Shop Truths, Phrases, Tales; and Outright Lies
THE DESIGNER
The designer bent across his board,
Such wonderful things in his head were stored.
And he said as he rubbed his throbbing bean,
"How can I make this thing hard to machine?
If this part here were only straight,
I'm sure the thing would work first rate.
But would be so easy to turn and bore,
It never would make the machinist sore.
I’ll put a right angle way down there,
Watch those babies tear their hair.
And I'll put the holes that hold the cap,
Under the ledge where they can’t tap.
Now this piece won't work, I'll bet a buck,
For it can't be held in vise or chuck.
It can't be drilled; it can't be ground,
In fact, the design is exceedingly sound!
He looks again and cried, "At last!
Success is mine, it can't even be cast."
Unknown Author or time period.
But we can imagine his line of work.
4 Attachment(s)
more on "Why we do what we do"
Ok, a bit too intricate to be descriptive, brief and accurate. Fun part's easy. 3 characters "Who" and names changed to protect a brace of morons. 'Moron', charitable phrase that. Henceforth, ID'ed as (dufus) d1 and d2. Forget the brief part, efficiency kills fun. Short story anyway, compared to War and Peace.
Set Up
Day 1 last Wed. Over time, d2 frequently mentions "25 years in production". Checking LinkedIn, there is a short USMC commission and production turns out to be printing industry. Not offset like circulars, cartography or even texts. Checkbooks. Oh yeah that relates, dovetails right into metal fab. Most initiatives turn out to be theorizing, weak attempts to apply single station and closed cell work to multi-process manufacturing.
Now it's 2:30 and clocked out. d2 is assisting press brake operator. His sale of fairing sheets is late. They are 16ga galvanized, 109" wide 70" something deep, no way 1 man job. Interesting part, one end angles 30 degrees from other, but not a simple crease. A 12" radius, needs like 50 fractional step bends. The inspector, Mr. Who stops by off the clock, but to support the brake operator, a good kid. They are having trouble, middle is buckled; bet extreme ends of ram are hitting before the middle. After signal to brake-op "I won't buy (sign off) these." d2 says "...we're having trouble." Magic 9 items need to ship, swear that .75 hour is quote for ALL 9, after 1/2 hour setup. Started in the morning and now 8 hours in. They frequently video the brake-op, surprisingly no camera and tripod in sight for this. Who fires 16" Naval battery. "Told ya, this looks easy from a swivel chair, watching youtube." Direct hit, d2 is shocked, can't respond with anything but 'you knucklehead 25 years yaddy yaddy ya.' Who chuckles and returns "25? what percentage is that compared to the total out here?...got 26 driving you jarheads around AND 40 years producing, not watching." Who departs without any evasive maneuver.
Heat's ON
Day 2, Thursday. HOT job. Co. sells bundle of weldments, 1.75 od cold rolled 37" long w/ a forged double pin clevis each end. Rods weren't chamfered night before, to run next morn. Guess Who got that deal. Rumor has it he's Inspector and mystery machinist. Nuthin beats switching 12'' chuck to 3 jaw by hand, mount steady rest cuz bar's bigger than spindle bore. No clue, fairly kickazz 60's era Okuma D1-6 spindle isn't 2 1/16 id. Anyhoo#1, Guess Who guy loads 58 bars, cranking the compound, flipping to other end and filling a pallet. Robot operator grabs a couple, fires up and he's off to the races. They're 25#, handled 3x is 4350. Runs bulk of order, we clock out, 2nd comes in.Attachment 12782
Enfilade & Defilade
Day 3, Friday. 1st comes in 0600, job's incomplete. Shut down for porosity on 2nd's start up (oh sure - ran fine all day). 9 bad parts. We never run out of gas, silo sized vessel outside. Cracked nozzle supposedly (likely the prevalent & cracked supv.) So, intrepid G. Who gets his fav'rit flash ''...you need to cut off welds re-chamfer bars AND reshape spud of said clevises, all 18 of course. "How long's it gonna take". "Dunno, only heard of it 35 seconds ago" "Well get them done fast as possible" "No" "This isn't a race, it's to save a salesman (dufus2) and he isn't going to make a hospital visit, this ain't kid stuff". Way unappreciative glare from dufus1.Attachment 12780 Attachment 12784
D-Day
Of course G. Who knew. They (Co.) shy away from setup parts, 'specially when customer supplied materials are used. He split a few last run awhile back, recovering all destined to be scrapped out. Drawer of tool box has many accommodations, no one else can tell what they are. Snarling glance dufus1 grabs one clevis to give it a try. Oh, he'll show me, er G. Who. Despite all the 5s initiatives, 80 grit belts for the big sanders aren't replaced until last one burns up. 5s apparently means swearing, usually the colloquial term for feces, that many times. d1 goes at it, dinky right angle pneumatic in one hand, clevis in da utter. Like a weak 4th of July, way less spectators. d1 stops, clamps forging in his metal forming brake. His go-to repair site, that and fat deadblow hammer; zero talent past that. Knowledgeable set knows it as a Wilton Bullet vise. A veritable sculptor, he carves toward the spud with all the might 1/4" HF pneumatic RA can muster. The spud tapers from maybe an inch to 5/8'' or so and quite short, a well hidden nipple under mile of MIG wire. The bar, weld and cover passes near 2'' od. Audience is dufus2; hands in pockets, leaning forward oddly, intent behind 'cool' safety glasses, jeans, red poly-knit shirt, diagonal stripe on left sleeve. Grinding feverishly and trading off, they'll be awhile. Too dirty for ROFLOL, Who-man makes intermittent observations, appraising the competition, for plenty oneupmanship ammo.
