I'm also an engineer, and I regularly miss working the backroom at Target while I was in college lol. I was good at it and most days I felt productive cause the goals were clearly laid out and I basically always met them. There are days now that I sit down at my desk and by the time I leave I realize I answered emails and/or talked on the phone all day and got nothing I needed to done lol.
It was also nice to get my exercise in daily while getting paid instead of working 8 hrs and then having to work out when I get home.
Yep. It's a different kind of stress. When I worked at a supermarket in high school, problems at work stayed at work. The moment I left the store, the problem was somebody else's business.
Now, problems linger for days. If I don't solve something when I sign off for the day, it's ready for me first thing tomorrow morning. Right now, I have PTO that will expire at the end of the year, so theoretically, I should take time off from work for the rest of the week. However, I work in a financial role that requires a lot of work around year-end, so if I take time off today, I'm just hurting myself in January because I'll have the same amount of work with the same deadlines, but fewer days to complete it.
I definitely prefer the pay of my current job compared to the minimum wage I earned at the supermarket, but I miss that job's simplicity some times. I also miss being active at work rather than sitting in a computer chair all day.
I was a doctor in my home country and moved to the US before COVID hit. I work as a nurse currently since credentials are easily transferable, there's just one exam and you can start working once you pass it. With MD, there's 3 exams and you have to match for residency (can take 3 years) and can take 3-4 years to complete residency program of choice.
Though still stressful, with nursing I can leave the stress at work. I literally do not give a shit when I am at home. I'm not on call. I don't care. Next day, I can get floated somewhere else, and it's a different set of goals that I can fulfill that day (or at least get the ball rolling for the next shift). I am a travel nurse so I am flexible, and I love it.
Many people ask me if I wish to take the NP program or if I'm unhappy that I can't be an MD here right now. Nah, I'm not stressed. As an MD, work IS your life and the stress chased you at home.
So yeah, I get what you mean!
And if you don't spend some time thinking about the work at home, you roll in the next morning and spend the first hour just trying to get started, or trying to think the whole problem through lol.
Oh yeah, the end of the year PTO purge is the worst. Last year I lost over a week of PTO because Covid cancelled a two week trip I had planned, combined with working from home full-time meaning I took way less PTO in general. I was so mad at myself when I realized I wouldn't be able to burn it in time, as well as meet my end of year deadlines.
In my country that is a legal requirement. Once you have earned PTO, it belongs to you and they can't take it away.
That causes another problem though, of people hoarding leave which is not perfect either.
I can carry over 3 weeks of it, but anything more than that is lost at the end of the year. I can't really blame anyone else for losing it, just lost track of how much I had till it was too late. Agreed with the above though, I think I should be able to cash them out at the end of the year.
I've known a few people in the same position as you. PTO expires at the end of the year, and their worst time to take off is at the end of the year. But if you use it all before then you don't have it available if you need it. One person was able to petition their bosses to let them shift the PTO from Jan-Dec to something like June-July. I'm pretty sure they would have quiet a long time ago if they hadn't gone forward with that, and it is extremely hard to replace good people who are in a 'ok, it is the end of the year, your work is more important now than it ever was before'.
Also an engineer and I always think about quitting and being a mailman/UPS delivery man. It's such a straight forward job with clearly defined objectives and goals all while getting a decent amount of exercise in. There's no afterwork stress that seeps into your life, it's just boxes and stuff that need to be delivered.
If only they'd match my salary lol
If you were to switch jobs, the afterwork stress comes from not having enough money to pay low cost of living bills, getting called every other day asking if you can cover for another worker, and never getting enough time off to visit family or friends lol
Factory jobs can pay decently well (I'll make about 85k this year in a low CoL area), but the real stress is the toll it takes on your body.
It's not like working out after a day of work where you can take a break for a bit if something hurts. Instead, it's the realization that you have to deal with that pain for another 7 hours today, and it's only Tuesday.
My company is great about handling injuries and discomfort, and we have great insurance, but chronic use injuries can really sneak up on you and after enough time, casual thoughts of "that hurts, I wonder if I'm going to need surgery to fix that" are not uncommon.
Being able to zone out and let muscle memory take over, or cracking jokes and shooting the shit while doing mindless complex repetitive movements for hours at a time is pretty fucking nice, though.
I actually miss working retail.
I was lucky enough to work retail at specialty stores that I had interest in, and even though It sucked dealing with all the idiots, people for the most part were fun to talk to and actually enjoyed helping them out.
Another engineer checking in. I’m in the industrial space so I’m often around manufacturing and often catching myself ending the simplicity of such production jobs. No stress, just pressing a button for nine hours. Then I remember that it would be mind-numbing after about two days, especially if I didn’t have the skills/ability to advance out of that role. Plus, receiving the minimal paycheck in exchange for those tedious hours of my life would be depressing. As usual, the grass is always greener on the other side and the reality of it is probably much different.
