Thursday, May 09, 2013

Quality Is Job Nubmer 1!

Doesn't this AR bolt give you the warm 'n' fuzzies about the QC procedures of whoever manufactured it?

Remember: With all of your shooting gear, from the weapon itself to the ammo you put in it, you are the final inspection station in the Quality Control train.


(H/T for the defective AR bolt goes to Sepulveda's Revenge.)

18 comments:

og said...

This is why we sell machines that do QC. Expensive, foolproof and worth every penny.

Aesop said...

Back when it was possible, I bought my range and match ammo by the case rather than the box.

Sitting on my desktop for some years since have been the brand new factory brass case that split from rim to base after the first use, and another entire unfired cartridge sorted out during loading table operations because the expensive foolproof QC machines hadn't noticed the .45 case with the primer seated backwards.

99.8% reliability is admirable, but the other 0.2% is still a PITA that'll bite ya if you let it.

og said...

Ammo is poorly inspected. They can't afford to inspect it properly. I can very easily make a 100% ammo inspection system that will never ever fail. Nobody can afford to do it.

Ed Foster said...

One would hope it was sold as a part, not as something in an assembled gun, but how was it proofed?

Scary business, that. I used to watch them proofing bolts at Colts. Two guys with headphones and a blank stare had this rhythm going that was a hoot to watch.

The first guy would drop a blue pill in the dummy chamber, the second guy would drop in the bolt, the first guy dropped in the sleeve, the second guy placed, not dropped, the firing pin, then closed the block (jumbo rolling block test fixture) and his buddy flipped over the hammer/locking block.

Boom into the water baffle, then disassemble in reverse order and repeat, all while staring at the opposite wall and listening to U2 or Smashing Pumpkins.

CMT/Stag farms out their proof testing, but I imagine it's done about the same way today. Except probably to Taproot or Foxy Shazam.

cj said...

We refer to this as 'Kuality with a K' (sounds better when spoken), often when mocking a place or product of dubious quality with an intentionally misspelled name.

Ed Foster said...

And the ammo thing is why anything in the personal defense magazines (Metalform with the new follower) is loaded by Yours Truly.

I know every case is OK because it already went boom once, each charge is within a tenth grain, the cases are all trimmed to the same length (important for consistent taper crimp), and each primer has an anvil.

Screw the pooch and there's nobody to blame but me.

Boat Guy said...

My QC process has been working pretty well - apparently better than my primer feed. The question now is how (or whether) to salvage the components or just pitch the rejects

Scott J said...

Interesting co-inky that I open this post right after coming upstairs from checking all 200 rounds of my reloaded .45 Auto I'm taking to my first IDPA major in a Dillon cartridge gauge.

og said...

Ed: I thought I was the only one that anal retentive. Do you also laser engrave 'This ones for you" on the base of each bullet, or is that just something I do?

mikee said...

It pays also to be familiar with all the parts needed for something to be complete.

I once was confused for over a week by a $25k machine for water filtration that used filters up in hours instead of months - with everything apparently working just fine - until I found that a spring to hold the filter tightly in place was missing from what we got, and from the instruction manual.

RandyGC said...

I think you have the QC thing all wrong.

Quite obviously what we have here is the accidental release of the prototype for the new California Legal AR bolt. Legislation Pending,

Feinswine Arms considers this a feature, not a bug.

Ed Foster said...

Og, if I could, I'd try "ΔΕΞΑΙ". The ancient Greeks used to put that on sling pellets. I believe it's pronounced Dexai, and means "Catch This".

Critter said...

Roman sling bullets were cast with lightning bolts on one side and Percute (Strike!) On the other.

mariner said...

For some reason the first thing that came into my head when I saw the photo was, "I have no mouth and I must scream!"

fast richard said...

You'd think whoever assembled that firing pin into that bolt would have noticed.

Windy Wilson said...

Let me guess. That came from a factory where not only was there a "Quality is Everyone's Job" poster on the wall, there was a poster that said, "Thimk! Someone's Life May Depend on You!"

Ed said...

I had a B-school professor who told us lowly grad students that any business that had a "Quality" motivational poster on the wall had a quality problem that could not be fixed by any poster.

The Duck said...

Must be the new Senate Model AR, it doesn't work