What is this?

[heathicus]

mickyd, you talk like a QA Manager.

[robinson46176]

In the old tractor hobby we call those "Easy Breaks". They are useful in larger stuff or in a case where the broken bolt is not seriously stuck but you just need a handle to turn it.
Many of the old tractor guys and other repairman have started buying and recommending left twist drill bits. You use them in a reversible drill and as you drill if the broken bolt loosens up the bit will spin it out of the hole.
One problem with the "Easy Breaks" is that they only work one direction. I have a set of extractors that are a straight spline. You use the proper drill from the set and then drive the straight spline into the hole. Then there is a hard nut looking thing for each size that drops over the stem and is turned with a wrench. The big advantage is that you can "rock" it back and forth to help lubes penetrate better and relieve binding. Even after it once moves it can help to add lube and rock it back and forth a little.

[mickyd]

mickyd, you talk like a QA Manager.

Up on the soapbox now....

Been dealing with (aka interrogating ) tight lipped engineers / product managers for 30 years attempting to get them to explain exactly why stuff fails and how to prevent recurrence (aka root cause analysis), even when it's the customers fault. I get a little 'troubled' when they can't or don't want to provide functional consumer specifications. Us 'QA guys' are typically the one bearing face to the customer and those higher up in the companies food chain regarding field failures / customer complaints. You can tell by following this post that there is definitely customer dissatisfaction with an extractor product and the reason is probably because the products capabilities are obviously being exceeded, yet the consumer has no way of even knowing / detecting that.

Off the soapbox now....

[Ed in Tampa]

Up on the soapbox now....

Been dealing with (aka interrogating ) tight lipped engineers / product managers for 30 years attempting to get them to explain exactly why stuff fails and how to prevent recurrence (aka root cause analysis), even when it's the customers fault. I get a little 'troubled' when they can't or don't want to provide functional consumer specifications. Us 'QA guys' are typically the one bearing face to the customer and those higher up in the companies food chain regarding field failures / customer complaints. You can tell by following this post that there is definitely customer dissatisfaction with an extractor product and the reason is probably because the products capabilities are obviously being exceeded, yet the consumer has no way of even knowing / detecting that.

Off the soapbox now....

Mike
The problem is COST or to put it another way MONEY.

Extractors can be built that will never break, in fact the original bolts could have been built that way.

Most every product like this works 100 percent when tested in lab tests within the limits that cost established. It is when you take these tools outside the test lab that failures occur. Why? numerous reasons here is a few, the customer was using too small a extractor, the bolt stud was so stuck that an extractor simply would never remove it, or torgue was supplied in a way that momentarily exceeded design spec in some way.

[robinson46176]

Another factor is inadequate care during assembly. Unproven opinions to the contrary lubricating a bolt or screw will not in most cases cause it to loosen up in use.
Also dissimilar metals do not have to be as different as steel and aluminum to cause problems with threads either but those two can be a real pain in a damp environment.
I have spent all of my life taking stuff apart and putting stuff together. I have formed a rule in my shop... Virtually nothing goes together dry. I have for 40 years used a lot anti-seize compound in assembly work both in automotive applications and in farm machinery. If I had put it together 30 years ago and it sat in the weather it will likely be easy to disassemble. If someone else did it, all bets are off. Many times the lube is common grease or oil. It still will often be in there 30 years later.
One of the biggest problems with most anti-seize compounds is the way it tracks onto everything within a 500' radius... Just open the can and it is all over you. Still, when you are laying on your back in the mud under a combine pulling on a nut with a 2" opening box end wrench "rusted stuck" is not a good thing.
-
One problem I found when working with engineers etc. was the actually small % of them who once they designed something felt that they had achieved perfection... Once perfection is achieved their minds snapped shut.
I was a go between on a building project one time where in a meeting a (very sharp) construction foreman threw out a very casual suggestion for consideration as a possible improvement. I wish I could have made a video of the infantile temper tantrum the architect threw over that suggestion... The #$%& foreman was attacking his baby... How dare he question perfection...
BTW, the foreman, now deceased) was proven right after the project was done.

