As we are now under a severe time crunch on this project we had to jettison the idea of using water, which was magical, and come up with another way. And we did - kudos to our team who arrived at that novel solution in my absence. 

            

We know that whatever we build, and whatever level of performance we can achieve, the factory will not be able to match it. What we build has to work much better than need be, so that when in production, the performance is still satisfactory, even when reduced. 

            

The solution to another problem encountered would have required that we glue a rod to one of the components. "No can do," says the factory. The component supplier cannot guarantee that the components supplied will be identical in dimension and other specifications, and the expected variation means we can’t use this approach. 

 

 

            

The factory is also concerned that their workers would not glue the pieces accurately enough, resulting in throwing out a lot of components. They were also opposed to specially training their workers to do that part of the assembly.

            

So, instead of gluing we tried magnets to attach these components - a brilliant idea on the part of our engineer. While this solved a lot of problems, it added cost. It also raised concerns that the strength of the magnets may not be sufficiently consistent from the supplier unless a higher price was paid for them. On top of that, the components may vary such that magnets might not work reliably in manufacture even if we could overcome the problems related to the magnets themselves. 

            

We aren't tearing our hair out yet. Maybe tomorrow we will start. 

 

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