It's about time.: One Oops Fixed and Fire At The Old Plant.

Friday, September 16, 2022

One Oops Fixed and Fire At The Old Plant.

Our Location today is Windsor, Ontario.

Click on the pictures to enlarge.

When I got to the Plant this morning I simply waved at Mile and headed towards the PTA. By the time I got the Feedscrew with the Big Oops in place to be welded it was past 6:30. While the Burner did its job of preheating the unit I was busy changing the Powder from Stainless Steel to Chromide then making changes to the Program to fit the size of the job.

It was 7:30 by the time I first hit the Begin Weld Button and right away I was seeing imperfections in the Weld so I hit the Stop Button. When Alec trained me to run this machine he told me to never touch the Dwell Button Settings that they were already at to the most practical numbers.

Without the bright Arc glaring me in the face I was able to examine how the Bead was coming out. It was building high in the center but not touching the edges of the Flight. Using my knowledge of Structural Welding I recalled that doing Vertical Welds we paused a second or two on the edges of the weld. That allowed the molten metal to fill in behind the rod without going beyond. In this case the pause would be called Dwell.

After restarting the Weld process I started changing the Dwell on the Right then on the Left a bit at a time until it came out the way I wanted. This meant I was keeping the Arc away from the edge but by adding Dwell Time the Molten Metal flowed right to it.

The last half was perfect but I needed to fix the beginning. A little grinding here and there took care of the high spots. Still needing more height I simply added the second bead directly on top. The end result was Three-Eighths of an Inch of New Material that replaced the material lost.

It was nearly 1:00 and I’d had no lunch yet when I was being shown another Oops. With the first job in the Sandbox to slow cool over the weekend I was again removing the Chromide and replacing it with Stainless Steel.

If you read about the problems I had doing Bearing Surfaces last Friday and this past Tuesday you know it came back to haunt me. It seemed that I could manage repairing the Flights but when it came to these ~~Rotating Stepovers~~ the Machine refused to cooperate and it was only getting worse.

I showed Mile the problem and said I would fix it on Monday. I punched out at 3:47.

Back at the Apartment Kathy and I sat and talked for a while before we started getting supper ready. I was so hungry that I had Two Veggie Wraps made from the Leftover Stir-Fry. Kathy also served Fruitcake to have as dessert.

It was just after 7:30 when my buddy Ivan called. He informed me that the Heater Boxes on the Mezzanine had both caught on Fire today. Instead of calling the Fire Department Paul and Kharen put out the blazes using all the Fire Extinguishers in the Plant. If they had been called in that Plant the Fire Marshall would have been Condemned it.

One of the hardest working General Labours Paul had working for him went to a better paying job. It cost Paul over Twenty Thousand Dollars to replace the Paint-Line Rail in the Post Wash by Contractors. The Loading Docks I was struggling to keep going had to be replaced because Contractors were saying they were beyond repair. Paul asks Ivan to call me every day but Ivan says he does not talk to me. We’ll talk again soon.