Thread: OT-Tasks in the shop you hate...

It dawned on me, after the 5th attempt to weld a band saw blade together , that this is one of those tasks I absolutely hate! I take that back, I actually loathe it! No matter how many times I do it, it will never grow on me as a pleasant part of my shop life. Luckily it doesn't come around often. I also dislike mucking the chips out of my CNC coolant tanks.

What are some of the tasks in the shop you hate?

Cleaning / emptying the sand blast dust separator !!
My apprentice and I did it today.

We are getting good at it :

-Prepare 5 or 6 x 1 cu. ft. cardboard boxes triple taped and
lined with construction duty garbage bags.
-Bring the drum outside very carefully and empty using a respirator making sure to wear old clothes that you won't spend the rest of the day in
-Stay well organized and pick-up after one's self immediately after each step
-We use cheap automotive fine glass media as it's much faster on
hardened tool steel than the glass bead we used before, but that
stuff becomes like toxic flour once it's used up

We bought a Cyclone model 4000 dust collector yesterday for our much loved
Empire blast cabinet. With the cylone all we will have to do is open the hatch and bombs away once a month. What was a real dirty, disgusting and potentially hazardous job will now be simple routine maitenance


Later,

Hugh

I cannot stand changing out the "not so fresh" coolant and cleaning the sump and machine prior to replenishing with nice, clean 99.9% pure coolant. Although I love the freshess associated with new coolant smell. Especially the synthetic variety.

Originally Posted by hesstool

It dawned on me, after the 5th attempt to weld a band saw blade together , that this is one of those tasks I absolutely hate! I take that back, I actually loathe it! No matter how many times I do it, it will never grow on me as a pleasant part of my shop life. Luckily it doesn't come around often. I also dislike mucking the chips out of my CNC coolant tanks.

What are some of the tasks in the shop you hate?

Go to the DoAll website and download the operator manual for their blade welder. It has a lot of tips that changed by blade welding life

Plunging a clogged pot!!!!!!!
Legdoc

Performing first aid on myself, sowing fingers back on, digging tooling and/or parts out of my forehead, and waking up on the floor wondering what happened.

OK, I better stop posting on percoset

I hate deburring small plastic components with a scalpel, i never fail to stick myself with it

Cleaning grit off every horizontal surface in the shop after heavy use of the surface grinder.

The only jobs I hated doing in the shop were the one's I had to do before I got on a machine to learn the trade.


Tom

Angle grinding steel - and I have 4 angle grinders, each fitted with a different wheel to minimise the aggravation.

Second - at the moment - epoxy painting the freshly ground steel before it rusts. Sand blasting would be at the top except that, so far, I pay someone else to do it.

PDW

I hate most anything having to do with puttin' stuff away or cleaning up. My shop always looks like a tornado went through a junkyard.

Latest dread: emptying the shop vac. It sits in one place and slowly fill with 16 gallons of chips. I know chip formation and make dense chips. The cannsiter must weigh 150 lb. Groan!! Snivel!! Whine!!

Cleaning shop restroom.......then hor. bandsaw......stoppage to add coolant to anything......manuals,prints,ast books from desk....in that order.Rest of shop stays pretty durn clean and easily maintained.BW

Cleaning out the water table for the plasma cutter- its a big steel tank, and it gets 3" or 4" deep in black foul mud, mixed in with sharp drops from interior cutouts.
I have a hose bib on the bottom of it, so I can hook up a hose and drain the water out- then you let it sit for a couple of days, to dry out a bit, and then scoop out all the steel drops, which are recyclable. Leaves you with 20 or 30lbs of incredibly foul black goop.

But its nice when you refill the tank with a couple hundred gallons of clean water.
Inevitably, during cutting, small pieces will drop in the tank that you want. So you have to reach in and dig around til you find em. Which is much more pleasant when the water is clean, and the tank empty of muck, then it is after a year or so of neglect.

Answering the phone!

