My comment to that post exactly.

But more importantly - If the dots were not made by fixtureing at that contractors location, then the safety of a particlar unit is dependant on whether that contractor actully bothered to put tdots on every unit he made. Personally I assume the guy rushed, and thats why he was quenching in the first place. I'm not going to trust that he took the extra time to carefully mark his units!

JDW

Well i'm not sure if the guy is a engineer or not, it could be the guy just has a machince shop. it's not just a brazer, it's the process of brazing. I know all about brazing, heat treating, quenching, etc.. for that's what i do for work. i have even tested brazing process for CCH and metalious using RF induction generators.

hardness tester are used for specfic applications where the hardness is critical. one job i worked on was breaker boxes have to have a certain hardness to take the switching on & off all the time. from my experience the dots are typical of a hardness test.

see when you heat metal to cherry red the metal becomes soft, using a quench water or oil solution will harden the metal. This process is NOT suited for braze application unless you do multiple heatings. When quenching the housing & braze will cool at different times and tempertures. This leads a braze that will Not adhere to the housing but will look like a good braze joint on the surface.

i found out from Rock & snow about the outsourced cams and the process they were using.

hope this helps

mark,

from my understanding the outsourced cams process was not rushed and they thought it was a good way to braze the cams using a quench. at the end of the day there is no time difference between letting the part air cool and quenching. the heating time is the critical part. also i was told that the cams where marked from the outsource co.

the outsourced cams process was not rushed and they thought it was a good way to braze the cams using a quench. at the end of the day there is no time difference between letting the part air cool and quenching. the heating time is the critical part. also i was told that the cams where marked from the outsource co.

Perhaps, but it is still likely easier and faster to handle them when they are cool.
That does not eliminate my concern over whether all suspect Aliens really have dots. So far it seems they were made individually by hand. This alone might be unreliable, but they were were made individually by hand by someone who was already "screwing up" in other ways.

how you handle the hot parts doesn't matter. you still have to grab the hot part to place it in the quench solution or to lay on bench top to air cool. unless the part directly drops into the quech after the heating cycle.

as far as the dot goes i have no idea i've only seen pictures of the dot. you should be able to test your cams with bounce test. the braze bond is weak and should fail under a low force. take this with a grain a salt though, some braze strength may be stronger than others depending on the time it took to actually place the part in the quench.

imo if you are really concered about your cams send them back to CCH or have the braze joint x rayed.

hope this helps

imo if you are really concered about your cams send them back to CCH or have the braze joint x rayed.

Is having the joint x-rayed a viable option for most of us? I'm sure with a little digging I could Google up some sort of metallurgy testing lab, but what would this kind of testing cost me? Without knowing any better I'd guess it would be cheaper to buy new cams.

oh f*#king christ. it's f*#king option. getting an x ray may be cheaper then a funneral. now go play in traffic.

I stopped in at Nomad Ventures (Joshua Tree) on Monday, they had some of the recalled Aliens. The pimple/dimple is very clear and apparant, though the question of whether the outsourcer marked every single one of the cams he brazed, is still open and valid.

Personally, all of my Aliens have already proven themselves, so I'm not going to do anything with them.