' speeded up the machine, & whole sections of it broke off!
Oops!


Then there was the lift for the palletiser.
This machine stacks boxes on a pallet, & then lifts the whole lot onto a conveyor.

It would move up most of the way, and then stop.
No-one could figure out why it was stopping.
I took a photo of this machine, can you see the problem?






Yes, that's right, it's not level!
The right side is at least an inch lower than the left.
By no great coincidence, this is exactly the length of one of the chain-links
The chains on the right have slipped over the sprocket, and the sensors for registering the height of the lift (on both the left AND right) were confused, so it stopped.
Duuuuuuh!

More to come......