Those methodologies don’t proscribe the bests places to hold a piece of glass for optimal adhesion. Just how to structure and operate just-in-time workflows.
> Do people really think that "gluing the glass in" is some bit of advanced engineering?
Conversely, do _you_ really think that - evenly applying an adhesive to an incredibly smooth surface (repeatably) to bond it to a frame and have it undergo twisting, vibration, and extremes of heat and cold, aerodynamic effects / pressure, exposure to moisture, UV and atmospheric contaminants and retaining its adhesion for the expected life of the vehicle -
But you're talking about chemical engineering of making glue, and luckily 3m (etc) have already done all that work.
All Tesla have to do is "buy the right glue", and then "make sure it gets put on correctly". That is a bit of production engineering but seriously it's not hard to lay down a bead of adhesive, place the glass in, and then check that it's been done.
I understand what you're saying but I disagree that it can be reduced to 'buy the right glue' and 'make sure it gets put on correctly' any more it does any more justice to a model CPU to say it's just 'take a transistor and replicate it 5 billion times on a hunk of silicon'. While that's technically true in both cases, it neglects to consider the level of technology that goes into all of the details to make it possible.
I'm not saying that attaching glass to metal is at the same level of complexity as semiconductor fab, but it's a far cry from using some Elmer's Glue to stick two pieces of construction paper together.
And yes, I'm pretty sure Tesla didn't create their own adhesive for the purpose, but I'm equally sure 3M doesn't have an off-the-shelf "Model Y Roof Adhesive, 500ml" product. Or perhaps they did, but the engineering constraints to develop it were those of normal passenger cars, sunroofs, etc., not taking into account the various forces acting upon a 4'x7' sheet of glass at highway speeds, or perhaps the temperatures or speeds of an industrial applicator robot (or conversely, the slowness of a human applicator).
To go back to your original assertion, no, it's not hard to lay down a bead of adhesive, place the glass in and check that it's been done. If in fact the failure mode was 'Failure to apply adhesive', well, that's a fairly egregious and easy to spot problem. If it's 'adhesive failed for unknown reasons after a short period of time', that's an altogether different problem.
Sure. Choose a glue that has the appropriate material properties in all expected conditions, longevity, resistance to all the various stresses, compatibility with both mating surfaces... Then put it in exactly the right place e.g. where the full range of expected operating conditions doesn't create too much stress or resonance... But only the right amount and with the right cure time and cure conditions.
Repeat this step with literally every weld, seal, screw, or other component. Then get it right for hundreds of thousands of cars regardless of the condition of the factory line and workers/robots.
de Havilland was making airplanes for 33 years when the famous Comet crash occurred.
Manufacturing is a learning process. There's a lot of engineering in every detail, and there will always be room for improvement.
The Comet thing was a design flaw, not a process/quality control flaw. And the Comet was essentially unique at the time; _no-one_ was making things like that. Lots of people today are making cars; Tesla could just hire experts. For that matter, they could buy/merge with a small car company.
I suspect there’s some sort of NIH thing going on.
Nobody had been making pressurised-cabin passenger aircraft for any appreciable length of time when the Comet crash happened. The situations are in no way comparable unless you restrict things to the powertrain.
Musk has admitted to how hard production is. Those little nuances in manufacturing like where to hold glass come from years of production/quality/root-cause analysis to arrive at best practices to avoid exactly these kinds of issues. Don't discount how hard it is just because it seems simple to the uninitiated.
Ever talked to somebody with little to no software experience who will tell you how easy it should be to just slap some code together to build a the next Google? It's like that.
It's only hard because he's insisting on re-inventing everything rather than just using standard engineering practices.
I used to build test equipment for aerospace and safety critical equipment for coal mining. I'm well aware that even with rigorous control you're going to get some errors. But "the glass fell out because we glued it wrong" isn't a normal manufacturing error. It's a mistake that requires more than one process to fail.