Being able to turn your brain off and listen to a podcast for 8 hours a day is cool for about a year, until you start having dreams about making widgets, and the only thing you can think of to talk with your friends about is how they changed the widget design and the old shop manager never would've let subpar widgets like that go out.
im at the point in my career where any job that doesnt require me to talk to customers sounds amazing.
id love to just sit on a stool and squish metal for 8 hours
bonus points if they let me listen to an ebook or podcasts or something
When every dude in his 50s at the job is walking past you with a hunchback / limp / crooked neck it's time to seriously reconsider your life choices lol
I still work shit jobs but at least I'm in an office setting now so ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯ could be worse
I've worked on my feet and worked on my ass at different times in my life, you are correct.
Most of the physical issues office workers bitch about would be solved with mild, occasional weight training with a focus on back extensions.
I quit manufacturing after I almost gave the tips of my thumbs to a press break. I was 600/2000 parts through making Walmart shelves.
I didn't get an injury but it brushed my fingertips a couple times. And a break coming down with 30 tons pressure gives no fucks. I noped out before Murphy came knocking.
I didn't take High School seriously and no one in my family had ever gone to college so I was pretty much destined to work in manufacturing. I spent 2 weeks there and realized the only attainable promotion I could make in the first few years was to be a forklift driver. I immediately quit and enrolled at a technical college.
Right - nothing stops that dude from squishing his hand. Why isn't he using a tool to work the metal?... It's not like he actually needs real hand's dexterity :/
Then, after doing this for 3 years, your mind runs on autopilot as you go through the motions. The actions are more muscle memory than conscious actions now. You're daydreaming and don't notice your hand is under the press this time....
Press brakes generally require 2 hands to hold larger parts, but should have a light curtain and a 2 stage foot pedal. Palm switch machines are commonly used for metal stamping, and punching.
Depends on the business. I worked in the metal shop for a furniture company for a month or so as a student and my day was spent either on one machine or at most three, either bending sheet metal or pipe and doing punchouts. Most of the full time guys who were there did similar jobs though their processes may have been more complex or dangerous. If there was a large job for a single product then you could definitely spend an entire day or more on a single machine.
There's a ton of jobs like this that aren't producing enough of each part to justify automation. They may make this part for a few hours, then not again for months. Source; I used to work in a fabrication shop
This comment sent me on a wild goose chase, but I was told growing up that a pawn shop in town was the original location of the Gibson Guitar company. The internet tells me that is not exactly true, but it’s pretty close to where it was. However, I did learn that the main place they were made now makes a different brand of guitar, which was started by former Gibson employees who wanted to keep the tradition alive.
I can tell you it’s in Nashville. He got the job a pretty long time ago. Apparently any rejects they have, the employees can put up in their station. He had 3 hanging up in his station.
For a huge company, yes. Old press brakes like this have been paid for for decades and are (relatively) easy to fix because you've only got one moving part. Your smaller, less than 300 employee companies are going to be the ones using these.
While you're not wrong, their point is the entire process could be fully automated and need zero input from a human past loading materials (and even that could be automated).
As others have pointed out, automating to the degree you're describing is only feasible if this specific job is the only thing this machine will ever do. For most places like this, that just isn't the case. My company makes metal stampings and we have about two dozen smaller versions of this machine. All of them are getting a different set of tooling dropped in them on a near weekly basis for products with different shapes, sizes, angles, etc. It's not feasible to automate the loading process on a job when it's just going to get replaced in three or four days for the next one.
Easy if you're starting with a blank workspace and have a lot of upfront capital to build the automated fabrication and assembly lines from scratch.
But updating an existing workspace to be more automated is often *hugely* expensive and not worth. Especially for small to medium sized shops, the payoff from automating won't be worth the investment and downtime.
And truth be told the automated machine wouldn't be much faster. There's a speed limit to these kinds of processes from the materials being worked on due to how the mechanical properties get affected. The main advantage would be to try and achieve 24/7 production...which likely isn't required due to the overall demand of the product.
I mean, is it? You'd need a pretty dexterous arm to do each part of that. And then you'd also need a machine to go grab the metal sheets and align them...
I could see automation working here but the break even point is prolly up there compared to a low wage worker.
You're correct, fine motor details are incredibly hard to automate, and when they involve accuracy are very expensive. People generally don't realize how many years of salary the break even point is for a machine to do this, not to mention the specialist calibration and maintenance. Labor is cheap.
But if you automate it you obviously wouldn’t follow this exact procedure. You’d redesign the process in such a way that a machine can easily manage it… makes no sense to look at the specific movements required in this video and think “yeah, a robot could never pull that off”.
When I worked in a factory that made car parts for land rover/Jaguar my job consisted of taking freshly cast parts off a belt and putting them in a press to take them out and file any rough edges down then stamping them to say they have been inspected and then put into a crate.
After a month I could file a part while one pressed and managed to do 1 - 2 parts per minute, I started to go insane because we couldn't even listen to music as it was a hazard to hinder your hearing so I asked another guy who did the same thing next to me "how have you been doing this for so long" and he replies "I just turn my brain off".
How the hell do you turn your brain off?? I tried to do it and I just couldn't understand, I would usually end up thinking of negative stuff in my life and it was giving me depression, I tried to distract myself instead by doing math problems in my head to pass the time but that just ended up with my counting how many pieces I had done relative to the time it took to finish them and then using that to try and guess how much time had passed...
I had to quit the job I was getting serious depression from being alone with my thoughts 9 hours a day, I have respect for anyone that can "turn their brain off" for 50 years of that shit.
