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A certain Maintenance supervisor (Day-shift) developed a habit of assigning me projects that he believed I would fail at. No doubt as an attempt to belittle me and make me appear incompetent to seignior management and others. I disappointed him every time... (This was an ongoing attack that I had to endure once the individual that hired me resigned. This ultimately led to my resignation as well.)

I was handed a cannibalized Lube-Con controller and directed towards a pump station in a dank - dark corner at the end of the run-out table for press-2. No documentation or schematics, I wasn't told the controller was password protected, and was asked to make it work. After three days of studying the circuit card artwork and research online, I did. It became my intentions to bring Run-out tbl #2 online with channel #1 and support press 1 and 4 with channels 2 and 3 respectively. (Press #3 didn't require this...)

These were 4 channel units. The salesman certainly did his job when he sold these idiots a dedicated controller for each run-out table. The in-house mechanics didn't like this device because #1- the Castrol special High temp lubricant left a graphite residue which acted as an excellent lubricant in high temp applications but was difficult to get off of your hands if they needed to service the line. #2 It extended the life of the line so dramatically that to the best of my knowledge, via contacts I still know there, that line has not required refurbishment since. That is why it somehow broke beyond repair with the understanding that the conveyor chains would be lubricated by hand during routine PMs. Yeah, right... The hammer mechanic motto - "Things break, that's why we have a job." They were getting a weekend of overtime to completely refurbish each of these lines every 2 years.

The picture to the left shows Racks of press dies to the left side and the Run-out conveyor and transfer table to the right. The LubeCon controller is installed at the far end at the height of the yellow footage markers. The Pump station is remote to that on the other side of the Dies.

Considering this project alone. The down time, raw stock, the special order flight bars, the special order conveyor chain (req 2 spools per line @ 8K$ each), Misc hardware, and the overtime. If kept in operation once I left, would total a savings to the company approaching 50-60K$ every two years. (PER LINE!!!)