My new 686 has a "feature"!!

As for changing to a 7 shot configuration, that would require completely retiming the gun and installing new components for advancing the cylinder.

I'm pretty sure that's a new cylinder and star, and a new hand of the right length to carry up 1/7 rotation insted of 1/6. Not that big a deal.

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No, but not an inexpensive deal.
I got all enthused and bought an early 7 shot. Just my luck, USPSA revised the revolver rules to strictly sixshooters. Nobody was dumb enough to buy or trade for it, so I sent it in for a six shot cylinder. They fitted a new cylinder, extractor, and hand; and didn't even steal my action job hammer and trigger. Cost $300 though. I had the barrel sawn off and it is now my IDPA SSR.

Ah, I remember that story -- in fact, that's what I was remembering when I posted.

That stinks!

Stuff like that happens sometimes. Might be that the flutes are machined at a different stage, probably a subsequent to the rest of the cylinder. Your's probably isn't the only one out there, as it is probably a batch operation. S&W might need to look at a recall notice.

I know everyone is going to go off on the quality here, but stuff like this happens all the time in machining plants, especially where operations are batched, and where there are many products of similar appearance. It's big mistakes like these that slip through inspection because everyone is geared towards looking for small flaws.

I used to be the quality engineer for a piston manufacturer. Once, I had a piston come back with a 3/8" hole right through the middle of it. Plain as day, but it got through. People will see a 1/8" inch long scratch from 3 feet away, but the biggest defects get through.

True, the quality of the fluting job and the quality of the chamber boring job looks flawless............just done on the wrong cylinder.

I suspect that the machining of the chambers and flutes are done separately, and almost certainly by computer software.

It's probably a case where the wrong software was loaded, I'm guessing. And yes, we all make mistakes. Still a black eye for Smith QC.


The error could have caused great harm, perhaps even death. Glad it was caught. I hope there isn't a whole batch of these floating around out there.

Folks have been berating the inspection processes that let this happen. S&W clearly needs to fix a >manufacturing< process. A current trend in manufacturing quality is "poka-yoke" or goof-proofing the process. It's well known that inspectors miss things. The idea of poka-yoke" is to set up the process so the errors don't happen in the first place, not to catch them in inspection.

Homer Simpson was working that day on Loan from the Springfield nuclear plant. They had him running the CNC machine that makes the Flutes. Homer had just knocked the trays of cylinders on the floor and got them all mixed up.

1. Its not my Job
2. I didn't do it
3. Where are the Donuts?

DOOH DOOH

Ok, i didnt want to have to ask, but.. What IS wrong with this picture?? Did they just put the wrong cylinder on the 686+ model? (6 shot cylinder instead of 7?)

How many chamber stops (if that's what they're called) are machined into the cylinder? I'm guessing six if the gun previously shot fine.

My other thought is that these parts are probably done in batches. I wonder how many others were done this way and made it out of the factory.

Ok, i didnt want to have to ask, but.. What IS wrong with this picture?? Did they just put the wrong cylinder on the 686+ model? (6 shot cylinder instead of 7?)

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No. They milled seven cylinder flutes into the exterior of a cylinder with only six chambers. That means that there's an extra flute, which throws off the spacing relative to the cylinders. On one side of the cylinder (on the right in the pic) everything is spaces about normally. On the other side (left in the picture) one of the flutes is machined just about right on top of the chamber, leaving only about 0.1" of wall thickness to contain the chamber pressure!

I KNEW there was a good reason that I always preferred unfluted cylinders.

It's pretty hard to believe this slipped out. All you guys can knock taurus all you want but both of their revolvers that I own have the correct number of flutes and chambers in the cylinder.

It's interesting to note where S&W loaded the proof rounds. I thought they typically loaded every other charge hole, not two adjacent ones plus a third. I wonder if by loading all six they'd have found the problem. It would also be interesting to know what precautions they use during proofing in case a gun "lets go."

jojo200517 said:

It's pretty hard to believe this slipped out. All you guys can knock taurus all you want but both of their revolvers that I own have the correct number of flutes and chambers in the cylinder.

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And how many times have you seen 7 flutes on a cylinder chambered with 6 charge holes? C'mon, I have never seen or heard of this before.

Folks, I spent 11 years doing final QC on medical equipment that was used in cardiac cath labs, where you go to have an angioplasty done to open a clogged artery.
The QC on this gun is the equivalent of me letting a device go out the door with test software loaded that would show the patient’s vital signs as being normal no matter what.

