news.ycombinator.com

Untitled

Beretta_Vexee · 0 points · 0 comments · 10小时前

So titanium alloys are not completely resistant to all forms of corrosion. They are particularly prone to galvanic corrosion, which means that specific tools must be used, all forms of ferritic contamination must be avoided, special tools must be used, and they must be stored separately, etc. This is very labour-intensive, which is why it is generally carried out in dedicated workshops, with specialised equipment, and so on, by staff who have been specifically trained and do nothing else. If you add jigs, production-specific tools, and so on, all of that has been lost and needs to be recreated: staff need to be trained, QA defined and workshops need to be reorganised. This can take decades to return to the expected standard. You can throw as much money at this sort of problem as you like without actually being able to speed things up. Finding the drawings and dimensions is the easy part of reverse engineering a mechanical device. The real challenges lie in identifying the manufacturing processes and quality control procedures, and achieving the expected performance with an acceptable scrap rate. If I place a monocrystalline turbine blade on your desk, you’d be able to draw up the plans for it. But that would tell you absolutely nothing about the processes required to produce a monocrystalline ingot of a nickel superalloy. Source: former mechanical engineer in the nuclear industry, managing obsolescence was one of my day-to-day tasks.

评论

3 条预览评论 · 正在加载完整讨论
Tangurena22小时前

> They are particularly prone to galvanic corrosion, which means that specific tools must be used, all forms of ferritic contamination must be avoided, special tools must be used, and they must be stored separately, etc. The C4 Corvette had a titanium component back in the early 1980s (I worked for GM back then). The piece was flat and mechanics tended to use it to hold tools. Leaving the tool on that piece when closing the hood resulted in a dented (fiberglass) hood. Most tools (at least back then) have a cadmium coating (to keep them shiny). Cadmium causes corrosion to titanium. There were lots of service bulletins about this.

PostOnce7小时前

"decades" is a stretch. The original A-12 took 4 years (or less) to design and build from scratch with slide rules and manual machine tools. Surely we can match that with our 70 years of advanced knowledge and equipment? Maybe our risk tolerance is low now, and we don't have Kelly Johnson.

toomuchtodo6小时前

What are your thoughts on creating processes and systems to maintain continuity of this institutional knowledge across programs and talent generations? How do you keep this muscle memory strong over decades besides keeping folks building and working? Or would you say that is the only way?