Liz Warren, Trump admin agree on something: Army should have right to repair The US Army intends to secure the right to repair its own equipment, a right that hasn't always been available under past procurement contracts - and one of the very few things that Democrats in Congress and the Trump administration broadly agree upon. US Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll and General Randy A. George, US Army …
"take months and cost $20" - OK it shouldn't take months, but if it's a special part made to order and ship then maybe the cost is not too far out there. Although why it's special and not standardized is another discussion.
"less than an hour and cost 20c" - the 3D printing medium may cost 20c, but then add in in the cost of the machine, the cost of designing the part in the local software tool of choice, the engineer time to set up and monitor the printer, etc.
Typical politician, compare apples and pears and we find out they are bananas!
Each batch of material that goes into a military or civil aircraft has samples tested to make sure it meets strength requirements. You can buy cheaper versions of the same materials, but there is no guarantee that they will have sufficient strength to do the job, (safety margins on modern military jets are quite small nowadays). Just buying from a generic supplier means that there is no guarantee that the material has the composition that you ordered. (i.e. specific grades of metals are chosen for their compatibility so you don't get nasty corrosion problems.... two alloys with the same strength are not necessarily interchangeable)
In the civil engineering world, there are plenty of examples of one grade of structural steel being specified, and a different one being supplied, and no-one finding out until a structure is slightly overloaded beyond the design strength, and it turns out the change of material wiped out the margin of safety in the design. You *really* don't want that sort of thing to happen with aircraft parts.
Years ago my car (a Ford Focus) needed a replacement exhaust pipe. I took it to a garage and asked, and they quoted the replacement part as being about £20 plus labour, but it was not an official Ford part, just one approved to be used. So I asked what was the difference between that and the official Ford part. "About £70" came the reply, I asked "what is the in use? I spend a lot of time motorway driving and I want to avoid having an annoying noise." They said the Ford part was made of thicker steel. So I went for that one. When I collected my car, the mechanic was so impressed with the official Ford part tax he said he'd be putting one on his own car and not going the 'cheap' route.
Right to repair is all very well, but the question of equivalence of parts and operation is important. If the part fails, what does it take with it? Can it jeopardise the mission or the crew?
Years and years ago, dad's car needed a new exhaust. This was a common thing back in those days. The genuine part from the garage was expensive, but not excessively so, but a company down the road offered an equivalent part in stainless steel for about twice the price.
Took the stainless steel part, never changed the exhaust again. Later, dad had one of the first Renaults in the country to be fitted with a catalytic converter, and a mild steel exhaust which quite literally fell apart (rust flakes coming out of the tailpipe after the silencer disintegrated) after about six months and probably 7 or 8 thousand miles. The replacement for that was stainless, by Renault, and since then I really can't remember ever having to replace an exhaust due to wear-and-tear, though to be fair I've personally mostly driven Diesels in that time.
More recently, the wee injector* on my wife's Diesel Citroen died, splurging smelly wee into the exhaust and causing an "emissions fault". Bloke in my usual garage offered the Citroen official part, but said that it was made by Bosch, who also sold the exact same part without the Citroen logo for about half the price. It might have invalidated a warranty, but the car was only three months from the end of warranty anyway so no question which we'd have. Lasted until we got shot of the car a few years later, so had done at least as many miles as the factory-fitted part, probably more.
M.
*otherwise known as AdBlue
Right to repair is all very well, but the question of equivalence of parts and operation is important.
Right to repair isn't about using cheap parts... It's about ensuring a device (e.g. your Ford Focus) can be repaired AT ALL,
What if Ford wouldn't sell your mechanic replacement parts at all? What if replacing an exhaust pipe triggers some check that prevents your vehicle from operating at all, after? Hell, imagine if that was the case with your brake-pads. And if it was against the law to figure out how to get the replacement parts to work properly. That's about what you get with Apple and John Deer in the US at present.
The U.S. Military has about the strictest standards you could imagine. The cans of silly string they purchase are expensive "MIL-SPEC" certified units. There's no reason to believe they will cut corners and purchase parts that are cheap and don't meet-or-exceed manufacturer specs.
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In the early 1970s my father was a civilian employee of the US Navy, working on ground support equipment. At one point, a knob was lost from one unit. He said he could have gone across San Diego Bay (he was working at North Island Naval Air Station in Coronado) and purchased a replacement for about $0.25, or if he went to an inexpensive source, probably $0.10 to $0.15. He could also have walked over (about 100 yards) to the supply depot and pointed to the shelf where the spares were. But that's not how the Navy did things, so he put in a supply requisition for a replacement knob.
Six months later... A box showed up on his desk. The box had been sent from Bremerton, WA. In the box was an invoice for one knob for $10.52. The knob was in the box...and 51 more exactly like it.
He used to comment that his one hope for the US was that Soviet Naval Supply system was worse than ours...
Well, it's not any cheaper to ship just one knob, and the base probably needed a replenishment of supplies. Since you needed one, other people might need more for their similar widgets.
However
> He could also have walked over (about 100 yards) to the supply depot and pointed to the shelf where the spares were
Why the hell didn't he fill out the req with the supply depot sergeant and get one of the spares right then? That's what I'd need to do as a civilian employee. Sounds like he didn't know procedures and shouldn't be amazed when the end result is not correct.