Operation Flank and T-Bone
Meanwhile, Mr. Who spins last 2 bars. Swaps out 3 to 4 jaw, pulls steady rest, backs tailstock far as it goes and rolls up sleeves. Cue up something like a loping radial aircraft engine. Or 4, 113 inch HD's and a BSA 441. Anyhoo #2. He's got 2 pads that bridge gap of clevis arms and a little jackscrew inside. No indicator, just circular scored lines on chuck face; he's got the nerve and he's got the touch. Love that line, no clue on origin. Open those imaginary throttles. The setup is RIGID, goes 735 rpm, next step is 1200 something, inappropriate for this can't handfeed quick or deep enough to pass workhardening. Big negative triangular insert eats up crap weld fine, right near original form. He pulls the part and strolls toward robot station to verify Ok or better. Ahead of d1 by 5 feet, holding his out like a champagne toast - hot champagne at that. G. Who, eveready to convert defense to offense asks polite-like and impossibly straightfaced "First one?".
Attachment 12781 Evidently practice pays, now the glare is b-grade horror movie quality.
Most abruptly, sanding comes to a grinding halt. "Just get em done". d1 and d2 stomp off, with pinhole burns in shirts.
Returning to lathe Who starts in on remaining 16. Part way through, d2 hies in for another " how soon?". wtf its barely 10am. Who gets off more 2 rounds. "...faster than you'll figure out how to do this" and "too bad about the shirt dude, whats the racing stripe for?" a curt "...only decoration." Instantaneously and between the eyes "Good, lets time how fast you go away." Who is energized to say the least, heat of competition as it were.
Deguello
Now it's 11; still doing in-process inspections as they come along, back & forth from lathe to surface plate. Who finishes during lunch, plotting next sortie all along. But now, Who knows the cell numbers to d1 and d2. Texts out "Done. Avg less than 5 minutes part to part. Pay attention to your elders. You owe me lunch and and apology."
Who learns later d2 goes to welder asking "what's this is all about?" Welder really has NO interest in d2's number, and so states. They don't get along either. That is related to Who, and he texts out "Only one here with a Los Angeles area code, your fav'rit knucklehead, why blame [welder]".
Finally, Who logs in to job tracking, claims 9 bars, and 17 clevi. Comments section records permanently. "Saw cut weldments, 18 ends. Chamfer bars, both ends. Recut 17 clevis forgings. Someone thought hand grinding would beat 10 HP lathe and me."
Debrief
Believe it, me doing the Alpha-Hotel bit is not normal. AH's are amateurish, baseless, and without sufficient where-with-all to convince experienced persons of their false sincerity. After years seeing work dissolve into near servitude, where administrators think term papers equate work experience, and offsite corporate decisions solve everything, I bucked. Somehow, sometime, and thankfully individuality fell on me and it has a degree of self-preservation. They have little self-assurance, outside a canned title.
Be Right. Stay out of the corner, raise voice but don't yell, mild indirect swearing and use their ineptness to advantage. Never been terminated in any manner, genuine or created, or even on the carpet. It would be interesting to present facts against those abrasive and inflated egos to a third party. Somehow it never comes to that, despite veiled threats. The loudest and loutish are the trolls, without tangible means to establish themselves.
I Expanded my 'personal' library...yours too; by a gazillion times.
I Expanded my 'personal' library...yours too; and yours, all the guys over there, and the members of tomorrow!
Just found the "Digital Public Library of America', currently listing 13,997,962 individual reference documents. Now, you might want endless shelves of such material, I enjoy and value print too. But often they are difficult to identify correctly, find, or afford. This is not commercial in the sense of Cramamazon, or roundy-round searches via Ibay.
https://dp.la/
My first search consisted of the following. This is what an apprentice-newbie-fng learns, or ANY accomplished machinist thinks before about opening Machinists Handbook.
Despite what some consider 'glaring' errors, you'll be hard pressed to find info deeper on the overall subject of serious one-off machine work than these publications. From NAVEDTRA (dept of Naval Education & Training) branch of NAVPERS (dept of Naval Personnel) MACHINERY REPAIRMAN 3&2 10530-E1 and MACHINERY REPAIRMAN 1&C 110531-B. The 3/2/1/C are enlisted paygrades of USN petty officers, so 3&2 are entry level. There are illustrations, charts, graphs Another poster on another site stated MR's not 'machinists' in the true sense. The reaction there was emphatic and proceeded with illustrating why they are; and like workers anywhere, show different levels of expertise. But the equipment, tooling, materials, and materials available, make most any of us drool.
1.]They open pdf. and printable - I'd suggest transporting file via USB thumbdrive to whatever version you have of a office supply or printshop.
2.]The cost of two-sided and collated print will be more than worthwhile; if saved in a proper binder or actually having it bound. 3.]Opt for paper heavier than standard 20lb printer-copy paper, to withstand hours of perusal, thumbing and certainty of dogeared corners.
And Jon; if you see this I'm campaigning; a forum section at HMT as a reference library. Not texts - accurate descriptions and links we find. I invite thanks as an endorsement, sort of a vote for who thinks this worthwhile.