A day at my job, part 1

A Day at my job Oct. 16, 2009

Arrived at 7:28, 7:30 is start time and I’m the only one that gets there on time. I’ve always believed in being on time. There are 3 other coworkers with different degrees in machining skills from a few years to me with 33 years experience. I’ve done just about everything that gets done in a machine shop. I needed to keep running the job I already have been working on for several hours’, days before.

What I needed to do at the moment, start up the Lathe. This particular lathe is, ah, 30 years old (?). The name of this lathe, AXELSON, it is a 14X30 which means you can turn up to a 14-inch diameter and a part 30 inches long from the face of the chuck to the tailstock. This is a real beefy machine. You can really hog some metal on it. (Heavy cuts and high feed rates). More info from a nameplate attached to the lathe. It read Mackenzie Machine Tools, Machinery Co. Boston, Mass. This was the person who sold it to someone those many years ago. I wonder if they are still around, hmm

Just to get it straight, imagine if you wanted to make a baseball bat out of a tree limb. To do that you would put it in a lathe and turn it down to size that’s basically what a lathe does, cut round shafts and such.

What I am working on, when finished will be a 10inch in diameter, large tooth Gear. This rather big Gear is for a local Chicken Plant, it drives large conveyers. A week or so ago my boss gave me 5 pieces of 3inch long by 3.5 diameter round stock and also 5 pieces that were cut on a Plasma cutter at a local business that does that. They cut it out of ¾ inch metal plate. Think of the metal as cookie dough and you need to cut 10.5 inch round cookies out of it. That is what this machine does, burn out the shapes we needed. It is really quite amazing to watch those machines run. I had to put these large metal cookies in my lathe and bore a hole to a precise size. Then, if you remember he also gave me 5 pieces of the 3inch by 3.5 inch round stock. In those I had to rough drill a 1inch hole through them and machine the diameter just .003 just undersize of the bore in the plate. So now the "hub" will fit into the flange. Then we sent them to a local welder and he welded the two together. We got them back and now I have to take this rough piece and machine it into a finished Gear

This is the end of Part 1