Is it the size we said it would be?
Station 4 of 5 on the road every made thing goes down. Measure what came back against what we drew.
- How long
- Nothing to do here yet, and the page says why.
- You need
- Nothing yet
- Messy
- No.
Where each one stands here.
- The JumboNot yetFirst article: our bench, T1–T5 · waiting on Max
- Max, the Shop LightNot yet2 pre-production units · waiting on Maker
- LarryNot yetMeasure the first article against the pattern · waiting on Max
Try this at the table.
One for each object. A grayed-out one is not us being lazy. It is a thing that cannot honestly be done until somebody clears the gate written on it.
Measure your own airplane.
Five checks come off the drawing: length, wingspan, sweep, the fin tip, and whether the wing threads its own hole. We will publish our five numbers and what we actually got. Take a ruler to something in your house and write down the same kind of list.
IdeaMeasurement. Looking at it is a guess. Writing the number down is the whole trick.
Opens when: First article: our bench, T1–T5 · Max
Measure two of them and find the difference.
Two pre-production Maxes get measured side by side. Same drawing, same shop. They will not match exactly, and the size of the gap is what quality actually means.
IdeaTolerance. Nothing is ever exactly the number, so somebody has to say how far off is allowed.
Opens when: 2 pre-production units · Maker
Measure a stuffed thing and find the extra.
A stuffed animal is always bigger than its pattern, because the filling pushes outward. Measure any soft toy you already own, then squash it flat and measure it again. The difference is what a pattern maker has to allow for, and it is the one number Larry's tooling does not know yet.
IdeaAllowance. The finished thing is never the same size as the flat thing it came from.
Opens when: Measure the first article against the pattern · Max
That is the end of this one
The word for what you just did is inspection.
Inspection is what a grown-up calls this station on a resume. It is one of five, it always happens in this order, and skipping it does not save you the work. It only moves the work to a later station where it costs more.
Where to go now