Road Trips or Errands?

On several occasions I've been asked to go on work related business trips. Usually these amount to me driving somewhere to drop something off/pick something up or buy something. I hadn't been on any such errands in a while, but over the last two and a half weeks I've gone on two such trips. On the 16th of September I found myself driving to Hingham, which is south of Boston and today I drove to Clinton, which is in central MA. On other occasions I've also had to drive to Leominster, which is realtively close to Clinton.

Anyway, what made the trip to Hingham interesting was that my directions from Mapquest left me in a residential neighborhood on a dead end street. I found the place I needed to be, which I passed while following the directions. I was only about two miles away. To get there I drove I-93, which used to go through downtown Boston aboveground. Thanks to the Big Dig, I-93 now goes under downtown Boston. Not quite as scenic now and not nearly as enjoyable. What made the trip memorable is that on the day I went it was rainy and I had to sit in traffic on the highway for 45 minutes. Turns out a 20 foot section of I-93 was flooded with about 14 inches of water on both sides of the highway, probably due to a nearby water main break. Have I mentioned how much I hate sitting in traffic?

Today's trip was uneventful until I arrived in Clinton. Trying to find the factory was not fun. My directions were ok from Mapquest but trying to follow the streets in my map book was horrible. Understand that Clinton is a hole in the wall small Massachusetts town and there were maps of four towns on the same page in my book, making the print very small. I must have pulled to the side of the road at least 10 times comparing street signs to my map book to make sure I was on the right track.

I arrived at my destination and met with the person I needed to see. While walking on the catwalk above the factory floor I commented to him that the layout was nice & clean. He said the building was new and they had been there for about a year. All in all I like going on these little errands. They nicely break up the everyday routine.

Shortly after I got back to Tyngsboro, where my company is located, I was called into the clean room to repair a leak in one of the hoses connected to the mold on the machine that we were running. Turns out the hose was fine but one of the brass fittings got bent and cracked. The spray that came out of that crack was much like the pinhole leaks you sometimes get in old copper pipe plumbing.

We use a combination of water and glycol to heat up/cool off the molds. All told this issue shut down production for about 90 minutes so that I could take the mold out of the machine and clean it up. Once resumed, the rest of the day was uneventful.

For perspective on the part we made today: The mould clamps at 7 tons of pressure, which is about 52 kiloNewtons (I think that's correct.) One shot yields two pieces. Total shot weight is 1.8 grams. Total part weight is .2 grams. It's really hard to comprehend how small these parts are until you see them up close. And when you look at them under a microscope at 10x or 40x it's astounding to see the detail.