The design/build of a toothbar or ripper is easy compared to a mechanical thumb. The first two are essentially one solid piece with no moving parts. The thumb is adjustable and several 'pivots'. Looking at their website, it does appear they've used 1/8" walled square tubing. Odds are the holes are punched out. A 1st year mechanical engineering student would be able to calculate the forces on all the parts and explain why the thumb failed. Punched holes are not precise, there's a lot of 'slop' in them, bad news as ANY 'gap' will eventually cause damage. I KNOW the SSQA front plate pins are 'silky smoooooth' to remove and install on my BX23S, the thumb's pins need to be the same.
They really need to 'go back to the drawing board' for this product. For sure they need to quickly step up and repair/replace the thumb as well as any damage to the BH. This is 'customer service'. BXpanded could learn from Kubota. Just 2 hours after I sent Kubota an email about the broken loader frame, my account had a generous 'donation' from head office,so it's nice to see some companies KNOW what customer service is all about !