Originally Posted by
weemonkey
Don't think, just do...what the drawing says..
"Hundreds of F-35s could have the wrong fasteners in “critical areas,” according to the Defense Contract Management Agency. But F-35 builder Lockheed Martin says the problem may not need to be fixed.“All aircraft produced prior to discovery of this [problem] have titanium fasteners incorrectly installed in locations where the design calls for Inconel,” the F-35 Joint Program Office said in an email in response to a query from Air Force Magazine. “Because of this, the engineering safety analysis of the issue has assumed that each critical F-35 joint was assembled with the incorrect fasteners.”
Boeing levels of assumption (not to mention quality controls) being displayed there..slap some paint over the top no one will spot it..
To paraphrase Joe Stalin "corrosion has a quality all of its own"
wonder if the weight reduction program may have led to an proposal drawing actually being adopted???
weemonkey, your post is most confusing. It has nothing to do with Boeing or are you confused as to which supplier is responsible for design, manufacturing, assembly and testing the F-35 fighter aircraft? The supplier of the F-35 is Lockheed-Martin, LM for short. The program is on going for 20 years or more now, with no end in sight. It is a political aircraft. LM sold their soul to the devil when they agreed to source components in roughly 48 of the 50 States to make Congress happy and be awarded the business plus what was needed to be sourced outside the USA to draw in foreign customers. The result of all of this in 2020 is that none of the three versions are ever going to meet the original LM promised capabilities. As it now stands, there are 873 deficiencies existing that need to be fixed. The problem is, as some of the older deficiencies are fixed, new one are found. The example today being titanium fasteners being placed in critical areas that were supposed to receive Inconel fasteners.
tdracer is correct, a huge difference is weight, titanium lighter, Inconel much heavier. As for visual differences, there is a number stamped on each fastener to distinguish one from another, e.g., titanium from Inconel. Now inserting fasteners seems to me to be a rather boring job on the factory floor, sort of like the repetitive sandblasting job. Nevertheless, training and monitoring the results of training are significant factors in acceptable quality control.
Hopefully, LM is correct in asserting the titanium fasteners will be okay and will not need to be replaced in the critical locations. Then the 874 known deficiencies can be reduced to 873 assuming another new deficiency isn't found right away.
Insofar as Stalin is concerned, hopefully the correct fasteners were used in his coffin to prevent corrosion and early release of the contents.