They don't need to spin up a production facility for a run of four trash cans. I guarantee there are ad hoc metal shops aplenty. Cut some sheet metal on the CNC, run it through a folder-thingy, rivet/weld it up, add some hinge hardware. You're talking one guy and 2-4 days, including the CAD work.
Is your metal you are using NIST certified and traceable?
How about your welds? One guy, so yours saying he inspected his own work and no sign-off?!
You gonna retain those records?
ASA-100, Distributor Quality System Standard, paragraph 12:
“The distributor shall maintain documentation of traceability for at least 7 years…
Here is a small non-exhaustive list I found of what you need:
Did your shipment meet all the customer’s requirements? Note that this extends to more than just PN, QTY and ship-to. Failure to read and heed those pesky T&Cs (the Terms and Conditions on a typical PO or RO) is a frequent NCR.
Who signed your C of C/Material Cert? Are they authorized to do so (cross checked to the Roster)?
Where was the part obtained from? Are they on the Approved Suppliers List?
Did you send the part to a repair station/AMO? Are they on the Approved Suppliers List?
Whomever you claim to have trace to, is the chain of custody acceptably documented?
Are part numbers, serial numbers, and condition in harmony?
If there were any deviations from what the customer required, was there reasonable documentation in the record showing the customer’s acceptance of the deviation?
Anyway, good luck with your metal shop business and running parts through the folder-thingy. Please bear in mind that the link I provided is just a small look at the regulations that govern Civil Aircraft and that Mil-Spec is an entirely different beast, but I am sure you know that already!
You think Boeing didn't already have all those processes and shops in place?
If it still costed them tens of thousands to produce a trash can, I'd argue they're doing their job really inefficiently. Not really what you'd call an economy of scale.
> You think Boeing didn't already have all those processes and shops in place?
For parts likely not manufactured in decades? No. They likely didn't have current paperwork for that. Boeing wasn't sitting around just waiting to replace some trash cans just in case the Pentagon was going to order some.
Trash cans for a plane whose commercial counterpart has been out of service for decades is literally not an economy of scale. An order for replacement trash cans at this point is a specialty boutique order.
You are not certifying a process. You are certifying a process for that part.
If the process changes, you have to go back and re-certify.
If the technology changes, you have to go back and re-certify.
In some places, if you change the machine the part is run on, you have to go back and re-certify.
So if you take a part that was stick welded, move it to a tig welder and then move it to an automated spot welder, you have to certify 3 times.
Not to mention, a tig weld may behave differently under stress than a stick weld so make sure that you do a part analysis too!
Last but not least, the regulations have changed from the last time this aircraft was produced. Are your parts governed by the new regulations or the old?
This is what got Boeing in so much trouble with the MAX, they didn't want to re-certify the aircraft so they kept making changes to the design. Do you think they are getting more or less scrutiny now when they say "It's an old design, everything is cool!"
Up-thread, comment was to farm it our to a local machine shop with one guy. Here is the FAA on Counterfeit parts:
>Counterfeit Parts: These are unapproved parts manufactured and sold without FAA >approval. You should report them to the FAA as a SUP. There may be obvious, or >not so obvious, visual clues to help you spot these parts. The FAA aggressively >investigates these cases and works closely with the Office of Inspector General >(OIG) and law enforcement officials to ensure proper adjudication. There are >cases of this nature that have resulted in significant civil penalties and/or >jail time for those involved.
https://iflyamerica.org/safety_suspected_unapproved_parts.as...
Having been through this process with "some pieces of sheet metal" and "a design" $200k sounds reasonable if you want something produced to an actual specification. It costs a lot of money to pay "a guy in a metal shop" to build tooling to reproduce a design to a specification. I could probably get it done for a 5-figure NRE in certain quantities but the per-unit price goes up as the NRE goes down.
You should probably consider that these cans have to be tested to some minimal standard to make sure parts don't shear off under the stresses they encounter during their service life. These stresses are probably more significant for parts inside of a military aircraft, as it may be required to take evasive action or perform higher-stress maneuvers even though this is basically a 707 fitted with expensive electronics. It sounds dumb in isolation because it's a trash can, but if you want predictability and low failure rates you really do have to test everything.
I personally lack the imagination to consider all the failure modes of the can but that lack of imagination doesn't mean that the failure modes aren't real risks.
> It sounds dumb in isolation because it's a trash can, but if you want predictability and low failure rates you really do have to test everything.
It would really suck to lose an air crew because a trash can of all things made by some rando in their garage flew out of its mount in a wing over maneuver on a training exercise.
Sure. And all of this needs to be peoperly certified, to whatever standard the E-3 was certified against, in order to be mounted on the plane. Your comment tells me you were never involved in any of this.
Alternative: Those trash cans set in stock somewhere, the 300 buck price guarantee ran out, and the alternative was to not fly or develop new cans. Well, that wpupd also justify 50k per can if said E-3s are actually needed right now.
And your comment tells me you're too deep into the system to realize how ridiculous this is. Your guy in a metal shop can do this for $5k with plenty of padding. Hire your certification consultant for $15k, and so on. If being efficient with taxpayer money was a priority, you could do one-off jobs a hell of a lot more efficiently than this was handled.
There's a reason the Navy runs their own service and repair shops for submarines, and it's exactly to produce custom parts and tooling for overhauls and repairs.
I never said it wasn't somewhat ridiciulous, did I? I just try to explain the status quo, and some reasons why it is not as easy as buying some trash can from AliExpress or wherever.
But keep in mind, those same rules apply to safety critical parts, e.g. engines and wings. And overall, it is easier to just apply the same high standards to everything.
Assuming your numbers are accurate, that's still $5K per trashcan. Aviation is stupidly expensive.
Maybe contacting to a custom shop was an option but would take an extra week, and they needed those E3s in the air ASAP. I don't know what specific circumstances were at play, and neither does anyone in this thread.
