"So Let it Be Written... So Let it Be Done"

The life and times of a real, down to earth, nice guy. A relocated New Englander formerly living somewhere north of Boston, but now soaking up the bright sun of southwestern Florida (aka The Gulf Coast) for over nine years. Welcome to my blog world. Please leave it as clean as it was before you came. Thanks for visiting, BTW please leave a relevant comment so I know you were here. No blog spam, please. (c) MMV-MMXIX Court Jester Productions & Bamford Communications

Monday, December 05, 2005

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.

11 Comments:

At 05 December, 2005 11:58, Blogger Katie said...

Green - howdy from Texas. I wish I could add something either smart or entertaining to this post but alas I am an o-ring ignorant (yep used that as a noun). Thanks for coming by my blog for a visit. I'll be back to see how the o-ring debacle ended (I may not be o-ring literate but I like a good cliff hanger).

 
At 05 December, 2005 12:02, Blogger Tim said...

Come back as often as you like, and not just for the o-rings...

New faces and comments are always welcome here...

 
At 05 December, 2005 12:08, Blogger Genna said...

Glad you have the day off.... Hope for a miracle, that everything will be taken care of so you don't have to deal with it.

{I took the day off, too... Mental health day. Shhh... Don't tell.}

 
At 05 December, 2005 12:23, Blogger Tim said...

Mental health days are sooo necessary once in a while.

Though my present work schedule gives me every Monday off. Then I work four ten hour days to make upo for it...

 
At 05 December, 2005 12:27, Blogger Genna said...

That is absolutely the "ideal" work week... I have been trying to get my boss to observe "european work weeks" but no such luck...

 
At 05 December, 2005 12:38, Blogger Tim said...

Four day work weeks aren't bad.

Ideally I'd love to get my writing career going and get a few clients so that I can work for myself - when I want - at my own pace...

 
At 05 December, 2005 14:11, Blogger Genna said...

Green,

What would you want to write about? What genre?

 
At 06 December, 2005 05:09, Blogger DaBich said...

Green~Let's hope that when you go back into work the whole shebang is all taken care of!

 
At 06 December, 2005 16:57, Blogger Kristi B. said...

sorry work has been so frustrating!! Quitting work and writing instead sounds good to me too!

 
At 06 December, 2005 19:52, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I was second in new business sales for year end and how did they repay me ? They audited me and ripped my work to shreds without so much as showing me any of these so called audits....some places will do anything not to give a bonus or raise. I for one am sick as hell of being treated like I suck. I wish I could write, better yet ? I wish I was 50 so I could retire and LEARN to write. Or maybe collect seashells....keep yer dream Green

 
At 07 December, 2005 09:18, Blogger DaBich said...

Bluez! Wow, I'm so sorry to hear about how your bosses treated you. Ya know, I'd be damned if I'd push to promote them. I'd just do my job...nothing more...and look for another while I'm at it. That really sucks!!!

 

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