You are absolutely correct. I worked for 24 years in the Everett plant. 747 wing body join. Q.A. never had a horse in the race as to whether or not an engineering disposition was favorable, only if the process called out ie NDT requirements etc were correct. Quality would write pickups, they would document non conformance, they stamped defective part reorder tags and red scrap part tags. The part was scrapped by the engineering review if it was of any significance. A bent retainer for a bulb seal is treated differently than a gouge on a torque tube for instance. That process was almost 100 percent initiated by a line worker. If it was something that may have been overlooked there would be a line check requested which would kick out a greenline from planning to check and correct downstream units. Production managers would scream all the time about the dispo on a tag. Quality assurance people did not evaluate the structural and or functional acceptance of a defect. Only liaison engineers. I would guess the fastener shard he refers to is the thread of a BACN10BH* steel collar. The interference fit on those would sometimes peel slivers out. When they did you had to grab it with pliers and break it the rest of the way off. Rarely did I see one fall off on it’s own. It would usually hang off the end of the pin. I installed hundreds of thousands of fasteners of all types over the years. The collar shard is not a new phenomenon. In three decades he must have been around the older legacy aluminum tubes. The collars all torque the same. Tighten it until the tail snaps off. Remove the thread curl if present. Clean up your mess. Done.
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