> RaceMixer!!t4BTRmATV2 19/07/16(Tue)22:48

>>112976
> How many people could that have killed?

Well probably the 3 of us who were down in the basement. Me, the operator, and some rando that worked there. The main issue I was concerned with was asphyxiation. You can't breathe steam. It essentially displaces air so a lack of oxygen could be fatal, which is why I didn't run out into the turbine room. At least in the control room we had a room full of air. The first thing they taught us about hazardous atmospheres and first-aid in general was to survey the situation. If your buddy is in a tank or pit, and suddenly drops, there could be something toxic or displacing the air. If you jump in, now there's two dead guys in the tank.

One interesting thing is that when you get steam hot enough it becomes "superheated steam", which you can't see. Should it leak from a pipe it turns into a jet and cuts like a laser. The standard way of finding superheated steam leaks is to talk around waving a straw broom in front of you. When the steam jet hits the broom, the broom explodes.

But the other thing, if a room is filled with superheated steam, you can't see it, or breathe.

  More superheated steam.

  Then there's steam explosions:

> Another consideration is safety. High pressure, superheated steam can be extremely dangerous if it unintentionally escapes. To give the reader some perspective, the steam plants used in many U.S. Navy destroyers built during World War II operated at 600 psi (4,100 kPa; 41 bar) pressure and 850 degrees Fahrenheit (454 degrees Celsius) superheat. In the event of a major rupture of the system, an ever-present hazard in a warship during combat, the enormous energy release of escaping superheated steam, expanding to more than 1600 times its confined volume, would be equivalent to a cataclysmic explosion, whose effects would be exacerbated by the steam release occurring in a confined space, such as a ship's engine room. Also, small leaks that are not visible at the point of leakage could be lethal if an individual were to step into the escaping steam's path.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiler#Superheated_steam_boiler

Which probably would have been bad for everyone in the building if basement 2 had exploded. Natural gas lines and all.

But the biggest danger is letting the boiler run dry, then adding water while it's hot. That's the explosions you see.

I got a couple of emails regarding it. One from our safety manager thanking me for helping the site personnel shut down the unit and asking if it was normal to have pressure relief valves mounted where they can rain on everyone. (It is, actually, though they should dump safely.) And one from our business unit VP giving a +1, and thanking me for being a safe employee.

>>112982
>Also, small leaks that are not visible at the point of leakage could be lethal if an individual were to step into the escaping steam's path.
I don't even want to know what that injury looks like.

>>112983
It's probably not as as bad as high pressure oil injection wounds.

Seems I'll soon be joining the machinists club. How time flies.

I was recently offered a pretty sweet deal on a rather large mill/lathe combo unit. It belonged to a retired gunsmith who basically gutted and rebuilt it for work in his shop, and used it for several years before retiring. He passed it to a friend of mine who has decided it's more than he wanted or needed and offered me a "come pick this 600lb thing up and get it out of my garage workshop" discount off the price. It needs some fairly serious TLC in terms of cleaning, minute inspecting, and re-lubing, but I learned the basics of dealing with a Grizzly 9729 some years ago and they're very similar. Upon basic inspection it seems to be in solid shape and runs like a top. Comes with a bunch of extras (live center, steady rests, riser plates, a selection of milling cutters, and a 4 jaw chuck to name a few) with better motors already installed, too.

Speaking of machinists, how do your shops handle carbide dust from grinding flats and relieving endmills etc.? Where I work it's just an open grinder with no coolant, vacuum system or anything and no one else even wears a dust mask. I imagine that shit isn't good to breathe, I'm curious how it's handled elsewhere.

>>113000
I wear a dust mask, that's about it. Since I'm always the one ordering tooling, I don't have to modify stuff that often so I don't think it's a huge deal.

To be honest I've heard it's bad but I've never seen medical papers or reports on exposure to tungsten carbide dust, no idea how bad it is or what it's like long term or what.

>>113000
Dust mask, Proper airflow, dust handlers.
Last shop I worked at had wet grinders for carbide.

I don't know my job status, if I'm even really employed right now, when I'm returning to NorCal or exactly what it is I'm doing when I get there; it's messy. The survey shit I was doing is a soon to be finished project. I am now a member of the IBEW... I think? I don't know, man. I was supposed to start work as a groundman (still not sure what they do), but it got delayed. My boss is constantly hitting me with shit last minute, there's some vague notion that my doing this shit will eventually translate to a career back here in Vegas, and being unable to tell my wife when I'm supposed to leave or return is irking.
All I know is I fucking love the Army. Completed my first two week annual training for the reserve a week ago. I love my platoon, got a lot out of our training (I ramped a 100 pound robot off a fucking sage bush!), and even sleeping restlessly in the back of a cramped blast resistant vehicle, grimy clothes still on, I felt at ease. My ceaseless worrying and self doubt and second guessing all just shut the fuck up for two glorious weeks. My wife keeps saying I should've went active duty, but I refuse to uproot her. She's started a good career, a master's program, her whole family is here, and she'll never have a better selection of medical specialists (it's gotten worse, by the way. She sustained heart damage). And yet, I feel like whatever I do on the civilian side is just to pay bills until the day I'm down range, in the shit. I want it bad. God help me, I really fucking do.
Highlights of AT:
During an exercise with a grader on site:
>"2-6, Talon. The robot may have inadvertently made contac-"
>"breakbreakbreakbreakshhhhhutthefuckup!"
>"This is 2-6, say again last?"
>"Disregard, hot mic."

