# The Most Damage I've Ever Caused In A Machine Shop.



## Whyemier (Oct 21, 2014)

The photo below was taken about 25-30 years ago.  That guy with the rag in his back pocket and auburn hair is me.  Back when I had color in my hair and had hair to speak of on top of my head.  The other guy is my boss, understandably somewhat put out.  :sorry2:




	

		
			
		

		
	
:nono:

I don't remember the make of the lathe canted over at about a 45deg angle but I will always remember the day. It has a 60" faceplate and about an 18'-20' bed.  I was threading 18" to 30" diameter ductile iron pipe, each piece anywhere from 8' to 15' long, and then adding a threaded flange to it.  This was for one of the many phosphate mines in that area where I used to live. If you look to the left of where I am in the photo you might see the flange on the end of one of the pieces of pipe, lying where it should not lie.

To thread the big spools of pipe we had to set a chock under one of the movable 'jaws' on the faceplate and then bear down with a long bar 'two holed' in the flange.  I had just finished the defunct piece you see on the floor in the background and was going to start the lathe to face the flange to complete the job. 

 You know what's coming don't you? 

I hit the start button and became immediately aware of the lathe moving in a way it was not designed to do.  I stepped over into the nearest corner away from the lathe and watched it climb up on the chock I had failed to remover and with a sinking heart waited for the inevitable.  Everybody took notice so there was no getting out of this one.

Sparks flew as the wiring was torn loose and the conduit twisted out of shape.  There was the awful clanging, banging, bell sound of the work hitting the floor and the lathe coming right behind it. There was the screaming of the boss and he tore out of his office and let me know, kindly of course, what I had just cost the company.:*****slap:  There was the sound of silence ("Hello darkness my old friend") from me as I stood there and took it.:whiteflag:

Several thousand dollars later and a few hours, the lathe was up and running again, not noticeably worse for wear and the experience.hew:

How about you?


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## middle.road (Oct 21, 2014)

OK, question. Was the lathe properly bolted to the floor or did they just have it sitting there on the floor like a trash bin?

_Dan


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## Whyemier (Oct 21, 2014)

middle.road said:


> OK, question. Was the lathe properly bolted to the floor or did they just have it sitting there on the floor like a trash bin?
> 
> _Dan



Don't bremember me exactly but I will say just one or two. Enough to say it was even if it wasn't. With the torque that machine produced I 'm not sure how much difference it would have made:noidea:


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## drs23 (Oct 21, 2014)

I'm really green so I can't touch that. Good job Man. :biggrin:


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## Terrywerm (Oct 21, 2014)

Never did that kind of damage in a machine shop, but you should see what I did to the cab of an excavator!

I do know the sinking feeling that you experienced as that lathe attempted to tear itself apart though. It's never fun, but it sure is neat to reflect back on it!


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## Rbeckett (Oct 21, 2014)

My damage was tearing out a power pole that ran most of a town in NJ.  Big bucsk and lost revenue claims it ended going to court and I and the company rep had to show up so I could be escorted to the city line and told that they were giving me a trespass warning  and if I ever came back  I would go to jail for trespass violation.  
Yup that was a bad day in the snow in NJ.

Bob


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## chuckorlando (Oct 22, 2014)

Good night man.... You know you got a heck of a machine when it can climb over it's self. Most damage I ever caused was intentional. I had a engine from my wifes buggy that gave use problems every time we took it out. So I beat it it with a sledge hammer. I like to call that setting an example to the rest of them ahahahahahaha

You could buy no parts for the engine and it was leaking from the crank seals and that was the last straw.


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## xalky (Oct 22, 2014)

I was about 19 yrs old, 30 yrs ago, on 1984. I had very little machining or welding experience at that time. I'm building a cnc foam cutting machine from prints. I welded up an assembly that needed to be machined on the mill. Welded it machined it. Then I realized that I screwed it up and milled too much off if the part. The part was 4" channel iron x 3 ft long with some tabs welded to it, pretty simple really. Rather than fix it, I decided to throw it in the trash dumpster, to hide the evidence. The next day the dumpster truck came to empty the dumpster and compact it in the back of the truck. The compactor rammed that 3 ft long piece of channel iron right thru the body of the truck. That almost got me fired!


