Do engineers ever take into account the lowly hardware technician?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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For me it is about servers, mainframe computers, printers, check sorters and other banking related hardware. But this can apply to washers and dryers, cars or anything else that requires turning a screw driver or using other tools.

The reason I started this thread is because a repairman had to replace a interlock switch on my wash machine this morning ( I’ll get back to my hatred of interlocks in a moment ) and after about 30 minutes, I think I hear some cursing or maybe not. After about 30 more minutes he gets it fixed. I was kind of curious about what he had to do to replace it so I take a closer look. Oh yeah, I’ve been down this path many times before. He essentially needed a third hand to replace this damn thing, although at least he had phillips head screws to deal with instead of a single slotted screw… there are not enough roll eyes so I’ll spare you. You had to hold the interlock switch with your right hand and try to line it up blindly with the holes and then try to thread the screw with your left hand. The screws were non-magnetic so no screwdriver allowed. I now understand the cursing under his breath. Anyway, he got it replaced in about an hour on a job that should have taken 15 minutes.

I understand the need for non-magnetic screws around electronics but on a washing machine? To be fair, this could have been a manufacturing decision and not an engineering one but that doesn’t excuse the difficulty involved in replacing such a mundane part.

IBM used to be the bane of my life until they went almost completely modular and hot swappable so I have to give some credit to them for making my life easier, even replacing the mother board isn’t that bad anymore. So kudos to the engineers at IBM.

Hewlett-Packard on the other hand can eat a giant dick. I rarely need to work on a desktop pc printer so I can’t speak to the degree of difficulty working on those. I’m talking about the large 8000 series or above printers. Back to the interlocks, HP printers, especially ones with a stacker section have close to a dozen of the damnable things. On the HP9000 series there is exactly one switch that is relatively pain free replacing. I’m not going to mention replacing the corona on a HP9000 because I’m afraid a blood vessel my pop, oops I just did. taking deep breaths

I won’t bore you with check sorters or check imaging scanners, except to say that whoever designed these things are clearly sadistic and hate all of us who have to work on them.

This post is getting long so one more. I owned an 82 Monte Carlo and decided to replace the spark plugs. The passenger side was super easy, the drivers side was the opposite of super easy. The only way to get to the back two spark plugs was to remove the tire and go through the wheel well and even then it was very difficult to reach. I also noticed that these back two plugs looked to be in a lot worse shape than the others. I guess the previous owner had the same difficulty and just said fuck it.

I would like to hear from other hardware techs and our resident mechanics about some of your horror stories so that I can share in your pain.

I thought this was too mild for the pit so I’ll try it here first.

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That’s nothing…try V8 Chevy Monzas. I remember in the way-back, Hot Rod magazine was bitching about having to ‘pull the engine’ to change the sparkplugs. Some poor schlub of a PR hack from GM had to write and sign his name to a protest letter, wherein he claimed that Hot Rod had been unfair to GM, because all you had to do was unbolt the motor mount and jack the engine up a couple of inches, not actually remove it from the car.

And heater cores on Fox-chassis Fords. A $35 part that was accessible through the firewall on other designs now requires about $700 worth of labor to change. They even put a flow restrictor in the heater hose fittings to try to make the cores last longer, because it was pissing off Ford owners so badly. Get this: the heater core is in the dashboard, behind the glove box. The instructions for changing the heater core start with the mechanic in the back seat of the car, removing the mounting screws for the console. After you’re done pulling the console and front seats, you disconnect and lower the steering column, then pull the dashboard out. Now, you’re ready to evacuate and open up the a/c system, because they buried the heater core inside the a/c. Have you driven a Ford lately? Some guys have even figured out how to hack a hole through the firewall; if you hit the right spot on the right car, you might be able to get at the core that way.

3

02 Chevy Cavalier, it usually took TWO quick lube guys about 5 minutes to even find the oil filter and another 10 to figure out how to get it off. I always meant to put a mark on it so I could make sure they actually did change it. The trick was to loosen it from the top where you could actually apply some torque to it and then go under and unscrew it the rest of the way. No one ever took my suggestion to just take off the passenger side tire and do it that way.

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I remember reading (here maybe) about someone that got so sick of trying to get the heater core out, he just gave up and mounted the new one right in front of (or behind) the old one and moved the hoses over.

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We had an Olds wagon that blew it’s fusible link. On the Mazda pickup I drove at work, the fusible link was next to the battery. On the Olds,(from memory,15 years ago,might be a little fuzzy) put car on lift, remove oilpan, remove starter to get at link behind starter.

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Chrysler clearly does not want mere humans to work on their engines. The spark plugs in my truck live under coil packs. On the driver’s side, two of the packs are under the brake booster. I have no idea if it’s meant to remove the booster to access the packs and plugs, or if the engine needs to be removed. I can’t visualize any way to get at the bolts that hold the coil packs, much less getting a long spark plug socket into the well, so I pay someone else handsomely to worry about how to get in there.