A battalion wide party in the barracks where I witnessed my fucked up drunk LT tell off another company's 1st SGT, an impromptu B-boy dance battle, we all got smoked by the XO because even Top was fucked up, and at one point I shouted for a medic.

Smoking black & milds with several platoon members on the hood of an RG as the sun set, an Apache pilot doing some kind of drill in the distance.

My platoon sergeant awarding me high praise.
>"This motherfucker is either CID or a fucking serial killer."

Rolling in a convoy where every driver was hungover except for the LT's driver; he was still drunk.

All I got right now is people I work with asking why WOT/WOWS/WOWP "Dont work like you say".

Literally, caught myself saying "Niggah one be a game, one be real".
Ryan deserved better even if he was white and semi-retarded.

I like my job now, kind of feeling at peace with everything.

Still wish I didn't screw up some more important stuff but it's alright.

Bout to hit that paternity leave boiiiiiiiiiiii

>>113055
>wanting to go to paid gang shit over doing regular guy shit

MY MAN THAT IS THE BIGGEST MOOD

>>112982
Current job is in the solid fuel heating industry, we have retards messing with old boiler stoves (that go in fireplaces not the things you have in the kitchen - though we do have those too) or not getting things decommissioned propperly.

The UK still has a surprising amout of old baxi 16x22" boiler open fires, many in social housing. I know an inspector that went to visit the scene of an explosion. Basically the council had installed gas central heating and the gas plumber had just chopped the pipes and poured sand into the boiler rather than ripping it out. Fast forward 3 years and the lady in the property gets cold and lights the open fire, sits on the sofa and gets cozy... the grate cut her dog in half and spread her over the wall.

Steam boilers, like bombs that stupid people like to put in their living rooms.

>>113079

Over here, the old engineers used to say that there's a stick of dynamite in every gallon of water, and from everything I've seen and read, they weren't exaggerating. Any volume of superheated water flashing to steam is absolutely not to be fucked with.

Image unrelated.

>>112980

The bigger problem, from what I've read, is that it'll basically popcorn your respiratory tract, preventing gas exchange from occurring even if you managed to get back out to breathable air.

>>113091
For boilers under extreme pressure, look at nuclear power reactors. Many of the most common designs contain water under 150 atmospheres of pressure! If the structure containing the pressurized water cracks, the water will instantly flash to steam, destroying everything around it that isn't built like an Abrams tank. That's one of the main reasons why the reactor casing is made from solid machined steel more than nine inches thick, the pipes are like cannon barrels and the containment building has to be extremely strong to contain a steam explosion.

For a 1,300 MWe pressurized water reactor, the pressure vessel is about 12 m high, the inner diameter is 5 m, and the wall of the cylindrical shell is about 250 mm thick. The overall weight amounts to approx. 530 t without internals. The vessel is designed for a pressure of 17.5 MPa (175 bar) and a temperature of 350 °C. https://www.euronuclear.org/info/encyclopedia/r/reactor-pressure-vessel.htm

- This product is a forged steel component used in nuclear reactors. Unlike conventional products made by welding separate pieces of metal together, this is made entirely from a single high-quality steel ingot, the largest in the world.

Pressurised water reactor (PWR): This is the most common type, with over 280 operable reactors for power generation and several hundred more employed for naval propulsion. The design of PWRs originated as a submarine power plant. PWRs use ordinary water as both coolant and moderator. The design is distinguished by having a primary cooling circuit which flows through the core of the reactor under very high pressure, and a secondary circuit in which steam is generated to drive the turbine. In Russia these are known as VVER types – water-moderated and -cooled.
A PWR has fuel assemblies of 200-300 rods each, arranged vertically in the core, and a large reactor would have about 150-250 fuel assemblies with 80-100 tonnes of uranium.
Water in the reactor core reaches about 325°C, hence it must be kept under about 150 times atmospheric pressure to prevent it boiling. Pressure is maintained by steam in a pressuriser (see diagram). In the primary cooling circuit the water is also the moderator, and if any of it turned to steam the fission reaction would slow down. This negative feedback effect is one of the safety features of the type. The secondary shutdown system involves adding boron to the primary circuit.
The secondary circuit is under less pressure and the water here boils in the heat exchangers which are thus steam generators. The steam drives the turbine to produce electricity, and is then condensed and returned to the heat exchangers in contact with the primary circuit. https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-power-reactors/nuclear-power-reactors.aspx

Here's a pressure vessel with a titanium jacket.

