Boeing is having a rough time of it right now, with parts falling off its planes left, right and center. Just last week, a wheel came loose and smashed through a car, and earlier this year the door from a 737 Max aircraft broke off mid-flight. That mid-air disaster sparked an audit from the Federal Aviation Administration, which has gone far from well.
Are you joking? Please say you are joking… Because adding TBH is confusing.
If you aren’t joking, dish soap should only be used to clean dishes, and key cards should only be used to open doors through the card slot.
There’s nothing wrong with using soapy water to spotcheck airtight seals.
Using soap as a lubricant is a bad idea in general.
For the key cards, yeah they should be using feeler gauges of specific, certified thickness.
Soap is bad if you need to keep something lubricated but it works pretty well is you just need to lube something up a bit for installation because you can just hose it off afterwords. As far as the keycards go, that depends on the tolerance. If that tolerance is generous enough then an actual feeler gauge is overkill. A pack of keycards is dirt cheap and are all going to be about the same thickness. When one gets busted or worn then you can just grab a new one from the pack. Verses having a production guy break a feeler gauge and start guestamating because they don’t want to tell the boss they broke the third one this week.
Sorry for the confusion.
When I say “TBH” I mean “to be honest”.
I don’t support Boeing, but I feel like this aritcle is sensationalizing a possibly mundane aspect of the manufacturing. Like none of us know the specifications for assembly. The tolorance for those specific gaps could be generous and a key card turned out to be an acceptable gauge. Automotive industry uses a variety of Go/No-Go gauges that are 3D printed which are far outside the accuracy of Feeler guages, because in some cases you dont need the precision. If the gap needs to be 2mm +/- .5mm and a key card is 2mm +/- 0.4mm or whatever then its fine.
Overall, what I am saying is that the issues with Boeing is systemic across all aspects, but one shouldn’t be so quick to jump on details that make a eye grabbing article title.
I get where you’re coming from but as someone who’s worked in the industry where everything is super over regulated, something like this is a huge deal. Not only would they be required to use a feeler gauge. That gauge would need to be tested and calibrated every (where I worked) 2 weeks. The DIY’er in me thinks it’s ridiculous to “calibrate” a piece of metal, but in the industry and others like it, that’s what they’re required to do.
When government auditors come in and see something like this people get fired. They also search deeper because if you’re already doing something that blatant there’s going to be more to be found.
Once again this is a question of tolerance. It could be a place you only care about minimum clearance. If the spec is for a gap of at least 15 mil then a pack of 30 mil key cards makes for a bunch of cheap easily replacable go/nogo gauges with enough leway that even a worn one won’t put you under spec.
I’m most familiar with IPC standards for electronics but even in the most critical class 3 applications there are plenty of spots where the standards are effectively gauged by eyeball let alone with even a makeshift tool because those specific specs aren’t that critical for the application.
I’m also Class 3 certified and where I come from inspection will absolutely measure clearances if it’s not obviously within spec. And even then there are many that still do just to cover their own ass. God help them if QA steps in and gets a different measurement.
I have no doubt different facilities run differently. Just look at Boeing. But don’t assume they’re all run like a circus just because you worked somewhere that doesn’t do things by the book.
I agree there will be way more serious violations. The point I was really trying to make was that the FAA may have listed 100+ other more serious things that are not as catchy or mean little to people outside the industry. However, the media chose to report on this because its relatable to the average person and make it seems more significant than it really is.
“Failure to establish a validation system to ensure all components are present and installed” (4 door bolts) just doesnt have the same ring, dispite being significantly more serious, then Boeing using soap and keycards.
I think OP is joking.
If he isn’t… yikes!