OT: Amazing

After 2 years of being a Maintenance Supervisor for a CNC machine shop I finally gave it up and went to 3rd shift as a regular Maint Tech. The people my company was hiring had little or no experience, the engineering staff was of very little help and things were just becoming a mess. 3rd shift works out great but I do follow a 2nd shift crew that has about 8 months experience combined (3 guys).
I came in last night to something that just amazed me. I have to share this with everyone. We have a Mazak VMC3016 pallet change cnc machine. For some reason it would no longer execute the M911 or M912 commands (pallet change). They called one of the Engineers in and found that the only way to get it to work was to hit the Cycle Start button at Operator position then goto main panel and hit cycle start. To keep from having the operator walk around machine each cycle here is what they came up with after much thought.

(2 wires and a push button would have been so much easier)

unfourtunately it is still like this as they would not allow me any time due to production requirements.

Hhahaha nice, I love the redneck engineering.

We're slowly sinking to that level at my current place, "just make it work" is the prevailing theme.

Good luck and be safe.

At leased we are not alone, "run to failure" is starting to be the norm here.


Just got done trouble shooting a machine that the wiring(change) was not documented, that can be difficult, the really bad part...I made the change 6 months ago, back then all I can remember was "is it running yet?"


But I do say the was very innovative, nice job Bob

I was at a job site in Guatemala a while back and while wandering around noticed a motor starter that was held in by wedging a 2x4 against the wall and the plunger of the starter to make it stay pulled in. Whenever they wanted to stop the motor they kicked the 2x4 until it popped loose. I asked about it and they said the motor kept tripping out so they did this to make it run, it had been like this for about 2 months. They asked me to look at it, but I've learned that if you touch you own it so I offered to give them a quote for fixing it, but they didn't want to spend money since they had it working anyway. The things you see.

"just make it work" is the prevailing theme.

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That seems to be going around. we have that where i work also.they want us to try to optimize stuff and the operators come back in and change it back because they have to make it work.

pdelno said:

That seems to be going around. we have that where i work also.they want us to try to optimize stuff and the operators come back in and change it back because they have to make it work.

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Same here in the plant I work, when there is a problem regarding
machine they keep on saying we need goods! keep the machine running
no matter what it takes.


What a company!!!!!

You have to give them credit for the ability to improvise.

i agree, it's awsome...