Working at Symbrosia – A Darker View

Death by Salt

Conditions at work can be rough…

Severe corrosion of a printed circuit with exposure to shoreline conditions

The printed circuit board in the photograph here came from an industrial label printer, one used to create labels for our product packages. The printer refused to print for no apparent reason, and despite numerous attempts to update or replace printer drivers, using a different computer, and other fiddling it remained stubbornly inoperative.

So we bought a replacemnt and continued shipping product.

The printer sat in my office for a bit, and one quiet afternoon I decided to do a little forensic disassembly, and scrap any useful bits before I tossed the remaing carcass.

A Century in Service

In this age of short product lifecycles and rapid obsolescence it is nice to see an example of longevity. We consider equipment or tools old when over ten years in service. How about a century?

A compressed gas cylinder with inspection dates spanning over a cetury — A compressed gas cylinder with inspection dates spanning over a century

Our CO₂ is delivered in standard industrial pressure cylinders. These steel cylinders hold 50lbs of liquid CO₂ at a pressure sufficient to keep it liquid at room temperature, about or about 800PSI.

These standard cylinders require inspection every five years, and the inspection date is stamped into the steel at the top of the cylinder in the format month-year with a two digit year. It has been this way for a long time, longer than I realized.

Electrical Hazard

Over the last week at work we have been preparing an unused part of the facility for use. We need a place for an industrial freeze dryer and a walk in cooler. But first we had to clear out a massive pile of junk that had accumulated, and do demolition on a lot of old equipment and piping to remodel the space.

Demolition? Break out the sawzall! We used a big sawzall, a small pile of saw blades, an angle grinder with a diamond cutoff wheel, a bit of muscle and a lot of sweat to get it done. The pile of trash accumulated rapidly along the fence, old lumber, a lot of PVC pipe, and a lot of rust… A big dumpster will appear later.

Rust. This close to the ocean everything is badly corroded, do not even try to release the old bolts, just pop a fresh battery into the angle grinder and let the sparks fly. The 20 amp sawzall does not use batteries, good for the thicker pipes and framed walls, it rips through PVC like butter.