I had a bad experience with stripped out set screws on a Hobie OB SUV Demo I bought last year. The weird thing I think caused it was purchasing a set of ST Turbo Fins to add to the Pedal System when I came to buy it. It was sold to me with the short stock fins. But here is my opinion and guess at what caused it. As a Stainless Steel set screw bears down on a Stainless Steel flat spot on a rod the crown on the set screw gets rounded down. So now you have a dull blunt thread now at the end on the rounded crow of the set screw too. So as you back out the set screw it starts honing out any sharp thread it comes in contact with during the unscrewing process. So if you have to change fins and rods don't back the screws out very much once you firmed up the rods you already have in. Backing the set screws all the way out will just remove what ever thread the whole tunnel has!
The guy who changed my fins took the screws all the way out to do this fin changing procedure. A few trips in the ocean and the next one in the lake in my own back yard I threw a rod from a loose set screw. Then I found out I had stripped out set screw holes. JB weld helped for a few months to fix it. Then I threw the rod again in my own lake in the back yard again. I'm glad it happened in my 5 acre lake in the backyard and not some three miles away from a launch site in the St. Johns river some where.
I bought a new set of sprockets and the guy who took out the set screws on the old sprockets found the flat spot on the ends of the threads for each one and filed them down to have a grove in them again before putting them into the new sprockets. I've had no troubles throwing a rod since.
Wonder if Hobie might start putting a bevel on the ends of those set screws to keep this from happening?