Yeah, the best way to get me is just stop by....

maybe I need something like this
"You have reached SD&M, I am probably setting up my deviding head or holding a transmission up with one hand while I start the first bolt. Please leave me a detailed message and I'll get back to you if I feel like it. If you are really desparate just come on over..."

Unclogging the hose to the shop vac. The dog sheds about 1/2 a cubic foot of long fine hair per day

It combines nicely with long stringy chips to plug the hose, always in the middle, of course

Originally Posted by Ries

Cleaning out the water table for the plasma cutter- its a big steel tank,..................
..........then you let it sit for a couple of days, to dry out a bit, and then scoop out all the steel drops, which are recyclable. Leaves you with 20 or 30lbs of incredibly foul black goop.

Reis,
I have seen a shop that fit theirs with "pans" that have maybe 2" high sides,
and loops of 1/2" rod on the sides to lift them out with the crane.
These were shop made to fit tightly together to completely cover the
bottom of the tank.

Made cleaning out much easier.

MY apprentice buddy absolutely hated turret lathes, and just about
lost it when assigned to that section for a spell. The "lather, rinse,repeat"
routine was taking it's toll on him.

It got so bad, he proclaimed that if he had some money (later in life)
he would go out, buy a turret lathe, hook it up outside, and
pour rock salt on it....daily.

Me ?
having a job in a machine, trying to set it up, and
wandering around looking for tooling.

Originally Posted by Ries

Cleaning out the water table for the plasma cutter- its a big steel tank, and it gets 3" or 4" deep in black foul mud, mixed in with sharp drops from interior cutouts.
I have a hose bib on the bottom of it, so I can hook up a hose and drain the water out- then you let it sit for a couple of days, to dry out a bit, and then scoop out all the steel drops, which are recyclable. Leaves you with 20 or 30lbs of incredibly foul black goop.

But its nice when you refill the tank with a couple hundred gallons of clean water.
Inevitably, during cutting, small pieces will drop in the tank that you want. So you have to reach in and dig around til you find em. Which is much more pleasant when the water is clean, and the tank empty of muck, then it is after a year or so of neglect.

It's better than an overfilled dry table, trust me on that. When the table gets full the dross no longer has time to cool and skin over before it hits the bottom. Eventually you wind up with one solid slab across the whole top that is welded to the grates. And of it's more like steel than dross at that point. Takes four guys on two shifts a week to break it up with jackhammers. If the company would just do it twice as often it would take a day or two max, one of the many reasons I don't work there anymore.

Originally Posted by Forrest Addy

I hate most anything having to do with puttin' stuff away or cleaning up. My shop always looks like a tornado went through a junkyard.

A relief to find I'm not the only one with that overwhelming flaw....I think....

With the very best of intentions, I pick up a tool, use it and following my rule, it doesn't leave my hand until it's back in it's place. Boyed by the obvious improvement I carry on, only to find that at the end of the day, my bench is several layers deep in knited tools/remnants and the only thing that is where it belongs, is the first tool I used... unless I used it again......

Am I losing my mind? Naw, I've been damned with this my whole life, didn't have anything to lose when I started....

Why am I admitting this to the whole world? 'Cause the alternative is worse, to get up, go out and start working down to my benchtop, hopefully encountering my current project along the way....

Bob

Cleaning out the chip pan on the lathe when it is full and runninng over!

Worst yet, cleaning up the mill, pulling out all of them slivers that manage to get stuck in your hand and can't find them with 50x magnfiners.

Ken

Originally Posted by aerodark

I cannot stand changing out the "not so fresh" coolant and cleaning the sump and machine prior to replenishing with nice, clean 99.9% pure coolant. Although I love the freshess associated with new coolant smell. Especially the synthetic variety.

But thats what the apprentice is for

Also doing all those pita jobs you hate doing

My pet peeve is having to make fixtures for new parts, knowing that all that fine machining and grinding you've sweated over all day is going to get trashed by a moronic operator not blowing the fixture out and clamping chips to the fixture and the part

Boris

Mr Slammy... I've got a job for you....