So I get there, and the guy from third shift tells me that the machine isn't running right. "It won't go back," he told me.
Now let me take a moment to explain a bit how this machine works, or this post won't make any sense to any of you. The machine's job is to cut copper tubing into the correct lengths, so that they can be formed into the parts needed for whatever model of evaporator coils the order being made needs. The way it works is thus: There is a big roll of copper tubing on an uncoiler at the back end of the machine. We use two sizes of copper--3/4" and 7/8". This morning I was set up on 7/8". As the copper is uncoiled and fed into the machine, it passes through two sets of rollers, a vertical set and a horizontal set. These rollers straighten the copper. It is then clamped by a feed clamp and pushed by this clamp into the cutting mechanism. The feed clamp then returns to the starting position to grab the next length of copper and push it into the cutting mechanism. At the same time, two other clamps grab and hold the length of copper in the cutting mechanism while a blade between them cuts the copper. Once the copper is cut, the forward clamp pulls the cut piece away from the rest of the copper. The feed mechanism then feeds the next piece forward, and returns to its set position to begin the cycle all over again.
When I got there this morning, the guy on third shift told me that the feed mechanism wasn't returning to its set position, and if it was it was going really slow. This can cause the pieces to come out all different lengths. The reason for this is that once the pull apart clamp moves, the mechanism feeds forward, no matter whether it has returned to its original position or not. He said he'd called maintenance and they'd come out and basically shrugged their shoulders and left. I tried running the cutter, and it was still doing the same thing--not returning to its set position. We call that feeding back. The machine wouldn't feed back. I tried to adjust the air pressure, but it didn't help. So I took a deep breath, steeled myself, and...
told Johnny Lindley I needed maintenance to the cutter. And got hollered at.
You know, if I knew what was wrong with the cutter, I could have fixed it myself.
Well, he ended up calling the maintenance coordinator, but when I saw who it was they sent out, I groaned, "Oh, God, not him!" The one they sent out, John Hollis, is the laziest, most useless member of the maintenance team. He will give you two hours worth of run around in an attempt to get out of a ten minute repair job. And he always tries to turn it back on you, like the machine won't work right because you are stupid and don't know what you are doing. That's exactly what he did. He started off by saying I had the wrong clamps in the machine. I stated that I didn't, but he insisted that I did have the wrong clamps in there. The copper will hang up if you don't have the right clamps in. Yeah, I replied. I'd like to see you fit 7/8" copper through a set of 3/4" clamps. But he still insisted, and took the clamps out to prove he was right. Of course, the correct clamps were in the machine. Even if the wrong clamps had been installed, it wouldn't have stopped it from feeding back.
So that fell through, but then he began saying that I had my rollers too tight. He told me to push the copper through the machine, and I did. I pushed it up as far as you can manually push it, and he said with a smirk, "See, you can't push it through." I told him that I just did, and he still insisted that I couldn't because the rollers were too tight. He went and told Calvin--the shift supervisor--that the rollers were too tight and that was the problem. I said that they weren't, and to demonstrate, I walked to the back of the cutter, grasped the copper in one hand and rolled it back and forth through the rollers a few times. If you can do that, I stated, the rollers aren't too tight. Calvin just kind of went ehhh, and walked off. He doesn't know anything about that machine.
John Hollis kept insisting that the rollers were too tight, and I said that they weren't, but even if they were, that's not why the machine won't work. The rollers being too tight won't stop the feed mechanism from returning to its starting position. It may stop the copper from feeding forward, but since it was feeding forward just fine, that wasn't a problem. So John Hollis went and got Johnny Lindley and told him that the rollers were too tight. He came over and started yelling at me to adjust the rollers. I insisted that the rollers were not too tight and again demonstrated by grasping the copper with one hand--one hand, mind you-- and rolling it back and forth a few times. If I can do that with one hand, I said, the rollers are not too tight. Even if they had been too tight, that wouldn't stop the machine from feeding back. At that point, Johnny got right in my face and screamed at me to get the bar and adjust the rollers.
"I don't know anything about that," I said. "That bar!" He screamed. "The one you use to set the rollers!"
" Well, maybe you should put a trained operator over here instead of just throwing me on this machine because I'm convenient", I countered. John Hollis was watching these proceedings, smirking all the while. When I walked to the back of the machine to try to figure out what Johnny was talking about, he smarted off, saying, "See, your rollers are too tight."
By that time, I'd had all I could take. I gathered my stuff up, told Calvin I'd gotten sick and needed to go home and he could find somebody else to convince that idiot maintenance man that the rollers aren't the problem, and I left. I hadn't even been there an hour. The thing is, if that lazy, worthless maintenance man had just fixed the cutter instead of trying to get out of it by fiddling with the clamps and rollers for an hour, it would been done in just a few minutes, with a lot less stress on everybody involved.
When I got home, I was still so mad that I swept and swabbed (uh, mopped for you non Navy types) my bathroom and kitchen floors and vacuumed the whole house. I learned two things. Tiny bits of corrugated cardboard left from the cat scratching her claws on a box don't like to be vacuumed up. Copper BBs make an incredible amount of noise when vacuumed up.
You know what? Right now, I'm not so sure I'm even going to go back to work tomorrow.
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