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About LinkBacksGot any horror stories to share?
Got any horror stories to share?
For work hold down?
Yeah I got one, I was working in a place that made tools and fixtures for the defense industry, (don't ask). I had a 10 pieces of 304 stainless that were 10 inches in dia and 3/16 in thick and needed to be flat on the face within 0.0002 in. This required dusting it off in a rotary surface grinder. In order to hold the piece down (304 is non-magnetic) I used coceal a form a plaster of paris. Everything was fine until about the 5th piece, I was impatient and didn't let the plaster setup long enough. THat piece lifted up and blew the 12 in dia X 1in wheel into about a million pieces. The part came out of the grinder like a flying saucer. Scared the heck out of me and I sure am glad no one got hurt.
Whoa.... it sounds like you very fortunate that no one (including yourself) got hurt. So... did you catch heck for it?
Nah it was a union shop and the foreman was the one really pushing me for the job. In fact he went and got me another wheel for the grinder so I could get back to work on it!Originally Posted by Twistr
Whoa.... it sounds like you very fortunate that no one (including yourself) got hurt. So... did you catch heck for it?In fact after that he stopped pushing on all the work I did for them.
About 10 years ago, I was using what is called a "track burner".. This is an oxy/acetylene torch that is attached to a motor crawler to make extremely nice cuts. Anyhow, I was using the circle attachment on it while cutting a 36 inch circle from a 4ft x 4ft x3/4 thick steel plate.
The entire rig was set up on an empty steel 55 gallon drum.
Normally , the rig works with very little or no interference from a human once its going.. It takes about 15 minutes to cut a complete circle so I lit the torch, got it going, and left to get a can of pop.. (cutting with a torch tends to make you a little warm under the collar.)
I was only gone for about 5 minutes.. When I came back, the torch had gone out for some reason.. Not a big deal usually.. Ya just turn off the machine, relight the torch and start the machine again..
I re-light the unit, the next thing I remember is picking my self off the ground and the whole shop running toward me...
While I was gone, the flame had burned threw the top of the 55 gallon drum and the gases where accumulating inside it.. When I lit it, kaboom....
I had a nice gash on my arm, and the ceiling had a nice gash in it... The 400 pound plate launched itself 14 feet straight up.. The lucky part was that it didn't land on me when it came down...
After finishing that project, my very next project was a burn table built just for the purpose.
Murphy
Holy crap!!
(Note: The opinions expressed in this post are my own and are not necessarily those of CNCzone and its management)
Check Out My Build-Log: http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6452
Working as a tool grinder, I was delivering fresh 'meat' to a pretty big Bullard VTL. The job was turning clamping rings using magnetic chucks and clamps as the standard chuck created too much distortion. The rings were 83" OD and about 14" tall. While I was watching the performance of the boring bar the part let go, whipping around the bar taking out the chip shield, coolant lines and an air line. The boring bar then broke and the part then left the table, aided in part to one of the many mag chucks fastened to the 9' diameter table. The ring took out a tool cart and a cabinet before it hit the floor, then proceeded to wobble it's way towards the shop's newest Deckel 6 axis, big bucks machining center about 20 feet away. Good thing they put that Deckel there - it stopped the ring dead in it's tracks.
The operator didn't even miss a beat - he appologized to the maintenance guys as they made repairs to his machine but other than that, he wasn't too alarmed or rattled. Nobody was injured, minimal damage to the equipment. They had to re-shoot the Deckel's pallet changer, but other than that - nothing more than cosmetic damage to the Deckel.
Scott
Consistency is a good thing....unless you're consistently an idiot.
Not exactly a horror story but............ Years ago I was working up in the north of Australia at a place called Darwin which back in those days was considered to be rather wild, and being in the southern hemisphere, north means HOT and Darwin was hot. In the workshop where I was, we had our electric power points (outlets?) suspended at a height of about 2m (6ft) from the ceilings and so I went to plug in a 9 inch angle grinder. I placed the grinder at my feet and reached up to plug in the lead and all of a sudden the grinder roared to life at my feet. Whoever used it last hadn't switched it off but instead just unplugged it. (It was an old model where you could switch them on and they stay on).
Anyway the grinder took off at my feet and started its way on a big circle whose radius was determined by the reach of the lead. In one move I was able to rip the plug from the socket and jump to safety. I was very lucky I didn't get hurt and it still raises the hair on the back of my neck when I think about it.
Last edited by skippy; 06-06-2005 at 09:05 AM.
