Do you think that the tools that assemble parts on assembly lines just have some arbitrary setting for 'tight enough' ?They have very specific torque settings for every screw they tighten.
Agreed, most modern assembly lines have this.
So because you have taken apart something and not had a manufacturer refuse to honor the warranty that means that nobody checks ?
Whether they didn't check, or didn't use the information to void the warranty, either way the result is the same.
When you do repairs day after day on the same models you know what is the norm for that item. Screws in the wrong places, loose screws, tape pulled loose , even fingerprints on heat sinks and rf shielding are used to spot tampering.
I agree with this, except that quite often brand new, never opened items already have screws torqued differently and loose tape. Further, torque isn't quite an exact science when dealing with new plastic vs aged plastic that has gone through a few heating/cooling cycles.
I managed one of the largest warranty repair centers in the southern United States for several years our clients included, RCA, GE, Sharp, Panasonic, JVC, Philips. Did we check torque on every thing that came in , no of course not, but we did check on things that were high end items or products that had a higher than usual failure rate. One of the main reasons to check for tampering by the consumer isn't to void their warranty but to better understand the reason for failure. If you as a consumer open a failed item, replace a blown fuse then your replacing that fuse causes another part to fail we have no way of knowing what the original fault was without some way of detecting the tampering. It makes determining design problems harder because now we have sets with just a blown fuse and one part blown with a set that has a blown fuse and multiple parts blown. Is it the first part failing or the second ?
(Most) People don't open a properly working product, so while it is true that someone might have altered a product, odds are very low that they both did, and did it in a way that is not visible. Knowing that screw torque is different doesn't do anything to indicate what an original vs cascade fault was. It could just as easily indicate there was a fault with the screw driver used during assembly.
I agree that it is possible and useful to detect whether someone has fiddled around inside a failed product, but not that it is reasonable to assume a warranty will be denied based on a screw torque test.
On most items we didn't care about the tampering, but on expensive to replace items we had to check .
Many warranties do not claim opening the product voids the warranty, even if there is text such as "no user serviceable parts inside". If we try to assume nothing can be opened, where does it end? Can we not even open our car hood or have a garage replace the air filter when it's dirty for fear the transmission warranty is voided? Granted it's not quite the same, but there is a difference between observing something has changed and attributing it to a failure mode.
In the end, it is not reasonable to assume a product sent for repair will have the warranty voided based on screw torque until there is sufficient evidence that the particular product is being checked for that, while there is quite a lot of evidence that product warranties weren't voided after someone opened the case unless they did more than just that.
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