Amazingly small dimensional change to cause total mayhem. IMO, as an engineer,
that is a bad design, crying out for something to permit it to work with a tiny bit of
wear. I have and like Marlins, but this is just weird.
Yeah, Brad, but not recognizing this and going out there to figure out how to make
the design more tolerant of wear is just stupid management. This should have
been recognized long ago, (if it happens more than 1 in 1,00) and an engineer
assigned to figure out what the issue is and FIX IT. Leaving a marginal design
alone is unacceptable.
As a test pilot friend once pointed out when I questioned him about the flying
qualities of a particular very popular and aesthetically beautiful homebuilt
aircraft design that both he and an AF test pilot mutual friend had flown....
"Well, they don't sell landing gear assemblies in a one-to-one ratio with
the airframes." The design was entirely unstable in pitch at landing speeds
below a certain, very likely to be reached, speed. An Australian test pilot,
hired to evaluate the design before the Aussie FAA would permit the kits
to be sold, flunked it cold. A tail redesign was required, and the lower speed
pitch stability was then fine. The solution for this issue was absolutely well
known, obvious as hell, but the managment didn't bother even though they
were selling a lot of replacement landing gears, which should have been
a glaring red light that they had a problem.
Marlin should wonder why they sell a lot of carriers. Should sell nearly zero.
Marginal designs are out there in every field. Good testing and engineering
This is one thing that I did at work, with computer modeling, studying "design
margins". Basically, is the design just standing on the edge of an abyss, and
will a small change in some tolerance accidentally "step off the edge". Without
a design margin review, or redesign based on field experience, no design is
properly done, IMO. I could test designs (primarily stress and thermal, not kinematics
most of the time) and throw in variations and see how it would affect it. Sometimes
a design that had been really good for many years would suddenly have lots of
parts failing testing. A critical spec had been missed, often by just a bit, but the
design was intolerant of even small spec errors. This is a bad design.
Bill