Shop Truths, Phrases, Tales; and Outright Lies

[Toolmaker51]

My hats off to Frank S. I've only known one hot tap line welder, and he was 88, 30 years ago.
I notice a common facet in our off-topic thread.
Those with little experience are secure in an offhanded way. No challenge, no mistakes, minimal effort; even in the presence of knowledge they can't recognize opportunity.

[PJs]

PJs concern with a MR25 or d3 label is...groundless.
d1, d2 and likely MR39 are NOT here or even lurk reading posts. They certainly aren't posting. And no recall of an ''outside the box'' moment.
Jon may have a magic screening process. Or 'they' collectively may have nothing to relate. I hope for both.

TM51,

I am a bit concerned why you would think I have "Concern" about a "Label" for these people or some fear that they may be lurking on the forum here. I'm not even sure what you mean by "no recall of an "outside the box moment".

As for groundless...maybe. I do tend to head into the æthers at times in my thinking and writing because it's where I do my discernment, generally and specifically and hopefully with intent, be able to bring it back to the real world as a useful tool of understanding what Vexes Us and how to work with it. Whether it's right or not, it's mine, I own it, until I change it.

Mainly because I like the idea of this thread (Shop Truths, Phrases, Tales; and Outright Lies) and the subtitle of ("Why we do what we do") and your allegory tale, I re-read the entire thread again yesterday for flavor and insight before posting my dissertation. In the meantime C-Bag posted his insightful thoughts on the murk of the ne'er do wells and the why of it according to the book and his insights into his interactions with them. So Off I went, trying to tie the themes of this layered thread together in the spirit of their titles and this great Forum, by offering my thoughts/opinions on them, valid or not by any others opinion. And frankly too old (mileage) to gas about who may be watching, when there was never any intent to belittle or offend.

It's obvious now that my typical verbosity and subtle intentions (Weirding Ways of the Bene Gesserit - Dune) to what I wrote were missed or misinterpreted by your response. I did find Franks addendum to his post most rewarding though, which brings me to a story similar but backwards from his, of the last time I was concerned.

In my last 12 year run in Corporate, we had a 25 year machinist (an HP transplant). Nice guy and I respected him and what he could do for 3-4 years. He also taught me a lot about setups, sequence of ops, Cam and what he did to get stuff to the machine. I worked pretty diligently at giving him all he needed to do some of the jobs we had and for some of the 1-2 off R&D stuff I did. Even lobbied and for him to get things for his shop (like a new knee mill) and bought tools from my budget for his shop. He and I became pretty good friends. He knew that I was pretty good with computers and had some trouble with his at home. Invited me over for dinner with him and his wife a few times. His wife was a quilter and because I wouldn't take any money for the help I did for them they presented me with a beautiful king size quilt she made...still have it and cherish it.

I was engineering manager by then and was out in the shop dropping off some stuff in sheet metal (A real wizard there) and doing my usual check in with people and stopped by to check in with him. He was doing a job on some explosion proof housings for a product we made in several varieties and had that look. We had an old Mori Seike that he didn't like because he had better stuff at HP. We had put a new spindle and bearings in it a few months back and was there when they finished up and ran the test runs on it...it was dead on to about 3 tenths. The fixture he was using only did 2 off and required the 4th axis for some of the ops, and was pretty tired and I really didn't like the way it held the parts. We chatted about what was happening and I looked up and saw the 55 gallon drum scrap bin was full of these housing. These are ~$300 per castings...so that was probably about $8-$10k worth...Oh Crap! The bad thing was they had a pretty long lead time so we bought about 100 at a time for price and to have them...and this was a pretty big order of 25 IIRC...and I had about 14 balls in the air at the time, with a new fire drill.

The short of the production run was that we came up some better hold points that held it tight and found he had changed his touch of point to a place he found easier to work from...but was not part of the internal or already machined point that we received from them. Got them out the door on time but it was a row to hoe!