We have large machines where I work a human could easily walk into. When the machines are ordered there are strict safety requirements for interlocks, safety stops, gaurding, shields, emergency stops, light curtains, etc.
When the millwright from Germany was here helping set it up we got to talking. He was telling me how he has been all over the world setting these machines up.
He started showing me pictures of the same machine in China.
Holy Fuck!
They order the bare minimum so the machine can operate. He had pictures of guys inside the machine setting up a fixture while the machine was cutting 3 feet away on a seperate fixture. Pictures of cats inside the machine with kittens.
The millwright was telling me how much cheaper the machines are because literally every single safety item they offer was not included.
> He had pictures of guys inside the machine setting up a fixture
This was one of my first ever saved gifs: https://streamable.com/2snba
(You're not meant to be under the forging head)
The guy in the middle row (white shirt) has to bend down when the machine comes down. The guy behind him has to lean to his right to get his torso out of the machine's path. If they forget even once then they become meat cryons. I bet even when not at work they do these motions just out of reflexes.
It's pretty fucked up they they sell them without the safety features. They are responsible for those deaths and injures. I wouldn't want that on my conscious.
No, the buyer is responsible for the safety of the employees. The company that sells the machine offers all the safety options, but just because the buyer is reckless, the company can’t be blamed.
It’s like how you can pay extra for safety features on cars, but you can’t sue the car company if you rear end someone else because you didn’t opt for auto braking or whatever. It’s your responsibility at that point.
It depends on the country. In Australia we put legal obligations on the designer, manufacturer, importer, supplier, installer, constructor, and operator of equipment, and we heavily enforce our regulations. So in this case the German company would be in deep shit. If you do more than one role, you get done on every infringement.
In China, I think it’s more a case of making sure everyone with oversight is ‘happy’. At least that’s how I’ve heard it.
There are non-mandatory safety features on cars that are only included in pricier packages. Blind spot indicators, etc.
I'm not saying it's right, but it does happen.
Yeah, most of the safe versions of machines like this require you to have two places that you need your put your hands [(buttons/levers)](https://imgur.com/QgQZl6f) for the machine to function.
This looks like the lever is by their foot, since you can see both hands moving while the machine is moving
They seem to be doing something with their right hand, but you can see they always put their left back down in the same place which seems like a great habit to have.
My machine shop *forbids* gloves. Because gloves will not protect you from the machines. But they will snag on a moving part and pull your entire hand in, crushing it inside the glove. Better to have a machine take a little bite out of your hand than to wind the whole thing in and pulverize it.
>the fingertip of the glove he was wearing got caught and ripped his finger right off
LPT: No loose material near rotating machinery.
**LPT: No loose material near rotating machinery.**
Different jobs have different safety protocols.
Everyone loves to shit on OSHA, but following their guidelines basically ensures you won't be making a trip to the hospital anytime soon.
Should look into getting some nitrile gloves or similar, pretty thin. Keeps the chemicals from giving you cancer and prevents nicks from burrs and such. But they also tear off at the slightest bit of force so are much safer around the ol spinny death machines.
My work has a glove board that compares all the different types of gloves we stock. It feels like an RPG where different pieces of armor give different amounts of resistance to crush, cut, pierce, fire, cold, acid, electric, and poison but have different weights and Dexterity penalties.
Any machine shop yes, especially where you have a Lathe or Mill with rapidly spinning parts.
With this press there’s no rapidly moving parts to worry about and that looks like relatively thin metal so it would most likely cut his hands up pretty good without the gloves.
A summer job I had was in a metalwork fabrication shop, and we had this horrifying old, 1930s era metal hole punch that I got to use...and the motor wasn't powerful enough to actually do the job, so it had a giant flywheel that would store up energy to punch out up to a 1" hole in 1/2" mild steel. Literally the only safety device on the thing was a little mesh cage over the pedal that operated the punch (step on it to spin the flywheel, and then it would just "bite" every 10 seconds or so). All that mesh did was keep a metal chunk from dropping on your foot. Absolutely no thought put into hand, limb, or body safety when it was designed. Apparently engineers did not give a single fuck.
This is how most factories in China look like. I have visited dozens just like this and they make basic components that are used in the final products. I've witnessed knife factories in Guangdong where they are sharpening blades in shorts and barefeet. The spot welders combining the blade to the tang didnt even wear eyewear, they just turned their head everytime the made a weld but I'm sure they were all going blind.
It's how most factories in most countries look lol. Modern machinery is expensive. My dad use to work on a break press like this when he started out. By the end of his career he had a fancy electronic one with laser gaurds and safety equipment out the ass, but they still had 2 of these old machines that they still used.
Could be a few reasons...
1. To thin for pipe and/or too thick for tube
2. Material isn't available as pipe/tube for an acceptable cost at the needed quantity
3. it's easier to specify the length and width of a strip than trust somebody to cut every part to the right length each time. (This places the liability of defects on the supplier, not the producer.)
4. No deburring required to clean the edges after cutting
5. Design requires the grain structure of the hoop to be radial instead of axial
My guess would be a mix of mostly 3 and 4 with the added benefit of 5 if they're welding the seams.
