Oddball Curious Question

jgedde

jgedde

Active User
Registered
Joined
Jun 23, 2011
Messages
786
How do machinists in earthquake prone areas fare? Anyone know of an occurrence of an earthquake while machining an expense and complex part where the quake ruined the part? I would imagine machines may need to be readjusted/trammed after a quake.

John
 
Seems I remember reading, either here or another forum long ago, about a guy in NZ who had his shop wrecked by a quake. I don't think he was working in it at the time, but seems his machinery got tossed about a bit. I don't recall anyone scrapping a part because of one, but I wouldn't be at all surprised. Around here, the biggest risk of a surprise scrap part is threading on CNC when the power blinks. I know that's happened a few times.....and you can hear the groans from the operators when it happens. Bad deal when cutting tool joints on non-mag material. Power co is not liable though.
 
I was in my shop when the 1989 quake hit Calif. First, my dog went crazy about 20 seconds before any signs of a quake! Then my big heavy equipment started to dance on the floor. The first thing that came to mind was stand in a doorway. That doorway led to the outside. While standing there. I noticed a title wave about 4 feet high in the swimming pool (that was amazing!). Still standing in the doorway, I again started to think. Noticing the machines dancing, the whole shop was shaking and I’m standing halfway between being smashed by my shop or going all the way outside and dealing with that title wave. I moved again and chose the outside. Well, it was a good one, but no real damage. Had to re-level the old girls and pick up all the toys that flew off the tables and shelfs. Dog was fine…Dave.
 
Last edited:
i saw the undulating wave of concrete floor making a 3' wave in the shop is was working in Hayward,Ca.
it threw some heavy parts from the upper quad stack racks onto the floor some 18' below .
briggs and stratton engines, cast iron impellers, air compressors and stuff of industrial breadth raining down
i ran outside where the tilt up building was unlikely to pancake me!

i'm sure many parts got flawed that day in a lot of shops!
 
The heavy industry shop where I worked for 40 years had reinforced 14" concrete slabs with separaters about every 10'. We went through 2 strong quakes while I was there. Our practice was to keep our smaller lathes on the least # of slabs possible. All of our larger ones were on one piece inertia blocks up to 40' long, depending on the length of the lathe in question & 2', 3' or 7' thick.

As you might guess, the machines on inertia blocks sustained no misalignment or out of level from the quakes. What was surprising though was that neither did the smaller machines. We did go through and re-level & align the lathes about every 15 years or so, to keep up with normal settling of the building on the Columbia River basin, which was never that severe either. There's a lot to be said for a thick reinforced concrete slab.

For most home shop floors a reinforced 6" slab with the machinery bolted to it using adjustable jacking studs, your lathe will be as accurately leveled and aligned after 20 years as the day you installed it.
 
I remember my biggest quake in the Denver CO area back in 1967, a 5.3 mag. Several books fell of my book shelves and my electric drill rattled off the bench onto the floor.
I somehow survived!
I really don't want to experience one of those big ones. How did your dog behave after the shaking stopped. Its really great that they can detect it so much before us
superior humans.

CHuck the Grumpy old guy
 
I was working an aircraft program in SoCal years ago. We had a large aircraft in a tool that had just completed drilling hundreds of holes mating the wings to the fuselage, when a 5.6 quake hit. The holes for the most part were all misaligned and we were forced to reset the fixtures but never got all the holes aligned. There was also a hoist operator in the control cab about 40 ft. up when the quake hit. After the rolling stopped he climbed down, left, and was never seen again.
 
I wasn't in the plant when the quake hit Boeing Renton Plant in 65 but it took 3 days to realign the wing jigs and body fixtures. On second shift in the Wind Tunnel basement the rockford planer was following a template with a hydraulic follower when a passing barge took out the power lines over the river out back and the light, machines and any hope of saving the part went black. The tool dove in to the part and destroyed it.
At tech school just a passing truck would leave a mark on a part in the lathe. They just sat on the floor without a foundation slab.

Jim
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top