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## Kevinb71 (Oct 22, 2014)

In the end this caused no real damage, but most assuredly scared us well.
We have several digger derrick trucks (like the power companies use to set wood poles etc.). We had a job trailer that was in a some what low spot that had flooded a foot or so deep the night before. We thought we should get it out of there before the ground got soft. I backed one of the trucks up until I started to spin, but we were still 50 feet or  so from the trailer. No Problem we'll just use the winch on the boom to pull it over to us, which we did by spinning the boom around of the back of the truck. We pulled the trailer up to right behind the truck and then decided " Let's just pull it ahead some more like this" As we neared the road there was about a three foot ditch up to the road. As I was driving forward I turned to look out the back to see how things were going. I started to notice the boom getting closer to the ground just as my partner started yelling "Whoa , wait , STOP". I looked back forward and all I could see was the clear blue sky out the front windshield. I immediately pushed in the clutch and then noticed the rapid descent of the front of the truck toward the asphalt road. I managed to let the clutch back out enough that I didn't smash back down to the ground. After things settled (and checking my shorts a bit) I hopped out of the truck and all my partner could say was "I could see the whole bottom of the truck". Scary , but ended well after all!


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## Fabrickator (Oct 22, 2014)

Back in the 80's I was working as a maintenance man in a 50 YO factory that was about a block long that made furniture.  Raw materials offloaded from train cars and finished product boxed up and out the loading dock at the other end.  We made both metal and wood products and had punch presses, brazing, polishing, chrome plant, rip saws, mutli-drilling stations, shapers, glue stations, and a complete upholstery dept.  Each deportment had it's own building.  I was trying to get a machine working in the wood mill plant and opened a 480 fuse panel and the door that's supposed to latch in the up position, dropped across the three phases and took out the whole plant for a few hours. I was lucky to not get burned in a pretty significant flash and lucky it didn't start a fire with all of the sawdust on the floor.


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## genec (Oct 22, 2014)

I will bet  that erased every Atta boy you ever had:rofl:


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## ogberi (Oct 22, 2014)

Worst two things I ever did were in my home shop.  
One instance was when I mistakenly added a chunk of scrap magnesium to my aluminum scrap bucket.  It was late, I wanted to get through the rest of the 30 lbs of scrap to sort.  Usually I file a spot, and drop vinegar on it.  If it fizzles and blackens, it's magnesium.  Goes to the recycler.  This chunk I hefted, said "Ally", and chucked it in the aluminum bin.

Fast forward two months.  I was casting ingots, and as I grabbed that chunk, I said, "Gee, feels a little light.  Ahwell, it's in the ally bin, and I *ALWAYS* check."

Tossed it into the crucible.   The smoke was the first indication of "whoops", followed by copious light, god-awful noises, and molten ally spattering everywhere.  Only about 8 lbs in the pot when it all started.  Threw about 80 lbs of sand on it, then changed my shorts.  Was still hot 5 hours later, warm the next day.   Ended up with 2 lbs of ally in a half-melted crucible, and a good 10 lbs of glass.


Next item was my induction heater/furnace.  Home built, from scratch, myself.  It ran on 240v, and had a 340-ish volt DC bus to feed the inverter.  About 20 400v 3000uf caps in series/parallel for an 800v 30,000 DC filter cap.  Bloody lethal beast of a DC supply.
The tank capacitor was a 5uf 1600v home-made unit that could laugh at 300A rms at 30khz.  

It utilized a PLL to track the resonant frequency, and switched the inverter at zero current to cut the switching losses down.  The inverter was an H bridge of 600v 70A IGBTs, four in each corner of the H bridge for 12 total.  It would run happily at 8-10kw input, and could melt steel.  

And Murphy decided he didn't like it.  The all-important feedback lead that controlled the operating frequency went open circuit.  The short bit of it left locked onto the strong 2mhz signal from a nearby radio tower.  It tried to run the IGBTs at 2mhz, when their max frequency is only 100khz.

This turned on all 12 devices at once, effectively crowbarring that beastly DC supply with a dead short, plus the 240v mains for the instant it took the breaker to trip.

I thought a grenade went off.  The cover of the induction heater ended up in the back yard, about 40' away.  A 2lb heatsink wound up one street over.  Several components were never found.  They either got launched into orbit, or vaporized.  I got off lucky with only a scratch from something.   
The second time in my adult life I peed my pants a little out of fear.    Then there was the dealing with the emergency services.  No harm, no foul, but I'll never build another one, no matter how cool they are.


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## middle.road (Oct 22, 2014)

Whyemier said:


> Don't bremember me exactly but I will say just one or two. Enough to say it was even if it wasn't. With the torque that machine produced I 'm not sure how much difference it would have made



Turning 30" stock, that lathe should have been bolted to the floor correctly. That's a lot of mass to be spinning and the lathe itself isn't going to have
enough mass to counter-act that.
The fault lays with the person or persons who didn't install it properly.
When I was in Facilities Maintenance, the mechanics would go over the machinery on a rotating schedule to verify that all was well.
On the large engine lathes we would turn 48" diameter cable spools and on others cable sheaves. Lots of heavy items.


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