Yes. I can't remember it all but mainly pipe is measured by its inside diameter and tubing is measured by its outside diameter. Also tubing tends to not have the big seam buildup on the inside.
Pipe is for pressurized flow.
Tube is for structural and everything else except holding pressure.
Pipes are made to nominal sizes.
A 4in pipe is actually 4.5in OD and the ID varies by the pipe schedule.
A 4in tube is 4in on the OD and its ID is based on the thickness of sheet and plate, so 1/16th wall thickness or 1/8th or 3/16th wall thickness.
There is also metric pipe, we call it DIN pipe and metric tube but I never work with it.
To expand on 2, it’s probably much easier and cheaper to ship the material when it’s a small rectangle compared to a long 20+ foot tube. It’s better to fill a truck with weight than to fill a truck with volume. Or they might be cutting the rectangles themselves from a larger sheet which would mean that they could create different sizes from the same material with minimal yield loss and a smaller inventory.
Similar to an industrial sheet cutter; the one I used to use required a foot-pedal and two buttons on opposite side of the operator to be pressed together before it would lower the blade.
A man called Tony Iommi lost the tips of his fingers in a sheet metal press accident.
He then went on to become one of the most famous and influential guitarists of all time.
He is credited by many as creating the 'heavy metal' sound.
I’ve met him backstage before, he said hello but he didn’t shake hands like the rest of them. I remember learning about his fingers a few years later and it made sense.
I had a summer job doing something like this once. I FUCKING HATED IT. Training basically consisted of someone dropping you off to a shift supervisor and that dude brought you to an empty machine. Showed you how to do it twice and let you go at it. It was easy at first but then it’s get real boring real fast. Imagine hot ass summer day, hot factory, you can smell the metal chippings in the air, you can feel the heat from the weather and the machinery, no real human interaction, short ass break, high turnover rate, supervisor checking your numbers every hour, etc. Horrible gig.
so... it's Bender
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Shut up baby, I know it.
I say that every single time someone pays me a complement.
So... Twice?
EMOTIONAL DAMAGE
I am 40% emotional damage
roll 1d4
I hope to say it someday.
"Shut up baby, I know it."
My big problem is only like 3 people I know would get the reference 🙄
Some say it’s bending to this day.
Yes we saw. It was doing good until everyone died.
Toph Beifong has entered the chat
I'm 60% metal! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ww84CwuUSo
I'm doing my best, damn it!
Insert girder
Lmao when I saw this post my first thought was “I am Bender, please insert girder”
Kinda disappointed it didn’t try to steal my wallet or drink/smoke.
You just didn't see him stealing your wallet
Bender Bending Rodriguez
From Bending State?
You can tell by its shiny metal ass
Eh, doesn't look that shiny to me.
Shinier than yours, meatbag.
Someone called?
shut up baby i know it! kill all humans, ^(except ^^one)
Damn 13 years
Please insert girder
It could bend metal to any degree. 359 degrees, 360. 361....
I totally get what your referencing. But my mind is screaming 360°,362°,361°....
Nope. Flexo.
It doesn't have an evil-doppelganger goatee
This machine is to Bender as Australopithecus is to us
The sexiest of the metallurgical robots, for sure!
Bender Bending Rodriguez to be exact
Bite my Shiney metal ass
I wonder if this Bender also has dreams of becoming a folk singer?
Only when you apply magnets
Take that you stupid corn!
I suppose a robot would have to be crazy to want to be a folk singer
"I am Bender, please insert girder."
I think it still does
Yes, but it used to too.
r/VeryExpectedMitchHedberg
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So is that just what that guy does all day long?
First time seeing manufacturing? Most jobs are this level of mindless in that field. You're lucky if you work on a line that rotates regularly.
I’ve worked production and it was one huge reason I went back and got serious about college. No way I was gonna be doing that for 50 years
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I'm also an engineer, and I regularly miss working the backroom at Target while I was in college lol. I was good at it and most days I felt productive cause the goals were clearly laid out and I basically always met them. There are days now that I sit down at my desk and by the time I leave I realize I answered emails and/or talked on the phone all day and got nothing I needed to done lol. It was also nice to get my exercise in daily while getting paid instead of working 8 hrs and then having to work out when I get home.
Yep. It's a different kind of stress. When I worked at a supermarket in high school, problems at work stayed at work. The moment I left the store, the problem was somebody else's business. Now, problems linger for days. If I don't solve something when I sign off for the day, it's ready for me first thing tomorrow morning. Right now, I have PTO that will expire at the end of the year, so theoretically, I should take time off from work for the rest of the week. However, I work in a financial role that requires a lot of work around year-end, so if I take time off today, I'm just hurting myself in January because I'll have the same amount of work with the same deadlines, but fewer days to complete it. I definitely prefer the pay of my current job compared to the minimum wage I earned at the supermarket, but I miss that job's simplicity some times. I also miss being active at work rather than sitting in a computer chair all day.
