I am so very tired

Oh I had fun. When we do a first piece set up inspection, it's very detailed and it takes over 5 minutes to do one so when you are almost finished and I press a button and enter it there's a whole process that you have to do to explain why the piece failed plus you have to redo it from the beginning so its a royal pain.

The games began when the one guy squirted me with the alcohol bottle, we have battles with this stuff a lot but it leads to other mischief. We are the only crew out of four crews that mess around and laugh and carry on little children. The supervisor doesn't know the games we pull on each other but he does hear us laughing a lot and we are his favorite crew. He oversees a few other departments too and we have no issues with each other so he doesn't have to babysit us and take care of stupid little battles. He has personally thanked me for helping the moral of our crew. He told me that he really likes how we all interact with one another and from what I understand I brought a lot of that with me when I came onto the crew.

I did bid on a different department two nights ago and I'm sure he'll be upset when he sees that. I doubt I'll get the position but it doesn't hurt to try. If I do get it I will be going back to a normal second shift (2-10) job. That's my favorite shift but if I do get it I'm going to have to hire someone to come over and tend the pups for me in between me leaving and the hubby coming home. There will be too many hours in between for Tucker to be locked up in the house.

Interesting you are a machinist. My Dad and God Father both owned machine shops. I have been sat in front of a lathe to watch it til it was done - boring.

Some jobs are boring but when you have 7 machines that run parts as fast as these machines do it can be a real headache sometimes. I wish I was back in a normal machine shop so I could run different parts because making the same stuff over and over again does get tedious sometimes. There's a lot of trouble shooting some nights but if you have more then one machin with problems and end of orders or change overs (that means a different style of phaco tips) it can be very overwhelming.

You should see the tooling I work with. They are so tiny and some of the tolerances are very very small.

Google "phaco tips" and you can see what I make

Good luck on getting the second shift job. I think it makes for a nicer work place if everyone gets along and can kid around like that. Maybe if you get on second shift you can bring fun to that shift.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by wobblypops

Some jobs are boring but when you have 7 machines that run parts as fast as these machines do it can be a real headache sometimes. I wish I was back in a normal machine shop so I could run different parts because making the same stuff over and over again does get tedious sometimes. There's a lot of trouble shooting some nights but if you have more then one machin with problems and end of orders or change overs (that means a different style of phaco tips) it can be very overwhelming.

You should see the tooling I work with. They are so tiny and some of the tolerances are very very small.

Google "phaco tips" and you can see what I make

---

Wow very small. I don't think their smallest lathe would even do those. Hope you are able to get the other shift. My Dad's shop had 4 lathes and he would have 2 or 3 running at once - which was why I got to sit and "watch" it for him. Just when it got to the end we would back the tool back and put it in neutral and yell for him.

Oh, it sounds like you we're watching a manual lathe that was put on an automatic feed. I was never too good at the manual mills and lathes. Basically I am just a glorified button pusher where I am at now but the benefits are good and so is the pay.

By working that 12 hour shift I work 78 days a year less then a normal five day a week schedule so if you take in account that I travel an hour each way it helps with the gas and wear and tear on the cars plus I do like having the days off during the week like I do. I like being home alone but they changed our work nights.

Here is our old 2 week schedule: work Monday, Tuesday Friday, Saturday Sunday, Wednesday, Thursday.

Now our new schedule is work Monday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Sunday.

The new schedule is the reason I want out of the dept. I either get off at 5 AM on Sunday morning or I go in 5 PM Sunday night so now I no longer have a full weekend off. It use to work out that I had 52 days off during the weekend to be with the hubby but now it's down to 26 weekend days and I don't like that at all especially during the summer months when we like to go to the camper.

One big thing ill lose if I get this other job is .75 and hour plus an extra PTO day each quarter and a few extra paid hours each quarter. Our department and my shift is the only one who gets the PTO perks because its hard to find anyone to work those hours and now they made it even harder to fill the night shift by changing our work nights. Plus the new job I will be in a corner all by myself with no one around me. There's a few good points and bad points about that but as long as I have my iPod I think i'll be okay with it.

I do CNC machining also, and to run 7 machines at a time is ALOT! Especially if you're dealing with small parts, that's the faster the machines run.

Cool! It sounds like both of us gets pushed to the limits at our jobs. What do you make?

I wish I could go into more details about the job itself but we aren't allowed to invade we end up sharing secrets. I will at this though..... Working with all that cutting oil sucks especially when you're sweating and there's around 50 lathes all running at the same time. It's supposed to be air conditioned but our dept is always the hottest.

We make bearings for windmills and military helicopters. I hear ya on the coolant makes you smell too.

I did rocket nozzles out of graphite years ago and other military stuff. I don't know what was worse, the dirty graphite or the stinky cutting oil.

I'd say graphite without a doubt!