The boss asked me if I could automate a semi-manual spot welding operation.
We needed to take a small square of sheet metal and accurately weld it to a larger rectangle.
Order of Operation:
Use some of the vacuum cups to destack the small square.Use the rest to destack the larger rectangle.
Pick both up and transfer them to the "qualification" table where the large piece is dropped and shoved into position against hard stops.
Drop the small blank on the large and shove it into position on top.
Pick both up again, now accurately positioned on the robot tooling, and close a small clamp to prevent drifting.
Swing over to the spot welder I bought on Ebay for $1600 (!) and make 5 spot welds.
Swing over to the dimpler and place 4 dimples in the larger piece. Every other piece is dimpled to cause the entire stack to be level when done, since the small and large blank together are thicker than just the large blank.
Stack the finished product on a customer pallet.
The operator interface is being done through the robot's "teach pendant" because it was cheap to do it that way. This saved the cost of an external interface, although I might add one later for "sexiness".
The robot was from another line and was due to be scrapped because of no resale value.
I did the design and programming and a lot of the wiring.
I got a lot of help from some some really good guys in the maintenance department who did the fabrications I designed. They also had some good ideas to incorporate.
This picture is of the Great Lakes Engineering Works, the yard that built the Edmund Fitzgerald, among many other vessels that aided the Great Lakes economy.
The yard, along with others and steel mills (Great Lakes, McClouth, etc.) was in River Rouge, Michigan and extended south into Ecorse along the Detroit River, just south of Detroit.
Other communities also stretched south creating the Downriver area.
My dad had a house in River Rouge and my grandparents had a house in Ecorse.
The major thoroughfare connecting these communities is Jefferson Avenue.
When I was a boy (and dinosaurs walked the earth) there were underground crossings along Jefferson so that no one had to stop for traffic while crossing.
Why?
Men walked to worked, in crowds, with their friends and co-workers, lunch bucket in hand, to get to work on time.
These underpasses have long been filled in and you might not suspect they were ever there.
These men worked at the mills and the yards and were dependent on them for their livelihood.
They owned their homes, or co-owned with the banks.
Coal ships delivered the energy to power these yards and mills and supply electricity to the communities. Coal was converted into coal gas to light furnaces and stoves/ovens in the homes.
Only in the 1970s were these coal gas plants replaced with natural gas piped in from the southwest.
That was a big deal.
So, to summarize, men worked very near (and were dependent on) their place of employment.
Few drove or owned cars and travel was by train.
If the plant closed, you got work at another.
If business slacked, you lived on savings and hopefully held onto your home, until it picked up again.
It was a feudal system in modern times.
The arrival of the personal automobile, and good roads, changed all that.
In the 70s, when I left the Air Force, I hired in at a local auto plant while I waited to re-start classes at the University. I bought a house minutes away.
I never left, the money was too good. I had entered Skilled Trades.
The plant closed eventually, and many guys were driving as far as Toledo to stay in the GM system.
There was no work for my trade at other plants, a bit of union politics.
So, over the years, I worked first at one place, and when it closed, I moved on to another.
I have driven an hour each way, at times, to stay employed, but I was not beholden to a feudal master.
If you've stayed this long, I'll get to the point.
The Democratic Left wants to reduce the carbon footprint to "save the planet".
What they really want is a return to the feudal system where tight pockets of workers are bound to the local employers who will be unionized and support the political leaders that empowered the system.
Talk about power-grabbing!
Remove the car, or limit it's recharging range to a battery, or remove it from the purchasing ability of the public and you've enslaved the workers.
How many entry level workers can afford a bright new shiny electric vehicle?
Or keep an older one running? People struggle to keep their older cars running as it is.
More people than you realize drive with no insurance (or registration) because they cannot afford it.
This is often due to legislation seemingly designed for that purpose.
Michigan has the highest auto insurance in the nation, particularly due to it's onerous "No Fault" legislation. as if their is never any fault in an accident.
If I drive and do not have full coverage, and you hit me? I'm out a car, because it wasn't your fault.
Back to the energy.
The leftist ideal is a Malthusian economy with fewer people, less consumption, and a low energy profile centered, as I said earlier, around urban centers (that are always leftist controlled) dependent on the feudal lords.
And their leftist masters.
These are pictures of coal gas accumulators.
There was a giant dome that slid down into a moat to seal the gas as it emptied during demand periods and on off periods, they pumped it back up again.
Last year, about this time of year, I hired into a company called Mobis, in Detroit.
Last year, I wrote this about it:
As you may have read here, my work life has been interesting this year. In that last post about work life, I said that I was about to start a new job. Let me tell you about that.
When I interviewed for the position, I was sent a job description that was for a different position than the one I was applying for. I was applying for Assistant Maintenance Manager, which (from the description I was given verbally) seemed more a Maintenance Manager position by another name. The job description that was mailed to me was for a Controls Manager, something I was actually more interested in.
I met with two guys for the interview (let's call then Steve and Tim, because that's their names), one (Tim) being the Plant Manager and the other (Steve) being the Engineering Manager.
They both seemed impressed with what I could offer them and we discussed both roles. They said that they wanted to hire me and would figure which role for me to take later.
I started my first day, but was not given an assignment, so I made it a point to go out on the factory floor and familiarize myself with the processes. While on the floor, I met the Maintenance Manager, who had not been at the interview, and who had not been mentioned to me. That was perplexing.