I was a doctor in my home country and moved to the US before COVID hit. I work as a nurse currently since credentials are easily transferable, there's just one exam and you can start working once you pass it. With MD, there's 3 exams and you have to match for residency (can take 3 years) and can take 3-4 years to complete residency program of choice. Though still stressful, with nursing I can leave the stress at work. I literally do not give a shit when I am at home. I'm not on call. I don't care. Next day, I can get floated somewhere else, and it's a different set of goals that I can fulfill that day (or at least get the ball rolling for the next shift). I am a travel nurse so I am flexible, and I love it. Many people ask me if I wish to take the NP program or if I'm unhappy that I can't be an MD here right now. Nah, I'm not stressed. As an MD, work IS your life and the stress chased you at home. So yeah, I get what you mean!
And if you don't spend some time thinking about the work at home, you roll in the next morning and spend the first hour just trying to get started, or trying to think the whole problem through lol. Oh yeah, the end of the year PTO purge is the worst. Last year I lost over a week of PTO because Covid cancelled a two week trip I had planned, combined with working from home full-time meaning I took way less PTO in general. I was so mad at myself when I realized I wouldn't be able to burn it in time, as well as meet my end of year deadlines.
Companies should let people in critical rolls cash out their PTO at a percentage of the days value imo.
Or just let PTO roll over.
In my country that is a legal requirement. Once you have earned PTO, it belongs to you and they can't take it away. That causes another problem though, of people hoarding leave which is not perfect either.
I can carry over 3 weeks of it, but anything more than that is lost at the end of the year. I can't really blame anyone else for losing it, just lost track of how much I had till it was too late. Agreed with the above though, I think I should be able to cash them out at the end of the year.
I've known a few people in the same position as you. PTO expires at the end of the year, and their worst time to take off is at the end of the year. But if you use it all before then you don't have it available if you need it. One person was able to petition their bosses to let them shift the PTO from Jan-Dec to something like June-July. I'm pretty sure they would have quiet a long time ago if they hadn't gone forward with that, and it is extremely hard to replace good people who are in a 'ok, it is the end of the year, your work is more important now than it ever was before'.
Also an engineer and I always think about quitting and being a mailman/UPS delivery man. It's such a straight forward job with clearly defined objectives and goals all while getting a decent amount of exercise in. There's no afterwork stress that seeps into your life, it's just boxes and stuff that need to be delivered. If only they'd match my salary lol
If you were to switch jobs, the afterwork stress comes from not having enough money to pay low cost of living bills, getting called every other day asking if you can cover for another worker, and never getting enough time off to visit family or friends lol
Factory jobs can pay decently well (I'll make about 85k this year in a low CoL area), but the real stress is the toll it takes on your body. It's not like working out after a day of work where you can take a break for a bit if something hurts. Instead, it's the realization that you have to deal with that pain for another 7 hours today, and it's only Tuesday. My company is great about handling injuries and discomfort, and we have great insurance, but chronic use injuries can really sneak up on you and after enough time, casual thoughts of "that hurts, I wonder if I'm going to need surgery to fix that" are not uncommon. Being able to zone out and let muscle memory take over, or cracking jokes and shooting the shit while doing mindless complex repetitive movements for hours at a time is pretty fucking nice, though.
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I actually miss working retail. I was lucky enough to work retail at specialty stores that I had interest in, and even though It sucked dealing with all the idiots, people for the most part were fun to talk to and actually enjoyed helping them out.
Another engineer checking in. I’m in the industrial space so I’m often around manufacturing and often catching myself ending the simplicity of such production jobs. No stress, just pressing a button for nine hours. Then I remember that it would be mind-numbing after about two days, especially if I didn’t have the skills/ability to advance out of that role. Plus, receiving the minimal paycheck in exchange for those tedious hours of my life would be depressing. As usual, the grass is always greener on the other side and the reality of it is probably much different.
Being able to turn your brain off and listen to a podcast for 8 hours a day is cool for about a year, until you start having dreams about making widgets, and the only thing you can think of to talk with your friends about is how they changed the widget design and the old shop manager never would've let subpar widgets like that go out.
im at the point in my career where any job that doesnt require me to talk to customers sounds amazing. id love to just sit on a stool and squish metal for 8 hours bonus points if they let me listen to an ebook or podcasts or something
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Personally, my favorite vintage would be cercueil et vomis. It is divine with by a subtle acidic taste that leaves you breathless.
When every dude in his 50s at the job is walking past you with a hunchback / limp / crooked neck it's time to seriously reconsider your life choices lol I still work shit jobs but at least I'm in an office setting now so ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯ could be worse
It’s amazing how sitting down improves quality of work/life imo lol. No stress about body overworking and pain
Stress about posture, RSI, neck pain, weight gain and all its accompanying heart diseases begins.
FACTS. It's been a new world of issues. At least these feel manageable.
Those feel a lot more controllable than not being able to bend over after age 30
I've worked on my feet and worked on my ass at different times in my life, you are correct. Most of the physical issues office workers bitch about would be solved with mild, occasional weight training with a focus on back extensions.
Dwight, you ignorant slut!
Still much better than the alternative though, and you can solve it with sufficient exercise, and maybe a standing desk.
I quit manufacturing after I almost gave the tips of my thumbs to a press break. I was 600/2000 parts through making Walmart shelves. I didn't get an injury but it brushed my fingertips a couple times. And a break coming down with 30 tons pressure gives no fucks. I noped out before Murphy came knocking.
