Backstage

Did Someone Get The Licence of That Truck?

Shortly after the last post, while I was letting the system cool down, my cell rang... It was a number I did not know, but with nothing major to do I thought I'd screw with the telemarketer... Fortunately, it was not a telemarketer, it was a client... This is 2pm on Thursday incidentally, keep the times in mind...

The person in question owns a major company in the entertainment business. Multiple locations across the country kinda large... Unfortunately for them, their fabricator had just bailed on them, and they needed a number of aluminum structures made, and ready to go Saturday... This was not good... They called us, because we rent from them when we run short on gear, and we had just been up there chatting with them about possibly doing some work for them... At any rate, the bottom line was there was a very limited number of hours until the gear had to move, so off I went to the shop, praying my heating system held out while I dealt with this...

The material came in at 5pm, along with a sample unit. I looked and knew right away we were going to have to dress every piece of material as they had just cut them in a hurry, and all the edges were sharp... There go a few hours... Mind you, I am still the only person in the shop... I have not been able to round up another welder (the machine, or the person), and I had not thought we would need to dress everything, so I hadn't gotten someone to do that... Well by 7pm my partner got back from the event in the city, and I put him to work dressing and cutting aluminum to fit my needs... I started welding by 8pm... My partner ran out of material around midnight, and went home, I kept going until 2:30 when I was about to fall over. I grabbed 3.5 hours of sleep on the office floor, and was back at welding by 6:30... Our second welder (both machine and man) got in around 7:30, and we were off to the races... We kept at it with one interruption where the other welder had to go home for a couple hours (I kept going) until 1:30am.

I dragged myself home, took a shower, found it was actually painful to stand on the shower mat since my feet were so sore, and then passed out, knowing the truck would be there at 11am to pick up the finished product... We hadn't cleaned up the last 3 units since we had all that time in the morning, and we were beat...

I got in around 9:30am today... Made some coffee, and by 9:50 the truck was there... Ugh... Now the nice easy cleaning session turned semi-urgent... We blew through what we could, and sent them on their way...

Were the units as nice as I might normally make them?... No, I'd never send something like that out of my shop normally... Were they done?... Hell yea!..

I just did a rough count, and there are around 1120 welds on the entire project. Those welds consumed 20 pounds of aluminum electrode from the welders. That wire is .030" in diameter... If I had my reference book handy, I'd figure out not many feet of wire that is, but rest assured that its a whole lot... Thankfully the welders never really broke down... One major problem on an overnight, and we'd have been dead in the water...

Hours later, after some more sleep, I still feel like hell... What a crappy way to start a weekend... Good to build up some professional collateral, but rough on the body...

Posted by Backstage at October 8, 2005 05:23 PM | TrackBack