After it was over I said I was going to talk to the vendor and get the actual casting/machine drawings for them and design a 6 off fixture that would lock them in properly and allow it to work better with the fourth axis. Also my guys and I went over the assembly drawing with a fine tooth comb. Luckily I/we had a pretty good relation with the supplier and after a chat with the owner we got copy of their latest drawings. What I noticed was they used Geometric Tolerancing on theirs, but mainly it was the casting tolerances I wanted. I had talk to our guys before as I had done quite a bit in the past and they poo-pooed it, so we didn't much other than concentricity and a few others once in a while. Bottom line was, I designed a killer fixture with his help and we did update our drawings with some Geometric Tolerancing because it was prudent!

About 6 months later I was out in the shop again and stopped by to check in and here he was doing them on the old 2 off fixture I thought had gone in the scrap bin or re-purposed. When I ask why, he said he only had a couple to do and it was easier. I Looked at the bin...nope...Ok, and said why aren't we building these bases for stock...Oh So and So dropped the order off. I had worked with Inventory to make sure we had these on hand and what the refill levels would be. Checked with Inventory and someone had bypassed the refill min levels. The worst part was of this ClusterTruck was that 6 off $2k fixture that worked perfectly because I was there when we ran it, sat on the shelf and he eventually told me he hated Geo-tolerancing. All I could say was You worked for HP for Blinking sake on tiny BeCU parts and how could you do that without Geo-Tolerancing...the program files were already written...it became clear.

That we pissed away $10-$12K in material and all the time and effort to help out and do it Right, was about the last time I was concerned. Except that he had dropped a foot long log of 4" brass on his foot about a year after the incident and left on disability and never came back...that concerned me too...because I liked him actually.

P.S. Vexus is the title of a book I started years ago about what Vexes Us...never finished it and finally realized it's probably an encyclopedia instead of a book. Add to it once in a while...who knows...my kids might get something from it.

[Frank S]

TM51,


It's obvious now that my typical verbosity and subtle intentions (Weirding Ways of the Bene Gesserit - Dune) to what I wrote were missed or misinterpreted by your response. I did find Franks addendum to his post most rewarding though, which brings me to a story similar but backwards from his, of the last time I was concerned.

In my last 12 year run in Corporate, we had a 25 year machinist (an HP transplant). Nice guy and I respected him and what he could do for 3-4 years. He also taught me a lot about setups, sequence of ops, Cam and what he did to get stuff to the machine. I worked pretty diligently at giving him all he needed to do some of the jobs we had and for some of the 1-2 off R&D stuff I did. Even lobbied and for him to get things for his shop (like a new knee mill) and bought tools from my budget for his shop. He and I became pretty good friends. He knew that I was pretty good with computers and had some trouble with his at home. Invited me over for dinner with him and his wife a few times. His wife was a quilter and because I wouldn't take any money for the help I did for them they presented me with a beautiful king size quilt she made...still have it and cherish it.

I was engineering manager by then and was out in the shop dropping off some stuff in sheet metal (A real wizard there) and doing my usual check in with people and stopped by to check in with him. He was doing a job on some explosion proof housings for a product we made in several varieties and had that look. We had an old Mori Seike that he didn't like because he had better stuff at HP. We had put a new spindle and bearings in it a few months back and was there when they finished up and ran the test runs on it...it was dead on to about 3 tenths. The fixture he was using only did 2 off and required the 4th axis for some of the ops, and was pretty tired and I really didn't like the way it held the parts. We chatted about what was happening and I looked up and saw the 55 gallon drum scrap bin was full of these housing. These are ~$300 per castings...so that was probably about $8-$10k worth...Oh Crap! The bad thing was they had a pretty long lead time so we bought about 100 at a time for price and to have them...and this was a pretty big order of 25 IIRC...and I had about 14 balls in the air at the time, with a new fire drill.

The short of the production run was that we came up some better hold points that held it tight and found he had changed his touch of point to a place he found easier to work from...but was not part of the internal or already machined point that we received from them. Got them out the door on time but it was a row to hoe!