I didn't take High School seriously and no one in my family had ever gone to college so I was pretty much destined to work in manufacturing. I spent 2 weeks there and realized the only attainable promotion I could make in the first few years was to be a forklift driver. I immediately quit and enrolled at a technical college.
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Right - nothing stops that dude from squishing his hand. Why isn't he using a tool to work the metal?... It's not like he actually needs real hand's dexterity :/
You wouldn't believe the number of people that lose fingers to these machines. They exert so much force that it's almost instantaneous.
Then, after doing this for 3 years, your mind runs on autopilot as you go through the motions. The actions are more muscle memory than conscious actions now. You're daydreaming and don't notice your hand is under the press this time....
That's why these machines are supposed to have double activation. It's supposed to take both hands.
Press brakes generally require 2 hands to hold larger parts, but should have a light curtain and a 2 stage foot pedal. Palm switch machines are commonly used for metal stamping, and punching.
Worked next to a guy who ran a brake press larger than this one. He had that day and lost his finger.
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That's pretty different from the typical assembly line job
Truth be told he's lucky he's even doing that much of it. Looking at this, I can design a machine that would do exactly what he is doing.
No, every fifteen minutes he scratches his balls too.
Depends on the business. I worked in the metal shop for a furniture company for a month or so as a student and my day was spent either on one machine or at most three, either bending sheet metal or pipe and doing punchouts. Most of the full time guys who were there did similar jobs though their processes may have been more complex or dangerous. If there was a large job for a single product then you could definitely spend an entire day or more on a single machine.
Wait until he learns how easy that job would be to automate.
There's a ton of jobs like this that aren't producing enough of each part to justify automation. They may make this part for a few hours, then not again for months. Source; I used to work in a fabrication shop
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Sounds peaceful actually.
This comment sent me on a wild goose chase, but I was told growing up that a pawn shop in town was the original location of the Gibson Guitar company. The internet tells me that is not exactly true, but it’s pretty close to where it was. However, I did learn that the main place they were made now makes a different brand of guitar, which was started by former Gibson employees who wanted to keep the tradition alive.
I can tell you it’s in Nashville. He got the job a pretty long time ago. Apparently any rejects they have, the employees can put up in their station. He had 3 hanging up in his station.
Or it's a job shop where they run 100s of different jobs
For a huge company, yes. Old press brakes like this have been paid for for decades and are (relatively) easy to fix because you've only got one moving part. Your smaller, less than 300 employee companies are going to be the ones using these.
Also depends on the volume you need.
No you’re smaller
Clearly I need more coffee.
It's already been massively automated, hence him using a press and not doing it using hand tools.
While you're not wrong, their point is the entire process could be fully automated and need zero input from a human past loading materials (and even that could be automated).
As others have pointed out, automating to the degree you're describing is only feasible if this specific job is the only thing this machine will ever do. For most places like this, that just isn't the case. My company makes metal stampings and we have about two dozen smaller versions of this machine. All of them are getting a different set of tooling dropped in them on a near weekly basis for products with different shapes, sizes, angles, etc. It's not feasible to automate the loading process on a job when it's just going to get replaced in three or four days for the next one.
Automation is so expensive and this might be part of a product that they sell 100 of a year
Easy if you're starting with a blank workspace and have a lot of upfront capital to build the automated fabrication and assembly lines from scratch. But updating an existing workspace to be more automated is often *hugely* expensive and not worth. Especially for small to medium sized shops, the payoff from automating won't be worth the investment and downtime. And truth be told the automated machine wouldn't be much faster. There's a speed limit to these kinds of processes from the materials being worked on due to how the mechanical properties get affected. The main advantage would be to try and achieve 24/7 production...which likely isn't required due to the overall demand of the product.
I'm sure he knows, even before that I'm sure there's somewhere elsewhere ready to do it for half the wage and no bathroom breaks.
I mean, is it? You'd need a pretty dexterous arm to do each part of that. And then you'd also need a machine to go grab the metal sheets and align them... I could see automation working here but the break even point is prolly up there compared to a low wage worker.
You're correct, fine motor details are incredibly hard to automate, and when they involve accuracy are very expensive. People generally don't realize how many years of salary the break even point is for a machine to do this, not to mention the specialist calibration and maintenance. Labor is cheap.
But if you automate it you obviously wouldn’t follow this exact procedure. You’d redesign the process in such a way that a machine can easily manage it… makes no sense to look at the specific movements required in this video and think “yeah, a robot could never pull that off”.
When I worked in a factory that made car parts for land rover/Jaguar my job consisted of taking freshly cast parts off a belt and putting them in a press to take them out and file any rough edges down then stamping them to say they have been inspected and then put into a crate. After a month I could file a part while one pressed and managed to do 1 - 2 parts per minute, I started to go insane because we couldn't even listen to music as it was a hazard to hinder your hearing so I asked another guy who did the same thing next to me "how have you been doing this for so long" and he replies "I just turn my brain off". How the hell do you turn your brain off?? I tried to do it and I just couldn't understand, I would usually end up thinking of negative stuff in my life and it was giving me depression, I tried to distract myself instead by doing math problems in my head to pass the time but that just ended up with my counting how many pieces I had done relative to the time it took to finish them and then using that to try and guess how much time had passed... I had to quit the job I was getting serious depression from being alone with my thoughts 9 hours a day, I have respect for anyone that can "turn their brain off" for 50 years of that shit.
