I won't argue the fact that the above situation is prevalent. I was just speaking to the lock washer application, not whether the engineer that designed it knew what he was doing. Actually, with the proper torque for that fastener size and that application there is no need for a lock washer at all. In your example the proper torque was probably applied and the lock washer was just going along for the ride.
Gordon Shumway wrote: ....
I don't believe the first of those is prevalent at JD Engineering nor the latter from a considerable number of years of observation of how equipment behaves under load...
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LOL. Trust me, I'm sure that JD had the same caliber of engineers as we did at Cat. Some of the things I've seen designed would scare you to death. In the last 15 or so years we hired many contract engineers that literally didn't know the difference between a nut and a bolt. I'm not exaggerating! That's the truth. These same engineers also didn't speak English very well either. You can draw your own conclusions about that.
Cat quit using lock washers before I hired in in the mid 70's. Prior to that the lock washer of choice was the "square cone" lock washer. Extensive testing proved that with the proper torque for the application that lock washers were not needed.
If they learned English later in life that would account for that. It would also account for not knowing the difference between a nut and bolt. I hope you hired one guy to explain what the others were doing.
The problem with that is that no one has told me what the proper torque is and I don't have a machine that will propertly torque things. I don't think there even are torque wrenches in the size I would need most of the time. I'm not in the same shoes as a manufacturer who makes the same thing over and over again, and I need lock washers.
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