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Whats the worst thing you ever had to Rework/Repair

justin36220

Plastic
Joined
May 13, 2011
Location
Pennslyvania
Was just wondering what the worst thing that you guys have ever had to rebuild/rework/repair or just in general un fubar

Mine has to be when a company sent me back a excavator that I had completely rebuilt (new hydro's, New Cab, New engine and transmission) and in the process of them taking it back to their HQ on their truck with their driver. They rolled it down an embankment and well trashed it. Was a very expensive repair and was extreamly time consuming for my company
 
When I worked at a brickworks
Friday about 3 o`clock there broke the main shaft of a horizontal clay mixer
About 150mm square 6mtr long And the mixer was full of clay So it had to be emtied by hand and then all the peddles had to come out
Also it broke at an angle so one part stopped turning while the other was still proppelled It ripped of 2 plain bearings of its foundation and damaged a gland
Luckely they had the policy to have a spare of every shaft chain and motor in use

Monday morning all was working again :nutter:


Peter from Holland
 
Repairs to make you cry

My worst was a pair of brand new injection molds...the molder trashed them both within an hour of delivery.
He hoisted them both into the press with the same dirty lifting strap; dirt got into the slides and seized them up solid.
We got a dozen shots out of one and half a dozen shots out of the second.
Both had to be taken apart with sledgehammers, and were total losses.
Broken campins, smashed cavities...it was just ugly.
He claimed the molds weren't built right...I almost went over there with the sledge to help him in his understanding.
I don't use him anymore!!!
Cheers

Marcus
www.implant-mechanix.com
 
Restored a 72 Chevelle Malibu in 1994, it had been parked in someone's front yard getting hit with the sprinklers every day for the previous 5 years. Oddly the body panels had minimal rust, but everything else was rusted together, what a nightmare.
 
Dirty earth moving bucket with siezed pins, it involved belting the shit out of it with a sledge hammer, custom spanners welded to the ends of the pins 3 meters long to try and crack them lose with a leaky hydraulic ram behind the pin to push it out took two days of abuse to get them out all because they were to slack to pump some grease into the pins now and then.
 
Worked in an electronics shop just out of college. Had to repair a audio mixer that had bounced around inside a car during a (fatal) rollover wreck. Bounced off the driver's head a few times, too. Worse, 'cause I knew the driver... Not a good day.

Chip
 
D6D fell off the trailer on to the asphalt. Landed on the blade corner. We had just finished a $50,000+ rebuild on the machine (customer was not a very happy camper the second time).

225 excavater boom hit the bridge finally did get it to go final drives, 3 cyls,boom, starter , inj pump, than the auction.
 
My dad does a lot of repair work for the local sewer treatment plants.

Any job from those plants is the worst job.
 
Repair work for Wastewater treatment plants and sanitation departments or garbage dumps usually sucks, on the flip side they don't bounce their checks and they pay in a very timely fashion and very well ;)
 
One Thanksgiving holiday we were all looking forward to a 3 day week end,2 hr before quiting time boss gets a phone call from a local power plant that is our main bread and butter so NO is NOT and option.
They lost a bearing in one of their gear boxes that run a conveyor that supplies coal straight from the coal mine to the top of the plant were the coal is dropped into a cylo to start the process of turning the coal into coal dust.
Myself and another machinist loaded up and drove down to see what we were gonna need to do the job on sight.First thing,the gear box is 300' in the freaking air inside a little shack and since it is in a coal environment you can imagine how nasty it was,plus it's November and freaking COLD as hell with the wind whipping thru there and on top of that we had to carry all our crap up in pieces by hand.

Spent all Friday making tooling to do the job,started Saturday on the gear box that we had to weld up 7'' bearing fit and re machine with a portable line bore machine.I welded the gear box side,my coworker welding the top section which had been removed and laying upside down.I spent something like a good hour preheating the cast iron on my side before starting the weld,my coworker being half ass every thing he does dick head verily got his warm before he started welding,and on top of that,he was not running hot enough amperage.So you know what happened?Thats right..when we hit the bearing size the weld on the half he did started to flake out because it wasn't tied in well.Of course the plant engineer rejected it and the process had to be all redone,luckily by boss knew that if he asked me to help redo it I would have told him to stick it because I tried to get dick head to do it right first time,so the boss went back with said coworker and redone the job.
 
Worst rework job to do? well ... theres been so many over the years :eek:

Press tooling.

