Barking up the wrong tree

Ok, I've been avoiding posting about the end results at work, relating to the o-ring problem.

As it turned out, the o-rings were NOT the cause of the leaking problem after all. My co-worker P and I were at wits end with this issue as of the close of business on Wednesday last. So he, being the R&D guy, called the big man - the owner of the company, L, to ask his opinion of the problem. A fresh set of eyes and mind can do wonders when dealing with frustration.

What caused the leaks?

Well, when the poorly designed mold was made, two of the slides that form the mold cavity were given three holes each for the coolant to flow through. After said holes were in place it was decided that only two holes were necessary, one for coolant going in and one for coolant coming out. The third hole in each slide was filled with a brass plug. The adhesive around these plugs had simply and finally given way, causing the slow, steady drip. Picture putting your finger over a pinhole leak in one of your old copper waterpipes and you'll get an idea of the pressure of the fluid that was leaking everywhere.

What gave the plugs away as faulty? Shooting a large amount of forced compressed air into one of the open holes while blocking off the other open hole caused the brass plugs to immediately pop out.

Now I had seen these plugs from the beginning, but didn't realize that they were actually plugs. I had thought they were part of the slides themselves to mark which piece belonged where, for purposes of correct disassembly/reassembly during cleaning.

The super adhesive mentioned in the previous post, which we frantically found late in the afternoon on Wednesday was to temporarily replug the cracks around the brass plugs, so that we could run something on Thursday. I didn't realize until later exactly what the adhesive would be used for.

Two days of valuable run time WASTED, barking up the wrong tree...

So we ran on Thursday hoping to make enough pieces to ship out by the time the FedEx guy got to our place around 4:30 PM or at the very latest dropping the package off at a FedEx location, allowing us two more hours of run time.

After running just over 100 start-up pieces, to fine tune the process, we sucessfully produced about 175 pieces. They looked like crap but based on similar parts we had shipped to the customer last year without getting any returned, figured these would be okay.

Not quite.

L, ever the prideful perfectionist, always wants to send the best quality parts to our customers, since his name and reputation are behind every piece. The parts that we figured were acceptible, L did not. Scrap everything.

So, with the shipping deadline totally shot, co-workers JA and M went back into the cleanroom Thursday night to try and figure out how to make better parts. Their work, and a meeting with L on Friday morning, determined that some additional minor work on the mold was necessary to help solve the problem. J then drove the mold to Leominster, to a company that has done mold work for us many times in the past and waited for the work to be done. When he got back, the mold was put back into the machine and more parts were made.

Where are we now?

As of Friday evening, my co-workers now directly involved were waiting to meet with L - for him to inspect the results, which unofficially were not good enough. Lord only knows what's happening with it today. It's my day off and I'll inquire about our progress on Tuesday, when I next go in.

Not needing the whole clean-room staff on this problem, I was assigned another task, along with co-worker JS. This for another project coming about in the not too distant future...

What will be the mood at work, now?

Likely tense until this 500 piece slice of hell can be shipped out.

Woo-hoo.