
That's a serious screw-up. Someone should get fired.
Lenovo has recalled its flagship Thinkpad X1 Carbon laptops because some may literally have a screw loose. As detailed in an advisory this week, fifth-generation X1’s “may have an unfastened screw that could damage the laptop’s battery causing overheating, potentially posing a fire hazard.” “Lenovo’s investigation and …
USA Inc. If you read Wolfe's The Right Stuff you will learn how a number of pilot fatalities were traced to the installation of securing bolts upside down.
And of course not just the USA. Leaky propshafts on carriers, Germans with a load of subs out of service, French cars (let's not go there) - pointing fingers at the Chinese is extremely mote and beam.
"Why no mention of British cars with missing screws"
My experience of British cars says it was all downhill after the Morris Minor, so yes, well spotted. But there are so few actually British cars these days that they barely appear on the radar.
British car problems were not workforce but management related, so if the factory is foreign owned it doesn't count.
There were, however, a number of British cars and motorcycles made with excess screws. You knew this because they used to litter the road and cause punctures.
> .Just picked up and shook my Thinkpad. It rattled. Fantastic.
..As did mine for years until the screen hinges just couldn't keep it up any more (being unhinged can affect your.... etc etc) The solution was epoxy putty, squished well in, doing duty as screws. Six year old crappy thinkpad still going strong but I'll not risk trying to get it through airport security...
> Investigation has identified the problem: the production line ran out of glue so the screw wasn't glued in.
You do realise this is likely exactly the problem? Screws are normally retained with a thread locker (the blue gunk on nearly all tiny screw threads). No thread lock? The screw will work loose over time.
If you're using blue loctite on screws that small, you're doing it wrong. Purple is the stuff you're looking for.
The factory-applied blue stuff is actually a plastic that's melted with some ugly solvents so that it can be machine-applied to fasteners and allowed to dry. That way you don't end up with assembly workers putting the wrong amount on, and they don't get glued to the conveyor.
If this was a T430-era laptop, the fix would be to remove the back cover and give it a quick shake to get the loose screw out. Instructions for doing that is in the freely available hardware manual.
Of course the battery on those was hung off the back, so a loose screw inside wouldn't set fire to it anyway.
Every day I seem to end up hoping more my T410 never dies.
AE mentioned, "...T430-era laptop..."
Yeah, we've got FIVE of the Lenovo T-series laptops. They're still fantastic, even years after they were manufactured. Heck, I bought them used in 2014.
On the subject of tiny screws, I was recently replacing the battery in my silly MS Surface RT 2 tablet. It's infested with tiny T4 screws, and then even tinier T3 screws. CRAZY small. The torque required to snug them up is seemingly about 5% less than the torque needed to strip the driver bit. I went through three T3 bits by the time it was reassembled. Thank goodness that I had ordered several driver bit sets from eBay while waiting for the battery to arrive.