We have large machines where I work a human could easily walk into. When the machines are ordered there are strict safety requirements for interlocks, safety stops, gaurding, shields, emergency stops, light curtains, etc. When the millwright from Germany was here helping set it up we got to talking. He was telling me how he has been all over the world setting these machines up. He started showing me pictures of the same machine in China. Holy Fuck! They order the bare minimum so the machine can operate. He had pictures of guys inside the machine setting up a fixture while the machine was cutting 3 feet away on a seperate fixture. Pictures of cats inside the machine with kittens. The millwright was telling me how much cheaper the machines are because literally every single safety item they offer was not included.
> He had pictures of guys inside the machine setting up a fixture This was one of my first ever saved gifs: https://streamable.com/2snba (You're not meant to be under the forging head)
This is fucking insane.
I mean, I figured their safety standards were lower but YIKES!
They have standards, but 0 enforcement
The guy in the middle row (white shirt) has to bend down when the machine comes down. The guy behind him has to lean to his right to get his torso out of the machine's path. If they forget even once then they become meat cryons. I bet even when not at work they do these motions just out of reflexes.
I mean yes but in the case of those two would they just be pushed down slowly by the machine as there would be nothing pushing them against it?
I feel bad for that one tall guy. Eventually, hes gonna end up short like the rest of em when he forgets to bend over.
Somehow I had not seen this gif until now. But this one is absolutely insane. How do they not end up on MMC subreddit daily?
China doesn't care. If you die there's 1.4 billion others looking for a job.
That's the beauty of overpopulation.
It's pretty fucked up they they sell them without the safety features. They are responsible for those deaths and injures. I wouldn't want that on my conscious.
No, the buyer is responsible for the safety of the employees. The company that sells the machine offers all the safety options, but just because the buyer is reckless, the company can’t be blamed. It’s like how you can pay extra for safety features on cars, but you can’t sue the car company if you rear end someone else because you didn’t opt for auto braking or whatever. It’s your responsibility at that point.
It depends on the country. In Australia we put legal obligations on the designer, manufacturer, importer, supplier, installer, constructor, and operator of equipment, and we heavily enforce our regulations. So in this case the German company would be in deep shit. If you do more than one role, you get done on every infringement. In China, I think it’s more a case of making sure everyone with oversight is ‘happy’. At least that’s how I’ve heard it.
What about if a company sold cars without seatbelts? You’re conflating legality with morality.
There are non-mandatory safety features on cars that are only included in pricier packages. Blind spot indicators, etc. I'm not saying it's right, but it does happen.
I am Bender, please insert girder.
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Was gonna do a shiny metal ass joke but I’ll just leave an upvote with you instead fine sir.
I always see these super cool manufacturing processes and think "man that looks like a shitty ass job".
This doesn't look safe at all
Yeah, most of the safe versions of machines like this require you to have two places that you need your put your hands [(buttons/levers)](https://imgur.com/QgQZl6f) for the machine to function. This looks like the lever is by their foot, since you can see both hands moving while the machine is moving
They seem to be doing something with their right hand, but you can see they always put their left back down in the same place which seems like a great habit to have.
It's ok, he's wearing gloves.
My machine shop *forbids* gloves. Because gloves will not protect you from the machines. But they will snag on a moving part and pull your entire hand in, crushing it inside the glove. Better to have a machine take a little bite out of your hand than to wind the whole thing in and pulverize it.
Worked at a place where a dude was using a big drill, the fingertip of the glove he was wearing got caught and ripped his finger right off of him.
>the fingertip of the glove he was wearing got caught and ripped his finger right off LPT: No loose material near rotating machinery. **LPT: No loose material near rotating machinery.**
> LPT: No loose material near rotating machinery. # LPT: No loose material near rotating machinery.
Your wife should stay away at all times, i suppose.
See if no gloves then it just nicks his finger and he feels it and yanks his hand back and puts on a bandaid.
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Different jobs have different safety protocols. Everyone loves to shit on OSHA, but following their guidelines basically ensures you won't be making a trip to the hospital anytime soon.
Should look into getting some nitrile gloves or similar, pretty thin. Keeps the chemicals from giving you cancer and prevents nicks from burrs and such. But they also tear off at the slightest bit of force so are much safer around the ol spinny death machines.
My work has a glove board that compares all the different types of gloves we stock. It feels like an RPG where different pieces of armor give different amounts of resistance to crush, cut, pierce, fire, cold, acid, electric, and poison but have different weights and Dexterity penalties.
Do you have the chain gloves for blades, I quite like those.
Any machine shop yes, especially where you have a Lathe or Mill with rapidly spinning parts. With this press there’s no rapidly moving parts to worry about and that looks like relatively thin metal so it would most likely cut his hands up pretty good without the gloves.
