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Unread 11-02-2010, 11:45
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Re: 1/2" gap in bumpers, is this acceptable?

Mike, that's a great picture of what most bumpers looked like several years ago... But last year and this year, unfortunately, it's not legal. As Al said, however, it's a fairly easy fix, provided you left enough cloth material there to cover the additional few inches.

As a real-life lesson here (adding to what vivek16 said about tolerances), can any of you think of a current, rather big issue for a major company that revolves around tolerances?

Toyota has recalled millions of cars recently due to a stuck gas pedal. Having seen videos of the procedure to fix it, the problem is one of tolerances. The pedal depresses a switch, indicating how fast the car should go by how far the switch is depressed. Well, there's a small gap between the pedal and the switch - small enough that something can get stuck in there and hold the switch down when the pedal is not being pressed. The solution? A small shim stuck in there to fill the gap and prevent anything from getting stuck there.

If the gas pedals were made to stricter tolerances, Toyota wouldn't have this problem. They wouldn't be facing a congressional inquiry, they wouldn't have had to stop sales of those vehicles (losing millions of dollars per day in the process) and spend millions of dollars fixing cars currently on the road. Tolerances are a big issue in industry - both in knowing what tolerances are acceptable for a part and in being able to meet those tolerances.

Learn from Toyota's example. In their case, a gap of 1-3mm cost them millions of dollars. Granted, we don't have to be that exact with the robots or the bumpers... but it is a valuable lesson.