You do have to ask the question that if this part is critical to operation AND relatively easy to break why are there no spares on a shelf somewhere?
Working in a high reliability commercial industry, there is an expectation from the end customer that spares for wear items and items that might break are all kept in stock. I suppose in the world of governmental agencies months of downtime for a basic part are not an issue as you get paid no matter what.
It is a very bad design if the part is not rugged, but used in a rugged environment - any parts should not break in the expected normal operation!
Yes, I have designed S/W and H/W that are used in very rugged environments, including aerospace.
The MOD/DOD/etc. have whole divisions dedicated to logistics and should have spares of everything in stock, and in the places where they can be easily accessed.
Think of the most indestructible thing in the known universe. Right? Well, a squaddy can break it. Think of the same thing, but put it through a 20 year 2 billion pound development. Got that thought in your head? Well, the same squaddy can still break it. Squaddy proofedness is thus the holy grail of defence contractors, and any claim to have achieved this state of nirvana is construed as a challenge. No-one has ever succeeded in this challenge.
The rubber eye piece for one of the old Starlight scopes was thought to be squaddie proof, it's rubber nothing to go wrong...so bored squaddies would eat it. So close but no cigar.
According to un-named Government sources, the only item ever to have been given to a squaddy and returned undamaged (i.e. the only squaddy-proof item EVER) was the ball bearing!
the only item ever to have been given to a squaddy and returned undamaged (i.e. the only squaddy-proof item EVER) was the ball bearing!
I'm sure that given enough time and an appropriate items (namely a sling) they can manage to damage it... byt throwing it at a tank enough time.
there's no end of bored private inventions with what they have to keep them not bored... until it breaks.
Unless the plastic clip requires structural integrity. The rule of thumb is that you can expect the printed part to only have 30% of the strength of thesame part in the same plastic, but injection molded.
Depending on the printer and the material used, the mileage may vary, but I would be very hesitant to sign the printed part off as flightworthy.
According to the arcticle it was >a new cover for a safety clip<.
Was that a new product or a replacement/repair for something broken?
If it was a new item i wouldn't be surprised if the manufacturer could produce it at less than 15 cents per item once approved but has to figure in costs and time for the approval process.
Leaving aside the current crap about 3D printers, predatory behaviour from John Deere and the like: this is something that's been brewing for years after the army brought certain facts to the attention of a Congressional committee.
Basically, they'd been put in a position where they were obliged to buy off-the-shelf kit, which invariably had a "return to supplier" repair policy.
The example given at the hearing was that of portable generators failing in IIRC Afghanistan, which the army's own mechanics were entirely capable of repairing but weren't allowed to.
Frankly, I'm surprised it's taken this long to sort itself out.
F-18 fighter landing gear wheels can't be fixed when a tire reaches EOL or blows. They have to be sent back to Boeing. So the carrier hangar deck has a big pile in the corner.
Lockheed doesn't even allow a sailor to breathe on the F-35 unless a civilian contractor is there running the proprietary maintenance software system. It's one reason it's so expensive to fly.
Anon for obv. reasons.
Anon to protect my employer, customer(s)/contract, and OEM supplier.
Scenario: $Army_vehicle contains a certain COTS-like $power_part that is part of DC power distribution. This $power_part and ones like it share a common base design yet highly configurable for the application (but not reconfigurable once made). The output power connectors are a $Power_co proprietary plug design using $Connector_co contacts.
For testing reasons, my company needs to mate with both sides of those connections. Plug to $power_part = easy: COTS available connectors and contacts. Receptacle-like mating to the proprietary plug: does not exist. $Power_co does have some designs in the works for such a thing, but they're holding their cards close so they can eventually bring it to market themselves.
Despite a multi-way non-disclosure (NDA) between us, $Power_co, and our customer(s), $Power_co isn't going to share the special connector design with us or even make some for us. However, they will share the design with the gov't-level customer, who is (surprisingly) happy to 3D-print us some. Since the application is a test bench in a lab -- possibly used on a garage vehicle, but nowhere close to a field of operations -- and it's costing us nothing, we're taking the deal.
How does this relate to the original article? Well, the gov't drawing for $power_part defines interfaces and function, but not enough info for us to reverse engineer and make our own special connector. This is how gov't and industry have worked together since Eisenhower ("military-industrial complex" -- his phrase, right?) -- protecting private engineering while giving the gov't enough info to be useful, but not enough to ruin their business model. Would "right to repair" upset that relationship a bit? Should it? Is reverse engineering -- to any degree -- allowed? Does analyzing and fixing a COTS generator (mentioned elsewhere in the comments) involve even a little reverse engineering to figure out how it works?
Reverse engineering is the sort of thing that ought to have strong constitutional protection -- "The rightful owner of a manufactured article is fully privy to any secret that may be embodied in it", sort of thing -- but it got missed, as the very danger from which it was protecting people would have required technological advances that were unthinkable at the time. See also the right to privacy -- for the longest time, all you had to do to be sure a conversation would be unheard by anyone else was take a little walk out in the countryside somewhere, and carry a stick with which to poke any bush big enough to conceal a person. It was taken for granted, right up until the moment we were surrounded by tiny recording devices and all the open spaces had been built on.
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