Then, after it's been around long enough, I have to factor in poor component and labor quality control.
Eventually, if you wait too long, machines & tooling wear out and then THAT is the thing to worry about.
So, EVERYTHING in EVERY market is suspect to me and I have come to realize that it is in fact ME that is usually the quality control factor in most any market.
Todd.
I can't say it's in every market, but it is in manufacturing across the board, especially non-union shops, which is almost every firearm manufacturer outside of Colt these days.
The sad reality is that there's a race to the bottom in manufacturing when it comes to pay and thus skills. The goal of management in manufacturing is no longer taking care of their employees and keeping them happy, it's paying as little as possible, maximizing profits as far as possible and if that means bad product has to leave the door to keep from investing millions into improving QC or hiring better employees... so be it.
The guys working at S&W or Ruger 50 years ago were probably making the equivalent of $20 an hour today. Today's guys and girls are making $12 an hour.
The machines that make the revolver frames I see in videos at S&W are old, like at least 20 years old, but they're Japanese Tsugami machines and Japanese machines are the best you can get. So, it's not machines, tooling can get worn, but QC is supposed to catch those mistakes.
The issue is that unlike 40, 50, 60 years ago, there's too much CNC being used, too much CMM being used. Back in the day each dimension cut on a revolver was done on a manual mill using jigs or fixtures and it was one guy who did it for decades. Boring work, but the quality was unmatched because that guy knew exactly what he had to do to make a good product.
Today, instead of one dimension cut per machine, it's all dimensions cut on one machine.
I watched a video of a shirt & tie at S&W talking about the tooling being computerized for the CNC's like it's doesn't even need people to check the parts it makes. There was video of a slide being inspected on a CMM and he was saying they don't need go/no-go gages anymore.
IMO, go/no-go gages are the best, most cost effective inspection tool you can give a machine operator to ensure quality.
I can tell you with how slow CMM's are, not every single part is getting inspected on a CMM, they inspect in batches. I don't know what the percent rate is of inspected parts, but a place I worked at if they get 500 parts, they inspect 50 of them. If 45 of them pass inspection, all 500 parts are good.
That's the way it is today.
