Counterfeit Titanium!
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/bu...-titanium-planes-faa-investigating-rcna157160
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/bu...-titanium-planes-faa-investigating-rcna157160
More Boeing bad news
- Thread starter LenZee
- Start date
It’s happened before with aluminium.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/alum...ver-46-million-defrauding-customers-including
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/alum...ver-46-million-defrauding-customers-including
This has been happening for two decades or more. Originally it was EOL titanium fan blades that were pulled from service at an offshore maintenance facility, then making their way to China to be spiffed up to look brand new, and eventually being distributed to approved new parts inventory channels.
Scott
Scott
Isn't Boeing and Airbus (or any manufacturer) supposed to have checks in place to keep this very thing from happening?
When engineers ran the company It would have had a better chance of catching it. Finance bros running it now are more concerned about profits vs safety.
It sounds more like issues with the provenance of the metals and the paperwork, as the supplier claimed to have received it from another supplier. The supply chain seems to be really convoluted before it reached Spirit. Spirit, Boeing, and Airbus claim to have tested the parts of verified that they meet all the physical requirements.
The problem has been traced back to a Chinese supplier that sold titanium to Turkish company Turkish Aerospace Industries in 2019. Documentation from this Chinese supplier claimed that the titanium had been sourced from another Chinese firm, Baoji Titanium Industry - however, Baoji Titanium has confirmed that it did not provide this batch of titanium "and has no business dealing with this company."
Not necessarily. It would be very cost prohibitive to test every attribute of every lot of all incoming material. And quality control studies have shown that you can't inspect quality into a product, but instead build quality in.
So most leading manufacturers have transitioned away from incoming inspection as a method to control the quality of incoming material, instead partnering closely with their suppliers, and contractually obligating the supplier to build quality into their product, and provide data to show compliance. It used to be that a supplier may have to submit certification data with each shipment. But these days, certification data will be submitted when a product is new, but later, only when the customer requests data.
No manufacturer intentionally selects a supplier that they think will cheat and lie to them.
This supply chain seemed to have a lot of middlemen though. It looks like it went through the original manufacturer (which is unknown at this point), another company in China, then a company in Turkey, and then Spirit Aerosystems.
Its been happening since the late 70's
Someones always running a scam.
Ehh, maybe?
That the materials were tested and parts in service were allowed to remain in service leads me to believe that they either couldn't be traced (non serialized) or they weren't otherwise critical.
Could've been as small as a single batch of panel fasteners.
Not necessarily a scam, but rather, a company that initially thought they could produce material to the specification, but when they got up to full production rates, they found their process was not capable of consistently making material to the spec. Perhaps they thought they could eventually dial in the process and fix things, but they did not want to lose the contract, so they started off fudging the data on a shipment here and there. Perhaps the results were only slightly out of tolerance.
The customer never caught them at the time, so they got comfortable with "fixing" the data when it was out. Eventually, fudging the data became so commonplace that they no longer thought anything of it.
This kind of thing happens. I've personally seen it. Let's just say I wasn't surprised by the company behind the largest cumulative automotive recall in world history, and leave it at that.
Or, perhaps testing and/or engineering evaluations were done, and it was determined that, even though the material didn't meet the specifications that were drawn up at the time of design, it still performed more than well enough to not create a risk of failure.
So, you link an article describing how Boeing and Airbus, both companies, have this problem.
But you write a thread title that bashes only Boeing?
Sure, that seems fair and unbiased…
I remember seeing an article in Time Magazine in the 80s where they showed some counterfeit engine replacement parts purporting to be from Pratt & Whitney. The packaging was actually pretty close to the original, which had the United Technologies logo.
Because an admin was upset with the fact I didn't mention Airbus, AIRBUS IS ALSO INVOLVED.
There done, That being said I'm more concerned by far of Boeing's every day exposure of safety shortcomings.
(Attention-this is my opinion)
Especially since most of my flights are in a Boeing product. If your mode of transport is Airbus, You are welcome to fly either company or whatever brand you want or just ignore the problems with both companies.
There done, That being said I'm more concerned by far of Boeing's every day exposure of safety shortcomings.
(Attention-this is my opinion)
Especially since most of my flights are in a Boeing product. If your mode of transport is Airbus, You are welcome to fly either company or whatever brand you want or just ignore the problems with both companies.
Manufactures can and do regularly check the materials to meet chemistry spec, it is very easy to do nowadays with very costly hand held spectrometers.
The problem is it can't show porosity, microstructure, proper distribution of elements, included gases etc. I would suppose it is a very expensive deal to handle liquid Titanium, it has to be done in a vacuum. I suppose it is VAR heated through some cycles to make sure of the purity.
This is not a Boeing issue, nor Airbus, blame it on the ones that shut down USA metal production.
This is one of the reasons most everything now in the automotive world ends up having issues as well, just plain bad metals being produced in other country's.
By the way the Ti parts I'm familiar with used on some aircraft are made very redundant, instead of one part it is made of 2 parts sandwiched together, so if one develops a crack the other one holds till inspection time.
The only fix would be to have an in house Titanium foundery and toss the Ti in a furnace and remelt it and start over.
The cost would be huge.
The problem is it can't show porosity, microstructure, proper distribution of elements, included gases etc. I would suppose it is a very expensive deal to handle liquid Titanium, it has to be done in a vacuum. I suppose it is VAR heated through some cycles to make sure of the purity.
This is not a Boeing issue, nor Airbus, blame it on the ones that shut down USA metal production.
This is one of the reasons most everything now in the automotive world ends up having issues as well, just plain bad metals being produced in other country's.
By the way the Ti parts I'm familiar with used on some aircraft are made very redundant, instead of one part it is made of 2 parts sandwiched together, so if one develops a crack the other one holds till inspection time.
The only fix would be to have an in house Titanium foundery and toss the Ti in a furnace and remelt it and start over.
The cost would be huge.
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