Below are some pictures dealing with an issue discovered at delivery: the pallet struts do not the full 8" range of motion. Jim Mills is working on fixing the problem, and the images below are being provided to NASA engineers to evaluate any issues that could arise as a result of fixing the problem. One of the challenges in engineering design is determining the effect that one seemingly minor design change may have on the rest of the design. In this instance, there is concern about interference of cut-off bolt heads and nuts with the adjustment threads inside the struts.
Here are Jim's comments on the images: The threaded 5/8” bolt in the center simulates the screw size only, disregard the bolt head of that element. The bolts used are ¾” to simulate the drop bolt head size of 1 1/8” across the flats. The last two are ¾” nuts to simulate the best case scenario of trimming the drops, via the 1” hole in the side, to mostly just hex without much screw remaining.
