How NOT to build something

This past week, I've had the privilege of attending training for a particular breed of liquid-handling robot. It does its job, and it works reasonably well, and The Vast Pharmaceutical Juggernaut which gives me money owns quite a few. They do tend to break more (a lot more) than other brands, but they are also simpler to program.

Now that I've torn one down and rebuilt it, I am shocked, amazed, appalled, disgusted, dismayed, and mildly outraged. Engineers supposedly design these things, right? No engineer I've ever met would admit to designing this one.

Let's talk fasteners. Metric allen-head bolts? Sure, of course, they Da Bomb, and everyone knows it. Usually, that's about it. But WAIT! There's more! SAE freaking allen-head bolts. What?!?!? Two different measuring units on the same robot? Madness. But hold the phone, the insanity gets worse! FREAKING PHILLIPS-HEAD BOLTS! For the love of all that is Holy, these are the scourge of the universe. Is this a nightmare? No, no, sadly it is reality.

My dear brother the aerospace engineer, would be furious if he saw this thing. Blind bolts you can't get to without massive disassembly, high-stress bolts in shear (bad engineer! Bad! BAD!), an infinite amount of "tweaking" required to render the robot remotely operational. Incorrect Loktite application. And mind-scrambling opportunities for failure, any one of which requires a total rebuild. Hmm, this motor output shaft has a lovely flat on it...let's put a round coupler on it and completely ignore the convenient flat, and introduce the possibility - nay, certainty - that at some point the motor will spin and the drive shaft won't. Brilliant.

Rant over.