Nuclear Reactor Pressure Vessel being forged.

Now that's a sturdy water pipe!

Gotta keep those jerk X-Wings away from this pressure vessel.

>>113098

Holy balls that's awesome.

I'm assistant gunner on a 120mm crew meow, moving out of ammo bitch status. Our ammo bearer is a stupid but eager kid that desperately wants to go eat a machine gun sandwich instead of being a chuck and therefore is slow as fuuuck and can't fucking count so I end up doing half his job too.

I fucking hate the Army, I really do. The shit leadership, the hordes of otherwise unemployable 19 year olds desperate to die in a firefight in Afghanistan because they think there's no higher calling. Not kick some ass, but to fucking die. But hanging rounds is fucking exhilarating. That moment after you hang it and clear the tube. That fucking Earth rumble from the H.E. on impact. God damn. I was butthurt when I randomly ended up a Charlie instead of a Bravo but it was the best thing the Army ever did to me. All about that chuck life.

Heading off to second JRTC rotation in 7 months soon. Deployment to Afghanistan a couple months after that. ETS a few months after return thank God.

kill.

>>113110
Assistant gunner?
I heard the story of an ammo loader in a 105mm howitzer crew stationed in Vietnam and he said his job was to grab a shell off the top of the ammo pile and hand it to the loader who shoved it into the breech of a howitzer and another gunner would fire it. And that was pretty much it. He just grabbed 105mm shells from a pile and handed it off to another guy. Occasionally he would assemble firebases and then pass around more artillery shells. He did two tours in Vietnam, finished his four years in the US Army, and then discovered that he had no real skills for the civilian employment market apart from bricklayer in construction where he grabbed concrete blocks from a pile and handed them to someone else more experienced who placed them in the walls they were building. After a few months of that, he said he joined back up to swing shells in Vietnam. I hope he learned more marketable skills then (unless there are super-lifers who swing shells for 20+ years in the Army?).

Camp Lejeune, N.C. - A Marine with Task Force Southwest prepares to load an M121 A1 120mm mortar during a joint mortar shoot aboard Camp Lejeune, N.C., Jan. 24, 2017. The range was conducted to refresh and exchange techniques on firing the M252 81mm and 120mm mortars in preparation for an upcoming deployment to Helmand Province, Afghanistan. The Marines are scheduled to deploy as part of Task Force Southwest to train, advise and assist the Afghan National Army 215th Corps and 505th Zone National Police. https://www.iimef.marines.mil/Photos/igphoto/2001691589/

>>113111
Oh hard facts. I had a relatively fun, stable job but always felt guilty for being a fatty and not going through with originally joining in 2009 with some super dumb sense of "honor". I had a high enough GT score that I could have gotten any MOS in the Army that maybe had some later employment opportunity but was still naive enough that I wanted to do "grunt stuff". I was willing to stick it out for 20 years if I liked it, but kept the GI bill as a fallback (if a little late). That's a hard no on plan A.

The military is literally designed for children that have never lived on their own (and still won't until they marry the first water buffalo that is looking for some o dat tricare/bah or are an alcoholic Staff Sergeant that hates life). I showed up as a 28 year old E-1 that had been married 3 years. I've lived a very independent life for the last 10 years and now I have people my age or younger with the most fucked up home life coaching and questioning my every move. Whatever, I signed up for it. I can live with that.

Now artillery and mortars are similar and not at all at the same time.

Artillery is slow, REALLY slow. They're also usually inaccurate as fuck by comparison. Far less mobile as well. Obviously arty let's anybody know what's up, but a 120 High Ex is no slouch either with a 75 meter kill zone. Not hating on Artillery even though it's easy to. They're not infantry though. While obviously an emphasis is put on mortar stuff. We're still expected to do anything an 11bravo can and half the time leadership either doesn't know how or doesn't want to use mortars and puts them in a half assed 11b role.

I don't know how mech or heavy mech units operate with tracks, but as a "light infantry" unit with 120's, 81's and 60's it typically goes

Ammo Bearer - In charge of running downrange with aiming poles, prepping rounds out of tootsies and keeping a round count of white phos, high ex, illum etc. Swabbing the tube as we fire. It's the ammo bearers job to pull cheese charges off of the round as FDC (fire direction control) dictates, pull safety pins, set timers on illum and fuses (impact, air burst etc).

