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Found a stat about rivet quality control that got me thinking

I was reading through some FAA records last night and saw that over 60% of field repair failures come from bad rivet installation, not the rivets themselves. That surprised me because I always figured it was more about metal fatigue or corrosion. Do you think training or tooling is the bigger issue for most mechanics?

2 comments

2 Comments

sam5304d ago

oh man this brings back a story a buddy of mine told me last year. he was helping a small shop do a field repair on an old Cessna and they had this big pile of rivets that looked perfectly fine out of the box. but when he went to seat them, like three out of ten would just spin or not grab right. turns out the tooling was so worn down from years of use that the rivet gun was actually slightly off center and it was smashing the heads crooked. they swapped to a newer gun and suddenly everything went smooth. so from what he said, i feel like tooling is a bigger deal than people give it credit for. you can have the best rivets in the world but if your gun is banged up or the bucking bar isn't shaped right, you're gonna get failures. training helps spot that stuff but bad tools just make good training pointless sometimes lol.

hugo503d ago

That story about three out of ten rivets failing really got me man, I always figured if the parts were good the rest would just work out but hearing how much a worn gun messed things up changed my whole view on it.