My crummy old Ford Taurus was also built in a non-friendly manner. The rear spark plugs were best reached by pulling the engine. It was at least possible to get at them with a long flex shaft as they weren’t buried deep in the engine under other parts. Still inconvenient compared to my even older Subaru. Almost everything on the Soob was freely reachable and didn’t require two hours of careful excavation to get at.

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Intermediate gear box drain plug on a H-23 Hiller observation helicopter. Then you get to put it back in and safety wire it…

Hot oil filter on older Cessna - 180 aircraft,

These kinds of things happen because the designers never have to work on their own designs, Because the manufacture is trying to save money by using the same item in more places than it is suited for & last buy not least, the 4 “P” rule of manufacture. Piss Poor Prior Planning.

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To answer the question posited in the OP title: good engineers/product designers do this, or maybe more accurately good companies allow their good engineers/product designers to design their products to be usable and maintainable. A really good design would include someone who had experience in similar maintenance as part of the design team.

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I’m guessing you meant the screws were non-magnetic (brass maybe? alumimum would strip pretty easy I think), and so a magnetic screwdriver would not work (screws keep falling off the screwdriver tip).
Family Handyman (among many other sites) offers tips to deal with situations like this constantly, and one recent tip was rubber cement the screws to the screwdriver tip (putty was also suggested, along with pieces of tape with the screw pushed thru) - I’ve tried the rubber cement in a similar situation, let it dry a bit, ‘thread’ it into the hole and tighten - pull the screwdriver away (the cement bond is rather weak) and just rub off the cement ‘snot’ from the screw and the screwdriver.
If screwdrivers were not allowed altogether, well, I don’t know then…

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To also answer the OP: good designers take into account the characteristics of construction materials and limits of capability of construction equipment as well as the abilities of the “lowly” construction worker.

Examples:

You might be able to drive a track-hoe through an 18-ft opening, but don’t expect it to be able to swing around in it.
Don’t specify plastic drainage pipe for 48" diameters and above, because those sizes aren’t manufactured in plastic.
Etc.

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The rule is supposed to be the 6 "P rule: Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance.

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Sometimes good engineers and designers get their designs thrown back at them for not “looking pretty” and they are forced to make things harder to replace/fix. There’s always going to be someone somewhere who doesn’t like the idea of an exposed screw head ruining his baby.

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Exactly.

I’m an electromechanical designer (commercial/industrial 6 years, now aerospace) so I fit somewhere in between the engineers and manufacturing. We try, but usually no one else cares enough to schedule the time in the project before hand. Outside of routine maintenance, failures are simply not designed for or at most it’s the last consideration for those above us.

In most circumstances here’s the priority list for commercial/industrial products:

  1. End-user in normal use
  2. Making everything fit in the package size (usually dictated by someone else)
  3. Manufacturing/ease of assembly (based on tools readily available on the manufacturing floor)
  4. If it has electronics – techs have access to boards/test points
  5. Routine maintenance access and ease
  6. People that have to fix unscheduled failures

Usually somewhere around consideration 2 or 3 we’re told to get it ready to send out for quotes and here’s the next project. Never got to finish ONE project in six years, that’s why I work on stuff that goes into orbit now and will never need to be pretty and damn well better not fail.

As for cars, I got no excuse for those idiots. :smiley:

14

Sorry SirRay,I should have been more clear. Once you can get the screw partially threaded there was enough room to use a screwdriver. The trick is getting the damn screw partially threaded, I have used bubble gum in similar situations with moderate success but rubber cement sounds like a way better solution, thanks for the idea.

15

I tried to take the guys who ran and repaired the equipment into account when I designed apparatus, partly because I felt that not to do so was bad engineering. Also, the people who often had to repair the devices were frequently our own guys, nt the cusyomers. Sometimes it was me. This makes you very sensitive to bad design, and poorly-placed screws.

I LOATHE Phillips-head screws. Give me a single-slot anytime. But better still are hex heads and allen bolts, which I used whenever Icould.

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Personally, I prefer Phillips over slotted simply because they are easier to drive and remove quickly. Phillips are designed to be self-centering. Hex heads and Allens are better still, but Robertsons beat all of them.

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I’m an engineer with the advantage of being married to a former machinist/tool maker. When I was still new to the design biz, I used to talk to him about my projects, and he gave me the artisan point of view.

As I worked more and spent time with the machinists, mechanics, and welders who built my designs, I learned to consult with them when I could. So some of us think beyond our designs to the people who build and use our designs. Sadly, it’s not something that was taught, at least not when I was in school.

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This is why you have PFYs. :smiley:

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Didn’t expect a BOFH reference, though I don’t know why.

That reminds me, I need to read the archives for the past 6 months or so. Thanks for the reminder!

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For poor design of a regular maintenance item on a machine you have to try hard to beat the oil filter on a Land Rover Defender diesel.

To change the oil filter, which is hard up against the turbocharger,:

Remove the acoustic hood from the top of the motor.

Remove the air duct from the air intake (on top of the left front mudguard) to the air filter.

Remove the O2 sensor on the air filter.

Remove the heat shield from the exhaust manifold/pipe.

Then you can change the oil filter - remembering of course not to drain the oil while you have the filter off because then you get an air lock in the system and the oil pump won’t re-prime.