Tonight was a personal best. For myself and my helper, I believe. We had eight and a half hours of running on the machine and 30 minutes of down time.
We ran 40 jobs.
Holy crap!
My lead did the numbers and commented that no one else would believe them…
Once he removed make-ready and down time, we averaged 6.25 jobs per hour. Our pieces per hour came out to 1,412 – or there abouts. Typically would be just over a thousand.
We hauled ass!
The cassette was lifted up at an angle. The two side blades crashed through the trimming sticks and into the cleats that hold them to the cassette. The trash flap had no place to go with the cassette popped up out of place, so the face knife crashed into it.
Ugh.
The face knife just got instantly dull… The side knives lost fragments.
Ugh. Really. It sickened me.
As I replaced the nylon cutting sticks, I had to get needle-nosed pliers to pluck out shards of the side blades from the cleats. In fact, I had to replace two of the cleats. In fact, I took one home with me. That is what you see in the photo…
The cleat itself is about one inch tall and about five eighths of an inch across. That wedge that shouldn’t be there is over an eighth on an inch deep. It still has little shiny splinters of the side blade in it…
The worst bit about the whole was the fact that I had just replaced the damned things. Brand new, sharpened blades. I had to do a second blade change. Dammit. Over an hour lost for the two changes together. Almost an hour and a half, because after the second change, I couldn’t bring myself to start up the trimmer. I was in shock. I could not push the button. My lead had to walk me there it…
Honestly, I have been operating the whole set-up for over a year now. This is the first time I have done anything like this. Other operators have lost count of the times they have crashed the knives… In fact, my current counterpart on first shift gave up a fingertip to it last season.
But, then… he is a goldfish…
gryphon's hole 