[unclebilly]

Originally Posted by David

Does Boeing test material or just trust the heat certs?

I don't think I could work in a shop that didn't have a material analyzer gun and hardness tester onsite. We usually rely on heat certs but if anything is suspect or super critical we check it.

We had both at the pressure control place and Q1 made us be in control of our supply chain. At the end of the day, trust played a big role in the material being what the MTR said it was.

The XRF gun isn’t 100% accurate and only identifies the materials it is programmed to recognize - we didn’t have 1075 tool steel programmed into ours. It also doesn’t give carbon content.

With massive billets of steel, the hardness varies by 5 or more points of the Rockwell C scale from the outside surface to the core (thermodynamics are to blame during heat treatment).

I wanted them manufacturing to scan and hardness test every incoming billet and report anomalies which would have flagged this material for further testing but they didn’t want to…