That lead avionics tech at PDX who showed me a trick with D-sub pins

I was getting trained on a CRJ200 in Portland about 2 years back and this older guy named Dave walked over while I was fighting with a crimper. He just watched for a minute, then said "you're squeezing too hard, that pin is toast now." He pulled a busted pin out of his pocket and showed me how the barrel was cracked from over-crimping. He had a whole coffee can full of messed up pins he kept as examples. That visual of the cracked barrel stuck with me more than any manual ever did. Has anyone else had a crusty old-timer save them from making the same mistake a hundred times?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_anthony1mo ago

That line about the coffee can full of busted pins is the kind of thing you can't learn from a book. It's the same reason I keep a box of burnt-out fuses and stripped screws on my workbench, people remember the physical proof better than any lecture.

holly_reed551mo ago

Yeah, that "coffee can full of busted pins" line really got me too. I've got a jar of stripped screws and broken bits on my shelf that I pull out when someone asks why we don't cheap out on fasteners. You can talk all day about torque specs and thread pitch but when you hand them a screw that's totally mangled, they get it right away. It's like you're handing them a little piece of a lesson they won't forget.

dakota4151mo ago

Read an article from a old machinist magazine at a buddy's shop that called it "building a museum of failures" (which I loved). Kinda stuck with me because it's true, you're basically curating a little display of what happens when you try to save a buck or rush a job. Those mangled bits tell a story way better than any spreadsheet or spec sheet ever could. They're like physical proof that shortcuts just create more work down the line. I swear, every time I show someone that jar of melted connectors or a bolt that sheared clean off, they actually listen. Nothing beats the visual of "look what happens when you don't do it right the first time".