Depends on who you talk to if its a failure. 15

[enginesrus]

This could be a fun topic here. Its about engineering regression, you know where something was designed nicely in the older days, then basically ruined in modern days.
I'll start out with something simple like filler locations, for gas and oil tanks on gasoline powered chain saws. In some of the beginning examples you simply set the saw down in its normal set position and could add the fuel mix and bar oil. Now many newer overly plasticized models you need to flip them on their sides to add the fluids. So if there is a slight leak from the cap, then of course the fluid leaks easily out.

 

[wayne440]

Try plastic fuel cans (at least here in the USA) for the next subject.

 

[dik]

I had a truckful of fibre gas tanks that I scrounged. I got them for a contractor that built docks. Company I was doing a project for had them as fuel tanks that were initially filled with a little gas to move them on the assembly line where they were taken to an area to be converted to propane. They couldn't put them in landfill because they were containers. They solved the problem by shearing the containers in half, and they were no longer containers. They had 1000s of these that went to landfill.

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Do you feel any better?

-Dik

 

[spsalso]

A lot of the problem is "styling".

"We'll sell more if we make the product coooler-looking." "OK, do it!"

For example:

On most semi-automatic hand guns, there are multiple grooves cut in the rear of the slide. They are there so you can pull it back with your fingers, to cycle it by hand, as necessary.

Originally, they were cut vertical to the direction of movement. Fairly quickly, someone decided that if they were tilted forward to align with the grip angle, it would look better. And, of course, provide a vertical thrust vector for the finger grip that does nothing for pulling the slide back.

Recently, there have been photos of guns with these grooves cut even more aggressively angled forward. I guess to make them look more "forward". One can wonder if they'll eventually rotate to the horizontal, perhaps with arrowheads at the front, to show ferocity. Or teeth!!!

I am NOT against styling--except when it impedes on the operation of the device. Or just plain looks stupid.


spsalso

 

[TugboatEng]

In the first example I would wonder if the saw was intended for chopping logs or felling trees. If used for felling, the saw spends most of its time on it's side. So the fuel filler orientation would make sense in that case.

 

[enginesrus]

Engineering has gone out the door when it comes to the automotive world. How about the tasty to rodents electrical wire insulation? Or the biodegradable electric wiring insulation? Just so many Ill designed and manufactured mess ups in this day and age, and most of them are never addressed with a recall, so the end user is stuck down the road with the huge costs to fix what the thoughtless ones at the manufacture had no idea of how to make correct in the first place.
Many like to blame "bean counters" well are those people technical engineers or business types? The ones that will carry some crap ideas to a bean counter will be an engineer. Bean counters know nothing about biodegradable wire insulation, or open deck cylinder blocks, or cracked bearing caps and such. At the end of the meeting where a discussion of some poor choice is involved you would think, someone with a bit of horse sense would say, "If we use this idea, the end result could be it will cost us thousands more down the road than we will save building it this way". You know like Takata airbags for example.
I just hope threads like this wake up the now generation of engineers and manufactures.

 

[EdStainless]

Not a new situation. Back in the early 70's there were cars where you had to cut a piece out of the metal inner fender liner in order to change the heater core.
The list of companies/products that combines style, function, and maintainability is a very short list.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
P.E. Metallurgy, consulting work welcomed

 

[JohnRBaker]

To say nothing of the several models of Pontiac where it was nearly impossible to change all of the spark plugs. You either had to cut holes in the body or pull the engine:

https://www.quora.com/Have-there-re...It-sounds-unlikely-but-its-a-persistent-rumor

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[Comcokid]

EdStainless - you may be thinking of the Chevy Monza. As I recall it was the spark plugs. This article is about it. As I recall another option was to cut holes in the inner fender well.
Link

 

[bacon4life]

I did not actually have to drop the engine, but the first time I changed my own spark plugs in my Oldsmobile station wagon I found out at least two different mechanics has skipped the hard to replace spark plugs because I found 3 different models of spark plugs.

 

[TugboatEng]

Odd listening to the generation that grew up with flat tappet lifters wiping out cams complaining about the multi-displacement lifters doing the same thing but less frequently.

It's really the millennials that should be making this complaint because they grew up during the early roller cam era of the 1990's where cam failures were actually rare.

 

[IRstuff]

To say nothing of the several models of Pontiac where it was nearly impossible to change all of the spark plugs.

