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Re Access/Overhaul/Teardown Procedures

I've read a lot of technical procedural material in my time, and most of it was/is utter tripe. Some of it, I swear, is speculative fiction with no basis in reality. It appears to be largely written by people who are barely conversant with their subject matter, and have respect neither for it nor for the reader. Where the stuff is illustrated, the illustrations are often little if any help. Needless illustration can, in fact, make a job appear to be more complicated than it really is by cluttering up the text with 'information' that tells one nothing that one can't plainly see for oneself. Consider, do you need to be shown a photograph of an oven door in order to be able to recognize an oven door? Surely not. Yet that's the level at which many illustrations operate.

A great deal of mechanical teardown work is simply a matter of attending to a linear sequence of steps, so as to arrive at a point where a fault can be corrected or a part replaced. One needs to know what the sequence is; it's often not obvious, and there can be booby traps and pitfalls that it's good to know of beforehand. All of that information can be conveyed by concise text. Illustration is seldom needed or helpful. (Documenting creative work is another matter; there, illustration can be essential. But there's nothing creative about replacing a set of shock absorbers on a vehicle, or a thermostat in a toaster oven. You're dealing with a uniformly mass-produced assemblage of components, all of which are readily nameable and describable.)

The access/overhaul/teardown procedures that I 'write' all follow the same format -- each procedure is simply a numbered list of items to be dealt with (removed, usually) in order. Following each item's name is point-form information detailing what's involved. There are no illustrations unless absolutely called for.

Following are the abbreviations and conventions used in the procedures:
  • A/F = across flats. Usually this refers to the size of a hex nut or a hex head on a bolt, as in '8mm A/F' or '9/16" A/F'.
  • aka = also known as
  • A/R = as required.
  • CW = clockwise
  • CCW =counterclockwise
  • 'left' and 'right' always refer to an operator/user's left and right as he or she operates/uses the subject machine/contrivance/what-have-you.
  • PCA = Printed Circuit Assembly
  • 'screw' means machine screw. [Note 1]
  • thou = thousandth of an inch
  • 'threading screw' means a coarse-threaded thread-forming screw as is used in plastic or with a Tinnerman nut. [Note 1]
  • w/ = with
  • w/o = without
  • YZD = yellow zinc dichromate, a yellow-coloured plating used on many fasteners.
Note 1: I almost always provide details of each fastener's size and type, as an aid to tool selection, fastener identification and to correct reassembly. Those details won't always agree with what you encounter on any given machine. Manufacturers occasionally make changes in the course of a production run, or previous work done on a machine may have introduced changes. But in the vast majority of cases, the fasteners I encountered will be the same as the fasteners you'll encounter on the same make and model of machine.

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