I ended up staring at a robot assembly cell (EPS, electronic power steering) that just shouted opportunity for improvement. As I was taking notes, Steve walked up behind me and asked what I was doing. He then assigned me to continue developing a plan for improvement of that cell as it was a big bottleneck for them. He also said that they were still deciding on which position I would take and that I would have a voice in that decision.
Over the next few days, I did just that. I called vendors for parts to improve the gripping of the part. The Maintenance Manager had told me that since the cell (and all the equipment on the floor) had been built in Korea, there were replacement parts that he could not source and asked me to find sources. I started doing that also.
At the end of the second week there, I gave Steve a three page document with a plan to improve the EPS cell. He then told me that he had just been tasked by the COO (above Tim) to get all the equipment programs (robots, controllers, vision, touchscreens) backed up as soon as possible. I told him I would begin on it Monday.
On Monday I started to inventory all the equipment to be backed up. I was then introduced to a new hire, Geoff, about my age, as the new Controls Manager. ??? The project I was working on would normally fall to someone in that role, so I assumed he would be taking it over. In talking to Geoff, he said that he also had been awarded that project, but that he actually wasn't the Controls Manager, that his role was still to be determined. I said I would be happy to work with him on the project, but was confused by the situation. He was also.
In the meantime, this Korean based company was changing it's internal IT system to force every document to be stored in their proprietary cloud. There were a lot of problems. I could not take a video of a process and plug my phone into my laptop and transfer the video. The software would not allow it. I could not share it on a server with others for discussion. You could not write to a thumb drive. IT called the new system the MVirus as it was causing them so many problems. For someone to share a powerpoint presentation, they ended up putting their phone under a camera connected to a projector which would then project the images on the phone's display! I sat in a training session and asked how we could possibly share large Autocad or Solidworks files with each other, vendors or customers and was told that we could not. Incredible.
One afternoon, I went to the maintenance office to suggest to the purchaser where she might get a replacement part mentioned earlier. Tim, the Plant Manager followed me into the office. He asked how it was going and I told him about the suggestions I had given Steve. The Maintenance Manager was standing there and asked if I had copied him. I said no, but if he'd like, I would. He got a little upset and said that I should. He then turned to Tim and asked in a very abrupt manner, exactly who I reported to. Tim told him that I reported to the Maintenance Manager, of course. This was the first I heard this. The Maintenance Manager then demanded I move my desk into his office. I did the next day. He then gave me some assignments he wanted me to do. While I was doing some of this, Steve came up to me and asked if I got his email. I said I had not. He said I should have. I showed him my phone, that I had not. I asked what he had wanted to communicate to me. He said he was scheduling a meeting about the software backup project, drop what I was doing and proceed with that. I found Geoff and asked how I could help. He said he was still planning and would get back to me. I asked him to call me if he heard of the meeting Steve mentioned being scheduled. I went back to my desk to work on what the Maintenance Manager had asked me to do. At 2:57 PM, Steve showed up at my desk and asked if I was coming to his meeting. I told him that I had not received a notification. Just then, an Outlook popup appeared on my laptop. I told him I would be there and he walked away. I looked at the notification. It had been sent only a few minutes prior, but the meeting was scheduled for an hour earlier! Whatever. I walked up front, found Geoff and we went to the meeting. Steve lumbered in, sat in front of Geoff and began to question him about his progress (in an unfriendly manner). Geoff replied that he was still trying to figure out where all the equipment to backup was, as he was new to the plant. Steve told him that that was no excuse, that he himself had to learn the plant floor in a short time. He then turned to me and asked what I had been doing. I told him I was doing what the Maintenance Manager had me do while trying to support Geoff. He asked why I was doing that. I said that since I reported to the Maintenance Manager, I felt I should do what he asked. Steve said that the decision as to my role had not yet been made. I said that that was interesting as Tim had told me otherwise. Steve stared at me with his mouth open for roughly twenty seconds after which he closed it, and then said, "You are dismissed from this meeting.". I said "Thank you" and left. The next day, the Maintenance Manager told me that my new priority was to assist Geoff on the backup project. I did that. I had also come in on Sunday afternoon and reprogrammed the EPS robot at the request of the Production Manager. The changes I made reduced it's downtime to zero for three days after implementation. On Thursday morning, at a standup meeting presided by Tim, the Production Manager congratulated me on my accomplishment with the EPS Robot and asked that I apply similar magic to the robot next to it. Tim then assigned me to do so. The supervisors and managers standing around me patted me on the back. Twenty minutes later, Steve found me and asked me to come up front with him. We went into an office wherein I met the new HR manager. I was then informed that I was being terminated. I asked why and was informed that it was because of the disrespect I had shown Steve in a meeting. When I asked which, I was told I knew. When I insisted, I was told it was the one where I had said that I reported to the Maintenance Manager. I was then also told that I had spent too much time on my phone and that I just wasn't showing the initiative they required. I asked the HR Mgr if it was normal to terminate someone with no progressive discipline. She replied that they were an "at will" employer. I thanked them for saving me the decision to quit such an insane organization. Being fired isn't always the negative it seems to be. This was the second time I had been fired in one year! But as bad as that sounds, if you are not suited for a position or vice versa, either you quit or you are fired. It doesn't mean you are unemployable or a bad person. Last night I got a call from a recruiter, looking for a Maintenance Manager. I asked where the job was geographically because they often don't want to tell you who it is. Detroit. I said Detroit is a big town. He said Fort Street. I asked if it was Mobis and he said yes. Hah! I told him the above and he was happy to hear it. He didn't want to poison his name with people he was trying to place. In retrospect, I think it would have been cool to have him submit my resume and interview.