[mickyd]

Mike
The problem is COST or to put it another way MONEY.

Extractors can be built that will never break, in fact the original bolts could have been built that way.

Most every product like this works 100 percent when tested in lab tests within the limits that cost established. It is when you take these tools outside the test lab that failures occur. Why? numerous reasons here is a few, the customer was using too small a extractor, the bolt stud was so stuck that an extractor simply would never remove it, or torgue was supplied in a way that momentarily exceeded design spec in some way.

one of mickyd's quality philosophy....

I couldn't disagree more that the problem is restricted to or even primarily due to cost / money. Cost is only 1 component of a multi component formula that determines customer satisfaction. In my experience, cost is frequently a typical engineering response to a problem...."If we only had more budget to make it better......". In the long run, that mentality stifles a businesses ability to be competitive. More cost rarely equals more sales.

A 'customer sensitive' response looks at what it takes to meet the customers expectation, which many times is provided through education. Many folks here are soured by the thought of screw extractors and that is due to the lack of understood application methods i.e. when it will work and when it won't.

An extractor can never be built, regardless of the cost, that will not break. Neither can a fastener. As long as there is a thing called physics and as long as materials have physical properties, there will never be anything made that cannot break.

An extractor can as is built that meets customer expectations. Does the customer even know what those expectations are? Probably not. Expectation does not mean that it had to successfully remove every broken fastener it comes across but it does mean that an 'educated' customer expects only so much. What they don't expect is that it snaps off causing more problems than you started out with. So that it doesn't snap off, one should only apply "x" amount of properly applied torque before calling it quits and going to plan "B".

[Ed in Tampa]

one of mickyd's quality philosophy....

break. Neither can a fastener. As long as there is a thing called physics and as long as materials have physical properties, there will never be anything made that cannot break.

Perhaps I should have worded it differently for enough money an extractor and/or bolt can be built that are strong enough that whatever they are holding together (in the case of the bolt) or being used on to remove the broken stud (in the case of an extractor) that before either the bolt or the extracor breaks the piece they are being used on will have been destroyed.

I still hold to the belief it is all pivoital on money. When an engineer designs something he doesn't design it to withstand everything only what is expected to be experienced within normal use. The reason they don't over design it is cost. They may even build in a margin of safety but again that is dictated by cost.

Look at our automobiles they could be designed to for surviviability in 99 percent of accidents but they aren't they are only built to level that don't increase cost over an established level.

Example we all know thread taps are as prone to snap as extractors yet I once saw a tap that was chucked in an electric drill (don't ask and no I didn't do it). It was used to tap about 20 holes it never broked. I dare you to take a normal 10/32 tap, chuck it in a drill and tap 20 holes as fast as you can while still retaining threads. The tap was one from the space industry and cost 100x what a normal tap costs. So yes a bolt or extractor can be built that won't break (before everything else is destroyed) if cost isn't a factor. It is done everyday in the space industry.

[mickyd]

Perhaps I should have worded it differently for enough money an extractor and/or bolt can be built that are strong enough that whatever they are holding together (in the case of the bolt) or being used on to remove the broken stud (in the case of an extractor) that before either the bolt or the extracor breaks the piece they are being used on will have been destroyed.

I still hold to the belief it is all pivoital on money. When an engineer designs something he doesn't design it to withstand everything only what is expected to be experienced within normal use. The reason they don't over design it is cost. They may even build in a margin of safety but again that is dictated by cost.

Look at our automobiles they could be designed to for surviviability in 99 percent of accidents but they aren't they are only built to level that don't increase cost over an established level.

Example we all know thread taps are as prone to snap as extractors yet I once saw a tap that was chucked in an electric drill (don't ask and no I didn't do it). It was used to tap about 20 holes it never broked. I dare you to take a normal 10/32 tap, chuck it in a drill and tap 20 holes as fast as you can while still retaining threads. The tap was one from the space industry and cost 100x what a normal tap costs. So yes a bolt or extractor can be built that won't break (before everything else is destroyed) if cost isn't a factor. It is done everyday in the space industry.