Assistant Gunner - Adjusts cannon and bipod on changes of deflection. Not a huge deal on a 60mm, but the 120 system weighs 319 pounds and needs a little loving to move for a large deflection. AG checks gunner's sight data and bubbles. Hangs rounds and drops on gunner's command or signals of "HANG IT" and "FIRE". Helps AB prep rounds during big fire for effects, double checks all charge levels and fuses so we don't go to jail and whatnot. Not the most fulfilling job in the world, but it's fun.

Gunner - Makes sure his gun is up always. Dirty bird signals AB when planting aiming poles. Floats bubbles on bipod and gets sight on aiming poles. Calls the shots on when to hang it and fire.

Squad Leader - Directs squad, checks all data.

>>113118
But is there actually an Army job title of the guy who takes the shell from the pile and hands it to the Assistant Gunner? An Assistant Assistant gunner?

- US M30 106.7mm (4.2 inch) heavy mortar, Vietnam, 1969.

"Just shift the shells, shell-shifter."
Pvt. R. Jones, of the 81mm Mortars Plt., 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines, is Wet and Cold as He Takes a Break During Operation Pitt, Taking Place Approximately 12 miles north of Da Nang.

>>113118
This shit is hilarious, thanks for story time.

  > got new job
> same company, same job, just in california

> some months ago
> did the interview
> best interview ever
> was telling jokes, talking about special shit we do, good to go
> get an offer that's a promotion to tech priest 4 (of 4)
> get 10% raise
> get hometown
> bosses and guys who know me are very enthusiastic about me joining
> I keep hearing "Oh good! We need someone with your skills!"

> get into working with the guys who are here
> they act like scalded dogs around any kind of policy or safety issue
> they're afraid to do shit

> at customer site, they're having some problems
> brainstorming with coworker
> suggest changing the software as a possible fix
> coworker is iceman (The alpha dog)
> I'm maverick (The loose cannon)

> Iceman: You can't just change the software! It's standard software!
> Me: Uh, yes you can. I did it all the time on the east coast.
> Iceman: What makes you think you know better than the engineers who designed it! Do you think you're smarter than them?
> Me: Yes! I'm here, at this site, for this application. I can see it's fucked up and I can fix it.
> Iceman: Well if you're so smart, why don't you become an engineer!
(more on that later)
> Me: Everything in this job if what you can justify to your boss. I stand behind everything I do. I would make the changes, document it, and if anyone asks I'll be happy to explain it. How long have you worked for this company, and you think the software is right? What the hell?
> Iceman: Well whatever man, you're the lead on the job and it's your name on it.

(like whatever man)

> informing coworker after clearing lockout/tagout
> Me: Hey man, I hooked up the CO2 bottles but have the fire system off
> Iceman: Well, are you gonna turn it on before they start?
> Me: I was going to wait till after it's running, I like to check for leaks while it is starting.
> Iceman: *Shrugs* Whatever.

I think this guy is stupid and he thinks everyone is as stupid as he is. Again, when I interviewed I told the bosses what I do, and they gave me a promotion and a raise, so I interpret that is a green light make shit happen.

Regarding the engineer. This year I've applied for 5 controls engineering jobs and 1 engineering-bitch job. They were going to make me an offer on the bitch job, but then it was canceled by the president of the company. (Oh well.) For the controls engineering jobs I got an email from Human Resources asking if I had a degree or not. (I do not.) They said it was a "legal requirement" to have an engineering degree to be an engineer. I'd like to see what "law" that is, but then they basically told me to stop applying for engineering jobs, so this technician job was the last shot before I walked.

>>113131
> They said it was a "legal requirement" to have an engineering degree to be an engineer.
In some places "engineer" (especially in a job title) is a "protected term" which carries legal implications if misused. I don't know if this is the case where you are, but they may simply be covering their bases and being overly cautious.

You should see what kind of "engineering" degree they actually require. If its an engineering technician degree (diploma?) that they require, you may want to look in to it.

Yesterday, we had a twelve mile ruck march. Sore as fuck. We passed a couple guys shooting a souped up bolt action. Thinking it funny, a young sergeant said, "on the next shot, just drop." So I did. My head bounced a little.

>>113132

It may be a requirement for some of the other countries the company deals with. I've heard that the guys who do my job in Europe have to be degreed engineers. Also they don't lower themselves to "turning wrenches", and just point and tell the "helpers" what to do.

We had a dude from Mexico come up to help with our last maintenance season. We broke a bolt off in a combustor and he had the best fucking time drilling the N60 stainless bolt out. Initially it took 3 hours to wear out all of my drill bits, for no damage to the bolt. Then we found some boiler guys who had "Norseman" brand "Black and Gold" drill bits which slowly worked. Another 3 hours and dude had that one bolt cored out enough to break it with a chisel.

The dude from Mexico fucking loved it. He said he never gets to do stuff like that at home.

Whats a 401k and why does it matter?