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A system prototyped by hand rapidly finds the bolt or pump that can only be removed or fitted if you have an extra elbow and third arm. Or see round corners. Sp

A system prototyped by hand rapidly finds the bolt or pump that can only be removed or fitted if you have an extra elbow and third arm. Or see round corners. Special tools were to be avoided or used for the rare exception. So plan B before lunch! The old approaches of an access panel over the timing chain or sprockets, or a removable plate fixing a bearing in place barely adds weight and complexity, nor does a grease point on a swing arm or steering joint, but needs a different understanding. Understanding that there's a life beyond a warranty that global manufacturers are trying to forget. CAD is great for making stuff fit - once. In combination with the progression toward write once manufacturing, the only consideration is the cost and complexity of assembly. Can our factory robots and CNC do this? Can we reduce the component count? Can we use one-time moulded clips in place of those machine screws? Some is driven by cost saving, much by the purely mental visualisation capability of the new process. Maintenance, even regular expected and necessary maintenance, increasingly takes a distant back seat. What once took 20 minutes to change now takes half a day. It now fits in a difficult corner or got combined with a dozen other systems making it now a £500 replacement. It's visible top to the tiny fractions at the very bottom - saving fractions of a penny on self-tappers or clips self moulded into the single injection plastic where once (in ancient times like the 1990's) there'd be a small metal captive nut or bracket to bite into, or real machine screws and nuts. Any and all of these can take years off expected lifespan mainly for the saving of pennies or a production step.

doctorpangloss 8y ago
There are a lot of opinions about what could or could not be built better in cars. The most interesting trend, obviously, is that people are just buying fewer of them, so it will soon be a moot point. Doing maintenance never has mass-market appeal. The best approach, in my opinion, is actually the opposite of what most mechanics (or MechE/EE people) will say: we should try to achieve as much as possible in software, with the absolute simplest hardware. Consider that an electric car, the fastest growing product in the category, has a considerably simpler engine and drive train. The software rules the roost there. It's just a coil. The engine and batteries are not really maintainable (they're certainly recyclable). There's a lot of knowledge tied up in what you're saying, which is a really interesting point of view. But optimizing ICE vehicles and their attendant maintenance is sort of a dead end. Then again, I'm agreeing with the general idea: CAD is bad. But what should the right response be? Don't buy things that need CAD designs at all!

doctorpangloss 8y ago

There are a lot of opinions about what could or could not be built better in cars. The most interesting trend, obviously, is that people are just buying fewer of them, so it will soon be a moot point. Doing maintenance never has mass-market appeal. The best approach, in my opinion, is actually the opposite of what most mechanics (or MechE/EE people) will say: we should try to achieve as much as possible in software, with the absolute simplest hardware. Consider that an electric car, the fastest growing product in the category, has a considerably simpler engine and drive train. The software rules the roost there. It's just a coil. The engine and batteries are not really maintainable (they're certainly recyclable). There's a lot of knowledge tied up in what you're saying, which is a really interesting point of view. But optimizing ICE vehicles and their attendant maintenance is sort of a dead end. Then again, I'm agreeing with the general idea: CAD is bad. But what should the right response be? Don't buy things that need CAD designs at all!