After it was over I said I was going to talk to the vendor and get the actual casting/machine drawings for them and design a 6 off fixture that would lock them in properly and allow it to work better with the fourth axis. Also my guys and I went over the assembly drawing with a fine tooth comb. Luckily I/we had a pretty good relation with the supplier and after a chat with the owner we got copy of their latest drawings. What I noticed was they used Geometric Tolerancing on theirs, but mainly it was the casting tolerances I wanted. I had talk to our guys before as I had done quite a bit in the past and they poo-pooed it, so we didn't much other than concentricity and a few others once in a while. Bottom line was, I designed a killer fixture with his help and we did update our drawings with some Geometric Tolerancing because it was prudent!

About 6 months later I was out in the shop again and stopped by to check in and here he was doing them on the old 2 off fixture I thought had gone in the scrap bin or re-purposed. When I ask why, he said he only had a couple to do and it was easier. I Looked at the bin...nope...Ok, and said why aren't we building these bases for stock...Oh So and So dropped the order off. I had worked with Inventory to make sure we had these on hand and what the refill levels would be. Checked with Inventory and someone had bypassed the refill min levels. The worst part was of this ClusterTruck was that 6 off $2k fixture that worked perfectly because I was there when we ran it, sat on the shelf and he eventually told me he hated Geo-tolerancing. All I could say was You worked for HP for Blinking sake on tiny BeCU parts and how could you do that without Geo-Tolerancing...the program files were already written...it became clear.

That we pissed away $10-$12K in material and all the time and effort to help out and do it Right, was about the last time I was concerned. Except that he had dropped a foot long log of 4" brass on his foot about a year after the incident and left on disability and never came back...that concerned me too...because I liked him actually.

P.S. Vexus is the title of a book I started years ago about what Vexes Us...never finished it and finally realized it's probably an encyclopedia instead of a book. Add to it once in a while...who knows...my kids might get something from it.

Along about the fall of 88 A very long time friend of mine and in part one of my mentors of years gone by, called me one night asking me if I would consider taking over as shop manager and R&D trouble shooter. I was fairly comfortable running my 1 man mobile machine and repair service. I had actually reached a level that even with all business deductions and other write offs I was still earning enough to have to pay income taxes every 1/4 so life was good money in the bank and some decent long range lucrative safe investments well on their way to maturity. I had no real interest in change at the time. That was before a 1000 lb hunk of metal from a dozer blade conversion I was doing tried to make a pancake out of me. I was alright afterwards just a T12 compression fracture NO SURGERY afterwards. However it would be years before I would be comfortable doing the heavy lifting I was accustomed to Anyway he heard about my incident and called me again with a significantly better offer (or so it seamed at the time) 2 kids in school one getting near college age weighed heavily on this as well.
The next Monday I rolled into the factory with my mobile set up and proceeded to tell the workers to find a 30 by 30 spot to unload the nearly 1/4 M worth of tools and equipment that there was a new sheriff in town and I was wearing the badge.
About an hour later the previous shop manager showed up and introduced me.
His exact words to them were I have been preying for MR Frank to join this company for 3 years the only thing that has changed so far as you are concerned is he is my boss and owns a sizable slice of this company. We will be creating a R&D plus quality control and safety testing facility in that 30 by 30 spot where you placed his grip.
Long story even longer; Over the next few months the scrap bin weight was reduced to the point of being laughable. But the main change to cause this was mostly due to rearranging a few workers and machines giving some of them 2 and 3 tasks so the guy responsible drilling the parts also ran the band-saw and disk sander for de-burring. He soon learned that his job was made a lot easier if he A. cut the parts to the correct size B. made sure to lightly sand all surfaces prior to placing them in the drill jigs and C. keep his bits sharp
In the welding department we made more substantial fit up jigs that were heavy enough yet open enough to fit up and weld out instead of removing the parts before weld out. critical weldements went into the oven while still in the fixture for normalizing then to cleaning then machining if the process required.
However I to this day feel that the best thing we did was when I started at random taking the shop guys out on installs. It was then that they learned just how important it was to build things right, because when you have several hundred components shipped 12 or 12,000 miles and every thing had to fit together and fit together correctly.

[C-Bag]

In our case most of the guys in the shop thought it was some kind of treat to go out on installs, but the one guy in assembly who was most responsible for screwing up the install would not go out. He would put things together finger tight because he could impress the bosses with how many conveyors he could assemble in one day. When they started arriving in a pile because the ride in the truck had shaken them a part they just switched guys, never said anything to him.

