[Kevin Sevcik]

Nevertheless, there's a LOT of teams out there that aren't having these problems. Many with students working electrical that are only moderately careful about things. If there were a 50% failure rate on these studs, even if only with inexperienced students working on them, there would be dozens of teams complaining about this. I'm not discounting your experiences, I'm just proposing that your team might be an unlucky outlier here.

Also, the engineers working on these components understand these kind of issues just as well as you do. I'm quite certain Eric Van Wyk would love to use a standard 1/4-20 stud there if there was one available that would work.

So, let's not assume malice or indifference by the designers and manufacturer. Let's assume they want to fix things and work towards that. I'm sure they'd work with you to get a replacement board and get your broken one returned so they can see if it's a problem they need to address.

Also, FWIW, even with its quirks, the current PDB is light years better than some of the previous solutions. Especially compared to the kludge of power distribution terminal blocks, giant MAXI circuit breaker blocks, and mini circuit breaker panels we had to use up to 2008. The new PDB does the work of those three parts in a smaller, lighter package that's easier to use and wire, and has more functionality to boot. And it's much more reliable than the previous attempt at an all-in-one solution, IFI's circuit breaker panel that was mandatory in 2005, optional in 2006, and never seen again after.