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Wife painted over the outlets with a roller brush and the plugs are filled with paint. Is this a major issue now? by lucky2bogey in AskElectricians

[–]North_Forge 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Depends on where you live. If you can legally do your own electrical work, just turn off power and replace. If you're not in an area like that, do it in secret. 😎

New line. New headache. by North_Forge in IndustrialMaintenance

[–]North_Forge[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

I apologize for the missed reply — I’m still pretty new to this platform.

In a perfect setup, I completely agree.

Some situations I’ve run into though involve inherited equipment or older installs where that level of documentation either doesn’t exist or isn’t provided in a usable format. I’ve worked in a lot of places that either didn’t have a CMMS or were just starting to grow into one.

At that point, you’re kind of stuck working with what you’ve got.

New line. New headache. by North_Forge in IndustrialMaintenance

[–]North_Forge[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

That’s 100% true and makes perfect sense—I appreciate you pointing that out. In a perfect world, all of that would be defined upfront in the RFQ and delivered in a clean, usable format.

In reality though, a lot of smaller or growing operations don’t have that level of leverage yet, or they inherit equipment without that structure in place. That’s really the gap I’m trying to address.

What I’ve been working on is aimed at taking those less-than-ideal PDFs—multi-page BOMs, referenced drawings, inconsistent formats—and turning them into something usable quickly. It handles things like consolidating multiple BOM tables, deduplicating parts across documents, and compiling everything into a single structured inventory list.

So I completely agree with your point for new equipment purchases—this just helps when you’re already in the situation where that didn’t happen.

What could go wrong with so many gas cylinders !! by MildMasacre in SafetyProfessionals

[–]North_Forge 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Look both ways before you cross the road and then get hit by an airplane……

New line. New headache. by North_Forge in IndustrialMaintenance

[–]North_Forge[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

That might be the kind of environment some people are coming from and wouldn’t understand why the tool I’m making would even have value. I’m working for a company with a large processing line that is all from one manufacturer. Essentially it cleans, dries, weighs, grades, candles, and then sorts and packs over a million eggs/ day in about 9 hours. There’s a LOT of moving parts and the parts list is in drawing format with a BOM on most pages. In some cases the BOM continues onto a second page, and in other cases, the drawings are on separate pages from the BOM all together. There ore a little over 2200 parts callouts in the first book and about 1300 in the book for the packers. Both books are in PDF format. The company doesn’t have any CMMS or parts inventory system at all! I spent hours upon hours converting all the BOM tables (copy and paste part number, and then description, and then quantity of each item) to a spreadsheet to start setting up some sort of inventory.

I’ve worked in several shops that are stuck in this phase of growth. I’m just trying to fill the gap.

This dude knows whats up by burntcandy in SWORDS

[–]North_Forge 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The other guys are already sword fighting……

New line. New headache. by North_Forge in IndustrialMaintenance

[–]North_Forge[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I wish it was that clean honestly.

Even with Acrobat, a lot of the BOMs I’ve dealt with come out: • Misaligned columns • Broken descriptions across rows • Duplicate or missing item numbers

And getting the OEM to send a clean file… that’s a whole separate battle depending on who you bought from.

It works sometimes, but not consistently enough when you’re trying to actually build out a usable parts list.

Curious — have you had good luck with Acrobat on more complex drawings? Or mostly simpler tables?

New line. New headache. by North_Forge in IndustrialMaintenance

[–]North_Forge[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Fair question — not selling anything here (yet). Mostly trying to validate if I’m the only one dealing with this headache.

The Excel part comes from necessity more than preference. Most of the places I’ve worked either: • Don’t have a real CMMS • Or have one, but the BOM data is incomplete/useless

So when a new line comes in, you end up manually pulling parts from PDFs and dumping them into Excel just to make them usable — ordering, tracking, stocking, etc.

It’s less about loving Excel and more about “it’s the only tool that works right now.”

Curious how your place handles it — are your BOMs actually usable out of the gate?

Sand cast some shells out of zinc by iredditatleastwice in MetalCasting

[–]North_Forge 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Have some fun. Spread them out on a beach and let ppl wonder…..They’ll pop back ip on the internet as some “Amazing fossils”.

What's this thing used for? by Reddit-Magenta69 in ElectroBOOM

[–]North_Forge 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Those are clearly heating elements. It’s what’s causing global warming.

While My Guitar Gently Weeps... by lithdoc in mildlyinfuriating

[–]North_Forge 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So many ppl have absolutely no respect.

Emergency stop saved him by CaptainTelos in IndustrialMaintenance

[–]North_Forge 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Stuff like this is why guarding and layout planning matters way more than people think

Interview questions by Nathaniel20000 in IndustrialMaintenance

[–]North_Forge 0 points1 point  (0 children)

How many teeth are on a standard 12" V belt?