Then they gave the job to a guy who equally tried to impress by using an air ratchet to assemble everything. But when the install guys tried to fix or mod something they couldn't get the thing apart. They were harping on us in the shop one day how we needed to speed up by using air ratchets instead of manual ratchets, I asked the boss do you know the correct torque on a regular 3/8" bolt? Deer in a headlights, I let him off the hook and said 35ft lbs. Still the deer. I noted the air ratchet can put at least 35 -50ft lbs, but it's the extra that every guy who uses one all the way out on the end next to the air coupling, turns it into 90+ft lbs. if not stripped it's stretched and a wooly bugger to get off and probably can't be reused. Needless to say they hated me because I never used an air ratchet even though I could use one properly. If needed I used a 3/8" air pistol that was smaller, could be set for proper torque and was faster. But because they refused to screw all the air hoses into the air lines on one end so they couldn't walk off, the air hoses were constantly disappearing (into the field as the field guys had keys to the shop and would come in and "resupply" at night)and you spent more time trying to find one than doing the job.

Like Edwards Demming so rightfully points out all this stuff is NOT the fault of the worker, it's the fault of management. It's why no American manager knows of him and why Deming made Japanese industry into the powerhouse it is. Making quality the focus not quantity and making the guy on the floor a part of the whole process instead of just a stupid tool.

[Toolmaker51]

TM51,
I am a bit concerned why you would think I have "Concern" about a "Label" for these people or some fear that they may be lurking on the forum here. I'm not even sure what you mean by "no recall of an "outside the box moment".

As for groundless...maybe.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well, despite efforts in clarity I get wound up, on occasion.
The intent was you personally should have no concern of being labeled for anything but the finest sort of mentor. The electronic posts with Rendo prove that, among others. Your comment was if you were seen by others in such a manner.

On lurking, we have no concern about lurkers. Tend to not even recognize themselves, unless they write it.

And 'out of the box' was that I have no recall seeing that reform, exhibited in that variety of personality.

And, I realize even though they have little control of me, its easily trumped by the supervisor and GM as my allies. I function with autonomous approval from the super and GM. But d1/ d2 have some insecurity, as if I'd take their jobs overnight. It is a source of irritation new to me. I'm not perfect by any means, but never had issue where my choices, abilities, and resources were disregarded so blatantly.
Were it not out of respect for super and GM, d1/d2 would be up the legendary creek sans a means of propulsion for sometime; and a vacant spot where my box is stationed.

[Toolmaker51]

FLASH Return of the dufus's (dufii ?) Dateline 1120 CDT, Kansas, USA

Beware of programs titled 'Knowledge Preservation'. AKA 'Process Documentation'.
Those of you familiar with my dufus's 1 & 2 will have background on the tribulations endured in a failing manufacturing facility. There are now only 3 more cars in the 'dirt' parking lot than those on asphalt; reserved of course for salaried personnel. While we're currently working jobs scheduled for November of '16, Sales and Quality spend a portion of their time on 'spaghetti drawings' to track footsteps, productive ratings of brake, laser, and welders, even the burr-hand; yet the queue of job travelers is all but dried up. And 'Process Documentation'. WTF? Sales better to get on the horn, the web, a horse, even carrier pigeon wouldn't you think?

One product we make, is an electrical enclosure for some variety of over the road tanker. It's a weldment of HRPO 14ga., box entirely welded watertight, rimmed lid and gasket attached with 8 screws. Its painted wrinkle black 100%, even the piercings for cannon sockets. Previously labored with masking dots to cover those holes to maintain conductivity of ground for case and contents. Conditions in the o/s vendor powder paint usually blew off the masking. Somehow the 'Inspector' (me) was roped into removing said paint of first two orders. Was no shred of tooling for the task.
Clueless twits go blank when queried on 'how many frickin' Fred's you figgerin on gettin' fer free'? So, now and again the 'Inspector' is suddenly 'Tool Maker' too.

