Author Topic: A story for Sir John?  (Read 2505 times)

Offline John Hill

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A story for Sir John?
« on: June 10, 2011, 04:58:38 PM »
My brother was around the other day and of course stories were being told, one related to his time at the local meat works.

He said they went to check out all the machinery prior to opening for the new season and found 'the chain' would not move, circuit breakers popped and no amount of searching could find anything jamming the machinery.  Now the chain is a substantial installation being many yards of slowly moving chain (funny that eh?) with hooks from which a hundred or more sheep carcasses would be suspended.  They decided the reduction gearbox, newly installed the season before, was the culprit so someone climbed down into its pit and took the top off.  They found the worm was firmly welded to the wheel and everything had the distinct appearance of having been very hot.

Then someone noticed the tag that had been attached to the reduction box when it was received for installation. "NO OIL",  the guy who did the installation went a bit red in the face and exclaimed that "NO OIL" means to not add oil.  They were going to kick his arse to the end of town and back again and arranged a formal meeting with the big boss to decide his fate.  He took a small box into the meeting  and when the boss asked "Well, just what do you think 'no oil' means?" he  said "Well you tell me", opened the box and brought out the gauges from a oxy/acet set pointing to the words stamped thereon 'no oil'.  He kept his job.

BTW, the reduction box had run almost 24 hours a day for several months before failure.

I am sure Sir John could have fixed that puppy and still had time to go to the pub before closing.
« Last Edit: June 10, 2011, 05:28:45 PM by John Hill »
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Offline PekkaNF

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Re: A story for Sir John?
« Reply #1 on: June 11, 2011, 05:02:29 AM »
Good save I must say.

Can't remember if this happened after osmas contribution to the air travel and cargo, but we used deliver spares ready to run on airfreight before. On day we rushed a pallet or two (just few parts and they are not cheap) from Finland to Canada, our customer got them an assembled them. They run only few hours before they overheated. They were not empty, but bleed the oil filling out just before shipping. There were instructions on with the shipment, but they apparently thrashed all the "papers". Now service department affixes a great big colorfull sticker to every "dry" part. We tought of the wording a lot because as you stated above wording better convey the idea pretty well before correct action is taken.

We get some smaller gearboxes from Italy, they have a small neat sticker next to one cap, that could be used to add or empty oil, depending which way the gear box is. Some of the mechanicians didn't take action, because it was on language they didn't understand. I mean - if you see a tag on a cap that looks like oiling point, wouldn't that arouse your curiosity?

Long time ago I sent a line printer to my brother. You now the matrix printer type that has a moving head. During transportation that heavy printer head had to be secured with a lengtvice split pipe over guide rod. For not that mechanically minded grater audience that pipe had tag "remove before use" affixed to it with twist wire. My brother called and complained that the printer didn't work. Just buzzed and the printter head did not move. I asked if he moved the transport block. He said "yes, but I don't understand what good that paper does!". He untwisted the wire and removed the tag. This transport block (split corrugated pipe) was made to look too professional, he tought it was a mechanical part of the printer.

Pekka