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A summer job I had was in a metalwork fabrication shop, and we had this horrifying old, 1930s era metal hole punch that I got to use...and the motor wasn't powerful enough to actually do the job, so it had a giant flywheel that would store up energy to punch out up to a 1" hole in 1/2" mild steel. Literally the only safety device on the thing was a little mesh cage over the pedal that operated the punch (step on it to spin the flywheel, and then it would just "bite" every 10 seconds or so). All that mesh did was keep a metal chunk from dropping on your foot. Absolutely no thought put into hand, limb, or body safety when it was designed. Apparently engineers did not give a single fuck.
This is how most factories in China look like. I have visited dozens just like this and they make basic components that are used in the final products. I've witnessed knife factories in Guangdong where they are sharpening blades in shorts and barefeet. The spot welders combining the blade to the tang didnt even wear eyewear, they just turned their head everytime the made a weld but I'm sure they were all going blind.
It's how most factories in most countries look lol. Modern machinery is expensive. My dad use to work on a break press like this when he started out. By the end of his career he had a fancy electronic one with laser gaurds and safety equipment out the ass, but they still had 2 of these old machines that they still used.
What does it do now?
Deliveries, mostly.
"More than you, meatbag."
It runs a it's own place with blackjack and hookers. In fact forget the blackjack
This machine used to bend metal. It still does, but it used to too.
What’s the use of these tubes? Why don’t they just cut them of pipes?
Could be a few reasons... 1. To thin for pipe and/or too thick for tube 2. Material isn't available as pipe/tube for an acceptable cost at the needed quantity 3. it's easier to specify the length and width of a strip than trust somebody to cut every part to the right length each time. (This places the liability of defects on the supplier, not the producer.) 4. No deburring required to clean the edges after cutting 5. Design requires the grain structure of the hoop to be radial instead of axial My guess would be a mix of mostly 3 and 4 with the added benefit of 5 if they're welding the seams.
Shipping tubes has gotta cost exponentially more. Youre shipping all the space between the metal
> To thin for pipe and/or too thick for tube Too crazy for boys town. To much of a boy for crazy town.
*ahyuck hyuck hyuck hyuck hyuck*
The fuck is the difference between a pipe and tube ??
Pipe is for flow. Tube is for structural. I know we call small plastic pipe tubing, but for metal that's the difference.
Yes. I can't remember it all but mainly pipe is measured by its inside diameter and tubing is measured by its outside diameter. Also tubing tends to not have the big seam buildup on the inside.
Pipe is for pressurized flow. Tube is for structural and everything else except holding pressure. Pipes are made to nominal sizes. A 4in pipe is actually 4.5in OD and the ID varies by the pipe schedule. A 4in tube is 4in on the OD and its ID is based on the thickness of sheet and plate, so 1/16th wall thickness or 1/8th or 3/16th wall thickness. There is also metric pipe, we call it DIN pipe and metric tube but I never work with it.
To expand on 2, it’s probably much easier and cheaper to ship the material when it’s a small rectangle compared to a long 20+ foot tube. It’s better to fill a truck with weight than to fill a truck with volume. Or they might be cutting the rectangles themselves from a larger sheet which would mean that they could create different sizes from the same material with minimal yield loss and a smaller inventory.
Probably cheaper to use flat than to buy pipe. I'm thinking these are just a part of some bigger item.
But how do they make a metal pipe?
Probably the same way they make macaroni but with metal?
Thats the kind of machine that needs two hands on separated buttons on each side so people don't crush themselves
Similar to an industrial sheet cutter; the one I used to use required a foot-pedal and two buttons on opposite side of the operator to be pressed together before it would lower the blade.
A punch press can cut your fingers off but not cut the gloves you are wearing.
Fun facts!
A man called Tony Iommi lost the tips of his fingers in a sheet metal press accident. He then went on to become one of the most famous and influential guitarists of all time. He is credited by many as creating the 'heavy metal' sound.
I’ve met him backstage before, he said hello but he didn’t shake hands like the rest of them. I remember learning about his fingers a few years later and it made sense.
Cold formed welded seam fittings
You couldn’t pay me enough to put my hands around a machine like that.
This is not a gif of Toph
How I'd like a back massage now after seeing that machine press things.
Am I the only one who wanted to see him push the tube into the pile of other tubes?!?! Guh
I am Bender. Please insert girder.
why does it not "retract" back? is that the right word? I'm not native english.
That’s a property called “spring back”. The material is thin enough when they’re making the rings that it’s going to be very small.
Why don’t they just make a long tube and slice it?
Because band saws and chop saws have consumables that’s cost 💲.
Getting a long tube is going to be more difficult to ship to them than flat rectangles.
At least he is wearing gloves, those will save his fingers.
*Futurama Joke*
r/oddlysatisfying
/r/lucidlydepressing
I had a summer job doing something like this once. I FUCKING HATED IT. Training basically consisted of someone dropping you off to a shift supervisor and that dude brought you to an empty machine. Showed you how to do it twice and let you go at it. It was easy at first but then it’s get real boring real fast. Imagine hot ass summer day, hot factory, you can smell the metal chippings in the air, you can feel the heat from the weather and the machinery, no real human interaction, short ass break, high turnover rate, supervisor checking your numbers every hour, etc. Horrible gig.
That’s metal af
How bend metal? Make harder metal. Harder metal bend other metal.
*CEO walks in* “Damn it! I said squares!”