ua549

Mostly by visual inspection with the service manager, a personal friend. He had some tools to check gap spacing that looked suspicious. For trim pieces, most of the issues were protrusions around the door windows. That said, I'm sure that many of those issues could be repaired prior to delivery. However my point is that robotic assembly is not as perfect as c4004matic believes it is.

petee1997

If anything is misaligned, it would be human error if it's on only 10% of the cars. The robots cannot think or deviate. Their work is wrong on all cars or right on all cars. Robots are programmed to repeat the exact same procedure time after time.

As I said before, you are misinformed on how robots perform.

ua549

I've had new cars with defective sheet metal welds that were done by robots.

So why are there flawed paint jobs as well as perfect paint jobs? Painting has been done by robots for decades.

The bottom line is that robots may repeat the same procedure, but can't account for variances in the materials they are working on. Inspections catch most of the failures, but not all of them.

c4004matic

Never said its perfect it just happens to be a lot more reliable whn robots do it. If the machine is calibrated incorrectly it will do it wrong every single time! That is called a QC failure. I've worked with automation for decades. Yes it like everything else can fail, however the amount of failures and error rate are orders of magnitude less than manual methods and the precision possible is way beyond human possiblity. You have robots that can work micrometer and nanogram range of measurement essentially 1000 times more precise than humans ever could. No human can stirweld for example, nor tack 700 welds a minute for a straight 15 days. There is no comparison at all, period. An AMG tech can turn out an engine in a day or two. Hopefully with no defects if he didnt get a naked selfie of his girlfriend a cople of robots is QCd properly can turn out 100 perfect engines in the same time.

ua549

I'm fully familiar with automation technology as used in the automotive industry and electronics/space industry. The biggest issue lies with part variances. Every part within spec, but the assembly still fails or performs poorly due to a min spec part matched with a max spec part. Those are random events and do not happen every time as you believe.

c4004matic

Unfortunately, I cant show you the data about error rates since Im an end user. However Im sure that any assembly engineer worth his salt could easily find the info. To furrher the point 20 years ago most part suppliers wernt even ISO 9000 certified thus they didnt even have manufacturing processes nevermind automation to ensure manufacturing quality! Again anyone thata has had any expirience with car ownership knows that cars are superbbly better made in the last ten years due to the overwhelmingly tighter tolerances and reproducibility out robotic systems. One very simple , no manufacturer in their right mind would have recommended 0w20 oil for any car. Now even turbo engines use it. That is not due to better oil its due to lower lubricty required given the exponentially better tolerances allowed by automated robotic systems.

ua549

I was using mil spec automated/robotic processes from the 60's onward as part of the Saturn/Apollo space program. Even then some of those processes such as solder slinging had a few consistency issues even though they were computer controlled.

Car engines are better today, but robotic product assembly has not progressed nearly as much. Which has better assembly quality, a robot assembled 2015 Fiat or a hand assembled 2015 Ferrari? They were both made by FCA (Fiat Chrysler).

vic viper

Seriously? you are comparing one of the most expensive, exclusive cars in the market to to one of the cheapest, crappiest out there?

ua549

I'm comparing the robotic built car which according to c4004matic is a superior method to hand built cars. Both cars in my comparison were built by the same company. Using c4004matic's logic the Fiat assembly is best. We know that is not true.

petee1997

The Fiat is inferior due to the quality of the components, not robotics. The Ferrari is hand build because of its' low volume and robotics would be would be cost prohibitive.

ua549

I don't believe FCA would use poor quality steel in any of their products.

So pick another FCA robot assembled brand - Alfa Romeo, Chrysler, Dodge, Fiat, Jeep, Maserati, Ram. They are not all built with inferior components. Other than perhaps the partially hand built Maserati, the fit and finish in all of the other FCA brands is inferior to Ferrari.

petee1997

Really! Have you been smoking the drapes comparing these cars to a Ferrari in the first place.

The answer for you is buy the parts of the vehicle that prefer and build it by hand in your garage and then show us your hand built car.