Of course, I conceived, designed, and built a whole set of tooling. 1. Fixture to hold box upright and rigid. 2. Guide plate for cutters, a single piece for three adjacent holes, including the anti-rotation flat, held by one keyhole washer and cap screw. 3. Ordered .437 reamer to shorten. 4. Ordered back spotface and shank. (mr. 25 years had NO clue what that was or it's function). 5. Made three different diameter spotface cutters, that pilot in the guide plate. (two are large, about 1.9 diameter and tricky me are LEFT HAND rotation tee hee only works in one machine, whole setup was too high for a knee mill anyway HaHaa.

Late this morning I'm 'advised' I NEED to run aforementioned parts; delivery is already late, hot customer and all that BS. And dufus 2 intends to document the setup-run procedures. How much shop experience is needed to deduce/ analyze/ reason how a set of spotface tools are used to cut paint?
Told him I never signed a release to be filmed (they have no such document here).

Parts arrive, I unpack, look over papers from vendor and prints to sign off that operation. He shows up. "Go ahead and set up, during his quick lunch so he can record later.

I was ready for that. "Look here, these are posted INSPECTION GUIDELINES, TRAVELER EXAMINATION, and INSPECTOR JOB DESCRIPTION - ain't jack sh-t about running production, machine work, rework, straightening parts, designing or building fixtures and tooling. NO one's paid a lick of attention to how I get this stuff fixed up and out the door, conducting inspections all the while, without any compensation for practical knowledge being applied. ANYTHING YOU RECORD AMOUNTS TO THEFT OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY". I reminded him of our ex-comptroller whose plant closed under similar conditions; they'd also recorded setup notes. When everything went to auction they destroyed files associated with tooling ''we don't give away info - we sell knowledge''. Shocked, he disappears, along with drawing needed to proceed.

Most I know, but drawing present during work is a requirement. Later he shows up with his minidigicam, shooting off pics of tools in chucks; ignorant of the fixture, why a certain drill press is used, reverse rotation, how the back spotface is used, or realizing that one tab is stainless not steel, rpm-lube-feed and tying the part down. Not even Cliff-Notes!

I guess preservation depends on ability to scope the job.There's been no justification of what makes this important. In 18 months there hasn't been any physical improvement in anything connected to inspection. Sales is deficient in organizing processes, but throwing in mounds of prints is supposed to satisfy the 'ISO quality program'. Who hasn't heard of copy/ paste? Needless to say broad atta-boys aren't practiced on anyone, in any way shape or form.
Thankfully, the Company newsletter points to diversified safety team, first responders, the 10% who went on picnic and whose going to have a birthday, and a plea for volunteers to commit off time toward cleanup of local Missouri River bank! Yeah, corporate gets credit for public outreach, helpers get mosquitoes, cottonmouths or some mysterious septic condition.

We know what it really is. A layoff, reduction (or other lame terminology) approaches, thinking sketchy crib notes are going supplant cumulative 100's years experience, dedicated employees and toolboxes with some salaried shmuck, who is without so much as a tape measure.

Bet not.

[C-Bag]

Remarkable but all to common story. I have no idea where this came from where it seems to be held you can get a herd of dufii from a temp agency and throw them into the middle of a hot job. And that everything will go as the front office has sold the job for. And there was never any documentation on any machinery and even if there was dufii would not refer to it.

In my case they made everybody sign a release so our "intellect" was their property.

It reminds me of the old joke of the guys betting against a pre recorded football game they have seen before. The very epitome of insanity where you keep running the same scenario over and over expecting a different outcome.

My biggest problem in situations like that was they kept giving me "helpers" and then yell at me because we were talking too much! I asked one boss how am I supposed to tell him how to do the job? I guess they though monkey see monkey do, or some kind of pack mentality would cause spontaneous expertise, dunno. I dumped 9 out of 10 dufii because of no general mechanical aptitude and most of all unsafe work ethic. A guy got his leg jammed through a 1200lb rotating carriage because no safety locks and they were using 2x4" to hold the carriage in place. One guy with 4 dufii and he couldn't keep an eye on all of them.

Thats why us experienced guys sent the temps/ dufii off to do little odd jobs when we were doing the heavy dangerous stuff because we didn't want to get killed. A good friend who did the same work for a different co. was crushed to death when a machine fell on him.