74 Camaro Z28 - second closest driver side spark plug has 1 click on the ratchet wrench of free space ; seemed like it took 15 minutes to get the plug unscrewed and 15 to get it back in.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list

http://www.eng-tips.com/forumlist.cfm

 

[Lou Scannon]

Problem is some of the engines designed in the 50s had low mounted spark plugs (they weren't great to service back then), which ended up in completely different car designs in the 70s, with ridiculously restricted access to the plugs. All V8s designed since the 50s, AFAIK, have had the spark plugs oriented above horizontal, at least.

"Schiefgehen wird, was schiefgehen kann" - das Murphygesetz

 

[enginesrus]

Tugboat, actually I grew up, way after roller lifters began. Most Radial aircraft engines as well as Diesel engines have used roller followers long before my Bday. I don't call it complaining, just pointing out bad designs. And since you mention it, as a youngster I don't remember very many flat tappet worn cam lobe, failures at all, I had worked on a lot of old junk in the day. Back then they actually tried, and strived
to do things right, using good materials, and designs, not going crazy trying to cut every corner possible.

 

[JohnRBaker]

That's one thing that's nice about these vehicles with four-cylinder transverse mounted engines. Generally the orientation of the engine block is with the cylinders vertical, as was the case with my old 2013 GMC Terrain. When it came time to change the plugs (something that the dealer wanted $150 to do), all I had to do was buy four new plugs and an extra deep spark-plug socket. Then you just remove the plastic cover off the top of the engine, pull off the four coil assemblies, and remove the plugs (I already had a long socket extension and a breaker-bar). Slap a bit of anti-seize on the threads of new plugs, and run them in. I was done in less than an hour.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[1503-44]

I hate that black soft, kind of rubber looking stuff that gets used on a lot of electronics and grips for hand tools. After a few years it gets softer then sticky as it turns itself into some kind of bitumen. And whatever kind of glue or heat bonding they seem to use these days for sticking the soles to shoe topsides. Nothing is stitched anymore. Those bonds never last more than 3yrs.

A black swan to a turkey is a white swan to the butcher ... and to Boeing.

 

[phamENG]

Don't just blame the engineers. Blame the people who'd rather buy the cheap stuff. No amount of engineering pontification will sway the pressures of the market. Very few people go into something saying "I want to make this is poorly as possible." But a lot do go to work at companies managed by the bean counters you mentioned who tell the engineers "you have $XXX budget to make this widget, and you have to meet targets A, B, and C, and you have to do it by next week." That's because the bean counters are highly in tune to the market pressures (or at least their stockholder pressures) and in many cases place profit over quality. It's not new at all. More prevalent, perhaps. Or just more visible. But not new.

It has always been and always will be. What was was better, what is is bad, and the world is going to @%$@$&*!.

 

[cranky108]

At least, in my industry, the quality of your power depends on where you live. You do have a choice, even if you don't know it. The industry pressures are that different customers have different opinions, from reasonable to impossible.
From 'no cost, and high quality' to 'twice the price and green', you can't please everyone.
Then there is the 'make the smoke have different colors and sworrol', when it isn't smoke at all, but the condensation from the cooling towers.
Yes we have seen rat inviting electric wires, and we eliminated there purchase from our store rooms. Yes, we have heard about hard to replace parts, and the refusal of workers to work on them, which changed our designs.

We do strive to provide the best power, but in our case it is not bean counters, but politics (governmental regulations) that gets in the way.

 

[1503-44]

I'll mention that to my shoe engineer.

A black swan to a turkey is a white swan to the butcher ... and to Boeing.

 

[Comcokid]

Back to: "Depends on who you talk to if its a failure.

Microsoft Windows and Office. period

Out IT Department upgrades Windows or Office about every four years - always with massive issues. This year IT has been upgrading computers department-by-department to Office 365. In Engineering we have heard the grumbling and problems echoing through the halls. This week it was Engineering. Engineering uses a wider variety of software than any other department. Now, AutoCAD will not import OLE objects (i.e. photos or Excel files with BOMs). LabVIEW will no longer work. Software/firmware engineers find their various tools are broken. D365 (a Microsoft product for MRP, inventory, product BOMs, and accounting) has portions that are now broken. And that is just the start of the problems.

Mind you, Office 365 is just an application with Excel, Word, Access, Outlook, etc. This was not an operating system upgrade or something like the replacement of all our computers and servers.

Productivity has gone to hell. I'm already finding the new annoyances on my computer have been in discussion on the internet for over two years, often with Microsoft offering no solutions.

As an engineer I have used computers since the days of DOS and CPM, and the occasional minicomputer and terminal. But it seems the past 15 years Microsoft continues to carry the world closer to the abyss of a new Dark Ages with every non-functioning upgrade.