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Just how many pieces of that medical equipment were you selling for $800 each or so?

And everyone knows EVERY PIECE of medical equipment is always perfect!

(My daughter is an RN and my son is an IT tech at a couple of major hospitals, I could tell you all kinds of stories about faulty medical equipment and big lawsuits!)

I work in the manned space flight industry (million dollar screwdrivers, etc). The reason things cost so much is because of the documentation and traceability required at each step in the manufacturing process, which involves multiple inspections. We couldn't build a piece of machinery equivelent to a S&W revolver for less than $100,000 and even then human or machine error would STILL be a factor.

It's a mechanical device built by man. Spaceships blow up, airplanes crash, ships sink, cars wreck, people die in hospitals, guns blow up because of manufacturing errors. I haven't heard of any recalls or a big rash of mis-machined S&W cylinders, possibly yours is only the first to come out but hopefully it's an anomaly. It'll definitely inspire some changes at S&W, even if only an additional line on an inspector's checklist that says "Equal number of chambers and flutes in cylinder". Just be glad you caught it.

Krogen said:

Folks have been berating the inspection processes that let this happen. S&W clearly needs to fix a >manufacturing< process. A current trend in manufacturing quality is "poka-yoke" or goof-proofing the process. It's well known that inspectors miss things. The idea of poka-yoke" is to set up the process so the errors don't happen in the first place, not to catch them in inspection.

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Right.

Also, the trend in quality inspection is to qualify the process so that 100% inspection is not required. Just some level of spot inspection based on the ability of the process. You cannot inspect in quality so the objective is to make the process not make mistakes.

Another trend, once a part of the process is deemed "passed", it may not be specifically inspected again.

I do not know what S&W uses for their inspection, 100% or something else. One would think 100% but in today's environment of labor costs and CNC machines, maybe not.

So, I would guess that the cylinder got in the wrong place at some point, was not specifically inspected after it was machined in error, and then no one after that point was responsible for looking at the cylinder to make sure it was still correct.

I am sure there will be some upset managers at S&W after the holidays.

Again, this is only a guess on my part.

Unless it happens to them

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sometimes fanboys just fall to their knees and pray harder

It's pretty hard to believe this slipped out

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It's pretty hard to believe this slipped out of the "PERFORMANCE" CENTER!!!!

This is supposed to be a custom or semi-custom gun.

If this were a gunsmith the fanboys would be saying how it was idiotic to ever do business with the guy. But this is Smith & Wesson. They could produce a cat turd truffle and some folks would proclaim that those that hate it just don't have refined taste

45 auto, I’m not real sure what the points of your post were

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I was trying to make the point that you bought an $800 consumer product made up of numerous mass-produced machined parts, and the inspection process, documentation, and traceability was appropriate to that price point.

Want to make it less likely that cylinders with mis-matched flutes/chambers get released? Serial number each cylinder, have inspections and buy-offs with traceability at each step in the manufacturing and assembly process. You'll catch a LOT more errors (but still not all of them), but your $800 S&W just turned into a $2000 S&W and nobody will buy them.

I wasn’t selling the medical equipment, I was doing QC. The equipment was pretty darn expensive, though. Anything that’s connected to the medical industry is expensive

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Part of the point I was trying to make. The technology, materials or manufacturing processes for medical equipment aren't particularly expensive. The legal liability for any defective item that gets out is what's driving the costs.

That’s right. And you can bet S&W has detailed QC procedures, some of which were not followed in this case

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I don't know their QC procedures, so I can't comment on that. You seem to be much more familiar with their QC procedures than I am. I don't know if they have a specific procedure to verify flutes vs chambers (if they don't, they probably will shortly). I don't know if your cylinder is the only one ever mis-machined like that (1 out of how many millions) or if that is a common problem at S&W.

Lots of companies attempt to achieve Six Sigma quality programs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Sigma), I don't know if S&W does or not.

Even at a six sigma level (99.99966% products manufactured without defects), that still means you're looking at one defect every couple of hundred thousand products.

Your cylinder is definitely a manufacturing anomaly, but it's no where close to being as unusual or unexpected as lots of people seem to think.

One of the most popular threads on many of the machining and manufacturing forums are the "Biggest Mistakes" threads ....

I wish people would quit making excuses for S&W, this is beyond ridiculous, period!!!!