You can’t control your way out of poor mechanical design

http://www.designworldonline.com/cant-control-way-poor-mechanical-design/#comment-128125

I think the article lost focus a little when talking about quality control issues instead of real design issues.

See my comment.

I'll not bother to read the article if you feel it loses its way, but just a thumbs-up for your thread title, it says it all.

If you create control algorithms to hide poor mechanical design, it creates rods for peoples backs, because as sure as eggs is eggs, some day the mechanics will wear, loosen, bind, break, vibrate, even oscillate.

Of course, you have to expect those sorts of failures, even with a good mechanical system. But not after 2 weeks of use.... A well-designed, and well-maintained system will give many years of use.

When I started in industrial automation, way back then (circa 1972), my "mentor" taught me many things, I can remember some of them word-for-word ...

"When you've thought of all the failure modes you can test for, think again"

"If you don't believe something can possibly happen, it probably will - deal with it"

Lastly, and most pertinent to your post, Peter...

"You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear"

Man, what a great title for a thread!
Nothing more needs to be said.

Amen.

I go to a plant where the engineers are also the operatives.
Anything breaks or fails - there they are, ready and waiting
Minimum downtime and no dumb operatives to employ.
A winning management strategy.

Wrong... the engineers have morphed into dumb lazy operatives.
Something goes wrong through mechanical wear - call Ron, he'll program a way around it.
An example this week; An hydraulic ram that was part of a pick n place for concrete blocks was leaking. This meant that sometimes while it was waiting to 'place'
it moved off its up sensor (ram seal passing)
And the poor operatives/engineers had to manually press a button to take it back up again before it would continue in auto.
Ron! program it so that it goes back up on its own.
Change the ram
That means downtime
what if it completely fails and drops to the floor
we'll change it then.
hydraulic leaks don't mend themselves, in fact they get worse
we are paying you to program it
change the ram - goodbye.