Your probably thinking "Man...won't this guy give it up?".....

Forum text conversations vs. dialog can be maddening!! I know, I have to deal with jpg all the time. I think our brains Ed are going in two different directions. In the event that&#8217]quality through education[/U], not product improvement. As it relates to screw extractors, I feel a lot of instances of what is perceived as “poor quality / poor results” is due to lack of education. One of the products my company distributes is thread cutting taps. We had frequent problems with walk in customers and certain machine shops either breaking taps, or having various other quality complaints, trying to return them as 'defective'. The policy was no returns for broken taps. The taps we sell are a decent commercial grade. Since the known reputable machine shops we sold to weren't’t returning them or complaining, it seemed the problem could be procedural. People just didn't’t know how to use them properly. Heading up Quality Assurance and getting real tired of the complaints, a technical data sheet was developed (aka hacked off the web!!) that outlined common tap problems and ways to avoid them. We now offer a 100% money back guarantee to any customer that reviews and signs off this data sheet at the time of the sale should they have a failure. Returned taps are now virtually non-existent. This is Quality through education, not product improvement. Additional cost…..a photocopied 8-1/2" x 11" sheet of paper. Here's a pdf of the data sheet, and p.s. notice the table at the end of the sheet.

[ATTACH]7362[/ATTACH]

It is a guideline for the max torque to apply. If the guideline can be created for a tap, it can also be done for a screw extractor. For that matter, an entire instruction sheet should be available for their use that would talk about prep, attempted removal, what to do if it doesn't’t come out (i.e. penetrating oil soak, tap with hammer, apply heat etc.)

Now, your post. I 1000% agree with your comment regarding design and compromises based on cost. No reasonable person would argue that. I have a 40 piece commercial tap and die set, (#4 thru ½ inch course / fine ) that I bought at Harbor Freight on sale for $9.00. http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=39391 . I sell an identical 40 piece set of industrial grade tap and dies manufactured by Greenfield Industries for just over $1100.00. (>100x the price of Harbor Freight). Ya think somebody had to make some serious compromises to meet a cost objective??

What I can’t agree with is the re-worded first paragraph and an implication in the last paragraph. Tensile / torsional strength of bolts and torsional strength of extractors cannot be made to exceed the physical properties of the things they are intended to do. The technology just doesn't’t exist. It’s back to physics and material properties. And tapping with a electric drill….it can be accomplished providing your controlling the variables that cause taps to break. Machine tapping is done all the time. Many machine tapping operations (drills, CNC’s etc.) only require a good quality tap, not a x100 price tap. If your interested in reading a little bit about it, go to the second and third sections of this website.

So, we either agree to disagree in text OR I’ll meet you halfway (Central Texas would be about right) and we debate verbally over coffee. All this typing is wearing me out.

[BigSky]

Like so many other things, if you use it wrong it won't work. If you don't know how, either learn or don't use it.

[robinson46176]

My other point I was trying to make in the mickyd quality philosophy post was quality through education, not product improvement.

I don't grind very many chainsaw chains anymore, maybe 100 a year. I used to do a lot of them before I retired. In about 30 years of grinding them I only had one actual complaint and that was from a farmer neighbor that can be a bit of a twit at times. I know what he did. He installed the chain backwards.
I did discover in conversation with a lot of people including professional tree trimmers and other pros that most were woefully lacking in basic knowledge about such things as uneven bar wear and maintaining the depth gauges etc. Few even knew to keep flipping the bar over. Today with the internet it is easy to find information like this page:
http://www.oregonchain.com/pro/service/faq.htm
to educate yourself. Back then the internet was 6 scientist discussing quantum physics over a university link.
I made an information sheet with basic explanations and some stolen sketches and one went out with each sharpened chain. Probably one of the best things I ever did... We started getting bars in to be squared and leveled and guys asking to have their depth gauges ground. We got a lot of discussion out of customers that discovered stuff that was usually not in the saw manual.