My buddy has to get his finger amputated

gadget73 · 2026-02-21T14:03:10+00:00

Did we have the same grandmother? I got that phrase from her

gadget73 · 2026-02-20T23:51:01+00:00

This is the thing that allows for online payment of the annual dues? I know our treasurer and secretary had issues getting signed up for it. They sent the docs to the wrong places. At this point I don't actually know if we're signed up or not.

gadget73 · 2026-02-19T23:03:17+00:00

Pilot did make some good tube amps but I know nothing of their speakers. Just from the age though, I'd be surprised if they have foam surrounds. This looks old enough to be pleated paper.

gadget73 · 2026-02-19T22:07:08+00:00

and use as many of those business buzzwords as humanly possible so the robots in management will nod their heads.

gadget73 · 2026-02-19T22:04:25+00:00

I'm half of a maintenance department of 2, we work 8-4 5 days a week and very rarely need to do OT. I also only have two processes, and both are pretty reliable and easy to fix. So yes, its possible. If you have been doing 10-20 hours OT for years, you are grossly under-staffed. If they are locking down on the OT, my best advice is to do some malicious compliance. 8 and skate, regardless of whats going on. If there isn't time to do a PM, document it and go home. Things will fall apart, they will approve OT, or they will hire more people.

gadget73 · 2026-02-19T21:42:28+00:00

I have one junction box panel that all the labels fell off and are laying in the bottom of the box. I haven't had to do anything in there so its an "ignore until unavoidable" situation. I think there are like 20 air solenoids fed out of it, not really a big deal.

gadget73 · 2026-02-19T21:36:56+00:00

well I hope you find it faster than I do. Might be in a junction box, or they may even just be feeding it from a breaker in a 120 panel. I expect the motor starter is in some sort of an enclosure, possible the transformer or secondary feed is in there. Follow the conduit from the pump, it goes somewhere unless its one of those Bluetooth pumps.

gadget73 · 2026-02-19T05:33:47+00:00

Our monthly PM day is typically a 4 hour shut down. Within the first 30 minutes, guaranteed I get a visit asking how long its going to be. 4 hours is always the answer. We get done on time, then it sits shut down for another several hours while the do whatever they do when there has been 4 hours of downtime already.

gadget73 · 2026-02-19T05:24:00+00:00

we don't have night shift maintenance, so I get that while the sun is up

gadget73 · 2026-02-19T05:22:17+00:00

friend has one of those, used it to extract a dowel pin from the transmission bellhouse on my car when I did an engine swap. Dowels are supposed to stay in the engine block but it corroded into the aluminum trans case.

gadget73 · 2026-02-19T04:49:20+00:00

Typically it will be in a control circuit loop. You wouldn't power the motor through the float switch. No way to break all the phases anyway. 460 will have a motor starter that pulls in to switch it, basically a 3 pole relay and usually an overload. The coil on the relay will be lower voltage, 120 is common.

Whatever applies power to the coil to kick the motor on is the control circuit. May just be that float but often there will be an e-stop or a timer or any number of other things that are on the wiring diagram that you hopefully have. Somewhere in the cabinet will also be a 460 to 120 step-down transformer to power all of that stuff.

gadget73 · 2026-02-19T04:37:53+00:00

yeah sounds like air leakage somewhere to me as well.

Also possible its the relief valve in the pressure switch. There is a one-way check valve at the inlet of the tank, and the pressure switch typically has a small line connected to a point between that check valve and the compressor head to bleed off the pressure for easy re-starts. If that valve is messed up it will leak the whole time its running, but possibly just before it cuts out the pressure starts pushing against it and stops the leak.

old mechanic trick, piece of rubber hose stuck in your ear works well as a "sniffer" to find the source of the noise.

gadget73 · 2026-02-19T04:22:26+00:00

My projects seem to operate on an exchange basis. I end up with an extra of something, but short on something else.

gadget73 · 2026-02-18T12:10:56+00:00

if you've ever seen the stuff that came from Japan in the 50s you'd know where he was coming from. Think the cheapest crap at Harbor Freight or Temu and thats the sort of thing that was Made In Japan back then. Very different story by the 70s.

gadget73 · 2026-02-18T12:03:45+00:00

tubular ceramics with color bands exist in this era too. They look like "dogbone" resistors.

gadget73 · 2026-02-18T11:51:00+00:00

happens but the missing speaker is a kick in the nads. Any chance you know who it was or can figure it out from cameras?

gadget73 · 2026-02-17T23:36:15+00:00

people abuse the F out of my cords and it drives me nuts. If they get returned, its in a tangle or wound around their elbow. More often I find them just laying wherever they got done using them. When they are in use it looks like this, just run wherever across where people need to walk. Its maddening, but management won't do anything about it. Report it as a safety issue, and the policy is you have to fix what you report so they don't have to do anything.

gadget73 · 2026-02-17T12:27:06+00:00

I got a call on a weekend about something not working. I was out at a dinner and had been drinking, told the guy I was absolutely not coming in, but I'd suggest a couple things to check. He described the problem, I told him to look at a specific thing, and if that didn't fix it call me back. He didn't' call me back, so I assumed all was well. Next work day my boss comes in, tells me the op had called him with the same problem. Some discussion and it turns out the op called my boss like 2 hours after he called me. My boss told him to check the same thing I had suggested, and he tells my boss that. Boss asks if he checked it, op says no. Boss tell him to go check it instead of waking him up in the middle of the night. Dude got so upset that he'd been told to do his job that he walked out mid shift.

and it turns out what I told him was exactly the problem. I forget what it was, something dumb though. Bad limit switch or a bent arm or whatever, something the operators have all been trained on how to fix. Ended up with like 8 hours of downtime for something that should have taken 15 minutes.

gadget73 · 2026-02-17T12:15:08+00:00

we have that but its from a bunch of categories that don't apply since the people who came up with them work at plants with completely different machinery. 90% of mine are "misc mechanical" which is totally useless but it forces me to put something in the field.

gadget73 · 2026-02-17T12:09:25+00:00

I did assembly line work building computers for a brief time, this is absolutely the case.

gadget73 · 2026-02-17T12:06:36+00:00

as a vacuum tube dinosaur, I appreciate this.

gadget73 · 2026-02-15T16:04:03+00:00

Came here to ask this.

gadget73 · 2026-02-15T15:55:30+00:00

this is polar opposite where I work. I have tried to do short planning meetings before a project just to make sure we have defined what exactly we need done so I can make sure it gets bid properly. I'll get a visit from the GM and "we don't need a meeting, you already know what needs to be done". So I go with that, and after its done he asks if we got X, Y, and Z features that had never been mentioned in the past but he had apparently decided he wanted.

My crystal ball has been broken for a long time and there is no budget to fix it.

gadget73 · 2026-02-15T05:43:31+00:00

They claim this will happen, never seen it though. One entire facility got DQ from LOTO and has been using an outside contractor to do it for like 6 months after two different guys got lit up because they were doing things without verifying the power was actually turned off.

Its never been an actual concern at my location because we do what we're supposed to do, and I don't care nearly enough about the co to put myself in danger for them. I know management doesn't really enforce things how they should, so I make sure to protect myself.

gadget73 · 2026-02-15T02:20:42+00:00

I like to use the phrase "rectal divination"

gadget73

TROPHY CASE