[PJs]

TM51,

First off ISO is pretty much a joke in most places to get orders (like $10-$20k for a CE approval) based on an "apparent standard of practice". I did a fair amount of vendor qualification over the years all over the country, some Canada and Europe and found most of the ISO businesses in scramble mode trying to keep up with it and some of the pedagogue inspectors. It's also permeated with paper-wasters trying to come up with a scheme to keep their jobs, collect insignificant data and satisfy ISO requirements...All in my humble opinion of course. Not that I disagree with the concept of a Standard of practice for manufacturing...but it's been muddled beyond recognition in a lot of instances...another mouse built to gubment specs.

Small story: I was once task with building a "show" unit for our reps and trade shows with tough specs. It had to be about the size of a bread box, <90lbs, wheels/handles, clients see the operation of it from 50', and a crate to ship it around the world and survive multiple times, all right side up of course. Most of our units were the size of a refrigerator or beer frig's. Really an R&D project that included all of our technology and some new stuff I came up with to fit in a small box the reps could handle...and a quartz bell jar no less. It ended up being a 83lb blivet. I did all design and about 85% of the build except for sheet metal and some trick machining on the 7075 flange and stainless feed-through for the tiny cryo-coil, with < 5% loss.

The thing that happened was as I was getting close to finishing it. I was sitting in my little R&D space with all these technologies on the bench and had just finished building a very unique stack technology (Cryo-refrigeration) I had come up with for space saving and here comes the VP-Sales with a bunch of Japanese guys we were negotiating with to license our technology. They all had cameras and as soon as they entered started shooting pictures of everything including my new stack...I actually hollered at the VP...What are you doing! OH, Oh it's ok they are with me and we're on a shop tour and thought I would show them what you are working on. My jaw dropped and I threw a towel over my stack. Believe it or not I got called on the carpet for yelling at him in front of them. Funnier yet was the VP was a 25yr Big Blue (IBM) guy! Nuff Said! NDR's, yeah right....let a lone job descriptions, really?

Sorry to hear about your friend C-Bag. That's a hard one to swallow! Good for you to dump the 9 for safety and sanity. Worked with some temps over the years and think your number is about right!

Old, old saying I just made up: The hard part with dufi is herding them to water but it's much tougher to hold all their heads underwater at the same time without getting kicked.

~PJ

[C-Bag]

Old, old saying I just made up: The hard part with dufi is herding them to water but it's much tougher to hold all their heads underwater at the same time without getting kicked.

~PJ

What was that VP of yours thinking??? I guess if he didn't understand it, nobody else would......

My buddy getting killed was a real shock. He was a rough and tumble guy as you'd expect a millwright to be. So he just seemed invincible. And he was much younger and they had just had a baby the spring before. All of us who knew him were stunned. He worked with much more qualified true professional crew. So it really came home to me how precarious my situation was working with guys that seemed like they picked them up out in front of the local Home Depot that morning.

I got sent out on an emergency crew to get a project back on track and clean up what was being complained about by the owner of the install. They had already sent back the good equipment so I was forced to use a cut off blade ( what we all called a suicide blade) on my 5" Makita angle grinder. I was carefully cutting the piece and was moving my clamps when one of the temps said " be careful man". I looked at him, well duh I thought. But he continued " them things is dangerous" and I agreed. While I'm fitting up my clamps he says "yeah, I won't use one no more" and lifted up his t-shirt to show me a scar across his belly! Now, that would have gutted any normal person and for the life of me I can't even fathom why anybody would be in a position with one of those things to have it get away from you and go across your belly. He was the best of those three temps

[PJs]

What was that VP of yours thinking??? I guess if he didn't understand it, nobody else would......

He wasn't my "Vice President"...but had some other non PC terms for "VP" & him, especially after being called on the carpet.

Such a loss with the baby and all and a rising star to boot. I sure get your point though about s@@ing your precarious position and becoming more aware around them.

Here's another saying on a piece of wood we have by the front door. We see it when we head out into west county traffic.

"I have gone out to find myself...If I return before I get back, Please keep me here."

Some how seem apropos here but not sure Dufi would get it. Think it also applies to getting older but brings a smirk to me every time!