Here’s another one from that same workshop. I was the foreman in charge of about 40 guys and one of those 40 was an apprentice who was 4ft nothing tall and had a high pitched voice. He, like all apprentices in probably all lands, was the victim of all the practical jokes at that time.
One day I had to go out to have a look at a job at an aboriginal reserve about 160km (100 miles) from the base. On the return trip in the company 4x 4, I ran over a 2m (6ft) King Brown snake so I backed up, got out, made sure it was dead with a stick, picked it up with a rag and put it in the back of the 4 x 4. When I arrived back at the workshop I tied its head securely with a rag because King Browns are deadly poisonous.
I then put it in a bag and took it inside to the tool shed where I carefully placed the snake (coiled up again) in the rag drum which was a 44 gallon drum sitting on a pallet. I went out to where the apprentice was working and asked him if he could get me a rag. Next thing you know he was running through the workshop at full speed, terrified look on his face with a high pitched scream coming from his mouth. Poor guy wasn't tall enough to see into the drum and so a handfull of still warm King Brown is what he had grabbed. Before anyone says it, yes it was cruel on my part but, like most apprentices I received more than my share too during my apprenticeship years.
EDIT: Just to expand on that last statement, I once had a tradesman connect up the high tension lead of the spark plug tester to the metal bench it was placed on and used a tooth pick to keep the test button depressed. I (as an apprentice) was then asked to go and get a (metal) tool from the bench and off course when I grabbed it I was thrown back some metres by the high tension electric shock.
Hmmm.... seems like these things don't happen in the US?
Last edited by skippy; 06-06-2005 at 09:08 AM.
Apprentices, ah, don't you love them. I once had an apprentice very frustrated when we were working on a job and I asked him to go to storeman to get me a "skirting board ladder", "a box of short circuits" and a "long stand", needless to say the storeman played along very well and after the storeman made him stand there for 20 minutes and then sent the apprentice back to me empty handed, I was not in the apprentices good books.
"A Helicopter Hovers Above The Ground, Kind Of Like A Brick Doesn't"
Greetings From Down Under
Dave Drain
Akela Australia Pty. Ltd.
(Note: The opinions expressed in this post are my own and are not necessarily those of CNCzone and its management)
I once sent a purchasing clerk out to pick me up a "Spool Of Pipe Thread".
Off she went in the company truck.
I guess the first three places she went perpetuated the prank, and it wasn't untill she got to the fourth place that someone told her that there was no such thing.
She came back as mad as a wet hen.
Moral of this story:
DO NOT p1ss off the person who has to sign purchase orders so that you can get what you want.
I paid for that for a long, long time. (Untill I figured out how to order stuff myself and give the suppliers random numbers when they asked for a PO#)
Patrick;
The Sober Pollock
You're kidding. That's it? Of all of the machinists and wanna-bees in this place and we get 6 stories and a few comments?
Sheeesh. Personally, I liked the story about the exploding drum and I have one for the Darwin awards that relates. I suck at story telling, but what the heck - nobody else is pitching in, so here it goes:
Frequently at my full time job, we have a problem with the operators over tightening the drum faucets into 55 gallon steel drums. When they get stuck, the operators will roll the barrel to the maintenance shop to have the faucet removed by our resident gorilla.
It's not at all uncommon to have the threaded hub in the drum (the bung) break away from the lid and start spinning, making it very difficult to remove the faucet. The maintenance secret was to throw a little liquid steel (weld) on it to keep it from spinning so the faucet could be unthreaded.
One particular drum thrust our eldest maintenance-man into the OSHA hall of fame. Upon receiving a drum with a stuck faucet and a spinning hub, he opted to break out the torch and perform a little fusion. The drum had previously contained an Acetone based paint thinner.
The resulting explosion blew the lid off the drum (thankfully for him) – this is about all anybody knows as he was doing this in the space alone at 5AM. But – we do know that it punched a nice hole in the wall and the roof before it came back down. The fire ball set of a sprinkler which tripped the water flow sensor which resulted in the Chesapeake Fire Department to be dispatched. Being a chemical company, this was quite an incident.
He suffered moderate hearing loss in one ear and his hair got a new lease on life. Other than that, he was fine; especially after his unexpected vacation – courtesy of management. Policy prohibits hot work on drums.
The names have been omitted to protect the guilty. Plus – Don’s a good guy and I wouldn’t want to embarrass him again.
Scott
Consistency is a good thing....unless you're consistently an idiot.
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