The 3/8 line on those older VF tanks clogs up way easier than people want to admit, but I gotta push back on calling this a real machine problem. You ran 200 brackets and it quit twice, that is not a pattern, that is one clogged screen. Pull the panel, hose it off, and you are back to making parts in 20 minutes. If the conveyor was really the issue you would see this every single week, not twice in one Tuesday. Half the guys I know running VF2s have never even looked behind that panel and they have been fine for years. Honestly this sounds more like a maintenance reminder than a design flaw.

The new guy saved your butt and probably a few others on that crew too. Nothing like getting called out by the rookie who just finished his cert class last month. Your counterweight math being off by 2,800 lbs is not a small oops, that is a "someone goes home in a box" kind of oops. Here is a trick that works for me: before you even look at the chart, write down every single piece of the lift on a notepad. Boom length, jib, block, rigging, load weight, and the counterweight you think you have. Then work the chart from the bottom up instead of top down. Forces you to actually see each deduction instead of skipping the ones you forgot about. Also keep a grease pencil right on the counterweight stack with the actual weights written on it so you are not relying on memory. Takes two minutes and beats spending twenty minutes rechecking after the fact.