Big piece of D5 steel moved far more on heat treatment than it was supposed to.
I had to go through several 1000 lines of program code looking for the holes and slots in the moved areas, before cutting the affected areas out with a W-EDM and making bits to go in.
Job started midday Sat, had to be at the customers 9am Monday I was a very sleepy machinist by 7am Monday :Yawn:

Transport (always a favourite)
Every 3 months TNT delivered a bunch of nuclear parts machined over the previous 3 months to our customer..... this time they did'nt due to the truck bursting into flames and destroying our work
Cue 3 months of 12 hour shifts to replace the lost stuff and be ready for the next delivery..

One day the police turned up at the factory with a second hand package and a bunch of very scrap rollers.
Seems the delivery company decided to leave the truck doors open and lob the package down the street instead of delivering it.
They paid all the costs of having them made again

Customers

Having a customer ring up and ask "where are those parts we wanted delivered yesterday?"
"Delivered yesterday as ordered"
"No they were not, we cannot find them anywhere"
"Yes they were and we have the signed paperwork from your goods inwards that says they were"
"Oh"
3 hrs later
"Can we have 300 more please?"
"Only if you pay us for them AND the 300 you lost yesterday" :D

Boris
 
Worst rework ever?

A three deck conveyor for veg packing that got dropped off the forklift, by the guy* who'd spent 3 weeks building it,........ on a very competetive fixed price contract.

* Me :D
 
About a dozen side-rollers (AKPHSR-1-15) right before Halibut (long lining) season started every year. Pretty basic work, basically three rollers on bronze bushings riding on stainless steel shafts. Disassemble, scarf out old shafts, weld in new shafts, rebush rollers, re-assemble. Easy right?

What made that job really, really special was what's *inside* the rollers when you start to work on them. Rotten halibut guts marinated in saltwater and left to age during the off season makes quite an impression when you put the heat to it. And you must put the heat to them, takes an air-arc rod to slit the welds holding the upright shafts in place. Did that for three years running, earned me a nickname for it too "Side-Roller Si". :(
 
My sisters ford fiesta in the days when I was too stupid and said "sure I will patch up your car for the MOT" would have been easier to buy her a new car :angry:
 
I made a platinum and diamond ring that was worth about 100,000 dollars for a guy who owned a giant truck stop. It had an 8ct diamond in the center and was a size 16 which is huge. The guy came back into the store that I was working at and asked to speak to me he took out the ring and it was mangled and the diamond was smashed this was about 6 weeks after I made it. I just looked at it in aw. I was like man I dont think they are going to warranty this. He says warranty hell I want to thank you for making this thing so tough it saved my hand, I had a rim from a semi fall off and it hit the ring square on, this ring saved my hand. Insureance covered the making of a brand new one.
 
Well that kind of goes against the idea of having jewelry in a work environment. But then the boss really doesnt apply normally anyway.

How much is an 8 carat diamond anyway?

Charles
 
The stone was decent but not amazing it is what I call an old lady diamond, they are too blind to see the flaws, this one was about 70,000 cost. I saw the guy about 6 months ago and he still has the new one that I made him on his finger. The insurance company kept the busted one.
 
El Mustachio,

You reminded me of a job we had installing stuff at the chicken plant.

We built all of this equipment, and then they asked us to install it,too.:confused::skep::eek::(:bawling:

It was all for the "Off-All Room" at the plant. All of the things they cut off /throw away ( from the chicken) goes through the Off-All Room.

We had some conveyors, gut augers, & shaker screens.

A shaker screen works like panning for gold. Except it lets the water & small things go through, but keeps the guts, feet, heads, & feathers up top and goes through another conveyor.

This was in July & stinky!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The pit was about 12 foot deep and had a drain in the bottom.

About every 30 minutes, an alarm & red flashing lights would go off.

This meant for us to get out or crawl up the ladders. When we did, they would run steaming hot water through the pit and it filled up to the 12 ft mark with guts & boiled water from the steam cleaning inside the plant.

As we were finishing up I was welding a down spout trough to feed another auger. It started smoking & sizzling. Another worker raised the liner up to see and it was full of rotten feathers & maggots, sizzling away.

That was the worst as far as nasty jobs.

JAckal:cheers:
 
rebuilding or modifying transmission housing dies,hardened H13,well aged by molten alum. wedged into a tapered pocket 18" dp..
Building new was cool,but fur every new 1 there was 10 used ones to redo/change.
Gw
 
In another life, I used to install/repair residential septic systems.
Nothing quite like digging into the tank outlet of a 30 year old system to put in the Y valve and getting buried to your knees in 5000 used rubbers, sh*t and other nastiness.
 








 
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