found a pic of the machine I run for a living

[backwoodsbob]

thought it was fairly cool for those interested.



Steel mill work.HARD labor but it pays well and my companies bennies are amazing

[CurtEastPoint]

1. Machines are amazing. I love 'How It's Made' or whatever it is...they show

all sorts of cool things being made and the machines are just amazing.

[OriginalGeek]

14. One of my favorite shows!

And I have no idea why. I love watching how they make stuff but I've never had even an inkling of a desire to make stuff myself.

BWBob's machine looks like it came right off that show.

[warrior1]

2. me too

[Tuesday Afternoon]

3. DU Rec

for labor

[Hula Popper]

4. Mornin Bob

Is that a slitter station before a rewind?

[backwoodsbob]

5. you got it

braner 76 slitter.

I'm the setup man.

[BlueStreak]

6. There are two machines I would have loved to use for a living

This old street sweeper:



And no real man would not love to be the Zamboni operator:


Instead I just worked on stupid computers my whole career.

[backwoodsbob]

7. zamboni!!!

Love those things

[BlueStreak]

8. What does that machine do?

Does it cut sheets into strips?

[backwoodsbob]

9. that's exactly right

loaded in the back of the machine is a master coil up to 8 feet wide.What you see there is various width pieces of tooling to set how wide of a cut we need to make with knives to cut the steel.This thing can take a 60,000 pound master coil and cut it up to whatever we need in about ten minutes.
My job is I put together all the tooling and knives.I setup the cuts.

[BlueStreak]

11. Sounds dangerous once that thing starts flying

10 or 15 years ago, there was a train running through a little town where I worked at the time. There were some flatbed cars with those huge rolls (probably that 60,000 # master coil you are talking about. One of those coils had come loose so this thing was flying down the tracks with a big piece of sheet metal flying wildly 15 feet off the side of the car. They were luck nobody got decapitated that day.

[backwoodsbob]

13. it's dangerous

VERY dangerous.
We had 5 people go to the hospital in march and earlier this year a guy got two fingers cut off

[backwoodsbob]

22. saw a good friend in Virginia

get cut in half.I'll never forget that.It will haunt me for the rest of my life.

It's a hell of a way to make a living.Pays well..I'll go well over 50k this year plus amazing bennies...but...you understand you could be hurt or worse every day

[CaliforniaPeggy]

10. Very cool, my dear backwoodsbob!

Thank you for showing us this fascinating machine.

[backwoodsbob]

12. very welcome Peggy

thought it was cool.I just did a google because I was bored and found that pic.

[denbot]

15. That's a pretty bad ass machine bwb.

How big a gage can your machine cut?

[backwoodsbob]

16. this one only goes to.115

our stamco machine right next to mine is the only slitter east of the Mississippi that can go .400 that I know of

Our stamco takes all the jobs over .115

[denbot]

17. Damn, that's almost plate.

Thanks for sharing your work, I too like the "How it's Made" and "Dirty Jobs" shows.

[Demoiselle]

18. ...And it's beautiful, too!

Thank you..

[Mopar151]

19. Tools are cool...

90% of our country has no concept of what we are capable of. I've done a bunch of different machine work related to automation and prototypes, and the kind of stuff you find tucked away in little niches is friggin' amazing.

[backwoodsbob]

20. I agree

I've lived all over the country from Seaside cali to Detroit to Bluefield Virginia and now Charleston SC and the one constant is how amazed I am at every shop I have ever worked at at how ingenious machines are and more important how ingenious the people running them are

[Arctic Dave]

21. Nice.

Keep it rolling.

[ConcernedCanuk]

23. Reminds me of 2 jobs I had

.
.
.

One was at a punch press factory in Huntsville Ontario back in the 80's where we mostly made trailer hitches, accessories and balls.

The trailer balls were made on an old lathe converted from a WW2 grenade maker!

I was a set-up operator for the presses.

Largest press was 200 tons - everyone knew when that one was running - every time it cycled (only 5 times a minute), the whole building vibrated.

Within 3 weeks I was the most productive operator - sorta pissed off the old timers (not on purpose, I just like efficiency) As a licenced automotive and truck mechanic, my skills enabled me to figure out inefficiencies in the set-up process.

All the other set-up men set the dies in the presses perfectly square to the press. I did that as well for a few days, until I started to operate them.

Found that setting them at different angles depending on the operation could speed up my production. I would walk around and ask the other operators what was the most awkward part, then resolve it.

They ran 3 8 hour shifts - 24 hours a day. When they needed an extra operator - I was first on the list - did way too many 16 hour shifts, but I was younger, and money hungry.

SECOND job that pic reminds me of is working at a newspaper press company in Bracebridge - around the same time - mid 80's.

Newspaper rolls of about 2 tons (looking like a huge roll of toilet paper) were threaded through a press that looked a bit like the pic in the OP.

It traveled through the press at 27 mph. We were all warned to never get near the edge of the speeding paper as the edge of it could cut right through you. (no guards back then)

Again, I became one of the most efficient employees quickly, able to do the jobs of 2 people - and yeah, again pissing off a whole lot of people by doing so.

Retired now, fixing up the place I just bought in the bush - loving it, but still pissing people off with my fussy ways.

F*ck em - I'm having a ball!

CC