L96A1 Behind the Scenes: Manufacturing Catastrophes and Exploding Rifles

"The recipe says 1kg of sugar. I'll just use salt." this is what this sounds like

Pylon: "Its not like its a missle." Also Pylon: tries its hardest to make the rifles into shoulder-mounted grenades

As an mechanical engineer, this sounds exactly like how contract manufacturing works, time and time again.

"3 guys in a shed" is the business equivalent of "2 kids in a trench coat"

“-and instead, they cut them at a 45 degree angle” You WHAT?

Pylon: Well it's not rocket science Narrator: But it was rocket science

"Basically just 3 guys in a shed." You already said they were a British company Ian, no need to repeat yourself.

One man inspecting 200 rifles: *after the 23rd rifle: "I'm in hell."

Two blokes called Dave in a shed sounds like every successful piece of British engineering ever.

"1/10 of millimeter here and there on a high powered precision rifle can't be that much of a deal :)"

Props to the British military for seeing through Pylon's BS and preventing them from ruining AI and the L96. Very rare, sober decision for an organization.

So basically the fix was to actually build it like they told them to ?

This sounds deliberate from the get-go. A missile manufacturer understands materials and treatment specs. The fact that they were revealed to have tried to steal the contract is, to my mind, proof that that's what they had in mind when hey first met the guys from AI. "Look at these noobs- let's fleece them."

Wow, the Pylon company sounds like it was run by cooks. "Don't have an ingredient? Use this instead!'

Pylon deserved to go bankrupt. Imagine they even tried to push poor guys out of business! Clowns. Could have ruined one of the most iconic precision rifles of all time.

Wow, all those “mistakes” do certainly sound life willful negligence

As a machinist myself, I absolutely HATE companies that promise the world when they know they can't deliver. Usually it's the salespeople blowing smoke up the customer's ass, and then the shop rats getting chewed out when they can't make the part with existing tools. I saw something similar to this happen close up, and it was embarrassing to be part of the slo-mo train wreck.

I wonder if Pylon would have done such a half-assed job if their own name had been on the finished product?

When I was working as a research technician, when I sent things to the machine shop for manufacturing, our guys would ask things such as "can I makes this piece which you've got as 6.2mm, as a 1/4" instead, as that'll be way quicker?", but the important thing there was that they ASKED, and we discussed how it was going to be made, and what could be changed and what was critical and needed to be done the difficult way. The problem here is fundamentally a communication one, Pylon assumed they knew better and changed things without asking important questions, and people got hurt because of their negligence.

The part about this story that blew my mind was when they rented a shop and bluffed the MOD into believing they weren't 3 guys in a shed by saying everyone else is out at lunch.