|
|
|
auotmation insights for a manufacturing
Wednesday, March 5 2025
Every Hanukkah, Gretchen's childhood friend Dina proudly show off (in her house and on Instagram) a menorah I made for her, probably as a present for her 2005 wedding in Tel Aviv. This year, an Instagram post garnered enough attention for me to make a website selling the things I make from copper pipe. Since then, I actually got a customer, someone wanting a menorah of design #2 (the designs are numbered on that website). But then I had to drive to Rochester to do landlording, drive to Staunton to attend the death of my mother, and then vacation in sunny St. Petersburg, Florida. Today, though, the plan was to make that menorah. So I took a recreational 150 mg dose of pseudoephedrine and started going through my bucket of half inch parts to find all the elbows and Ts I needed.
The great thing about my menorah designs is that, once I've created one, it can serve as a handy pattern for making another without having to do any design. The "grid" imposed by half-inch copper fittings imposes limitations on what can be done with them. For example, the maximum number of pieces that can come together at a junction is three, since there are no cross-shaped fittings. The spacing of pipes on a manifold also has a minimum pitch (about one and a half inches). Knowing these things, I can lay out the fittings in a loose arrangement to confirm that I have enough of every kind. Then I can count the joints to know how many inch-size pieces I need to connect them all together. There end up being some longer 2.5 inch pieces for the some of the candle holders on top, but most of the initial work comes from cutting forty of those inch-long pieces with a pipe cutter. If I ever get a large order for menorahs, I would cut those using some sort of chop saw.
Next I had to clean all the fittings and then put solder flux in all the joints, and this time I remembered to put latex gloves on before working with the flux. This is another stage that could be sped up with the use of a tool, some sort of spinning wire brush for the cleaning and a spinning soft brush with flux on it to dip into the fittings. Instead I used a nail covered with flux, and that did a less-than-ideal job, as I would soon discover.
Once I had the bulk of the menorah assembled (that is, all of it that could lie in a single plane), I took it down to the garage and soldered it right where it lay, on a piece of Hardiebacker, a material that doesn't do well in freezing conditions as an outdoor siding but is fireproof. I tried to minimize my solder use, since these joints were entirely structural and didn't need to hold back water. Some of the joints didn't seem to want to accept any solder, which suggested that I hadn't gotten enough flux into them. Still, initially it seemed like I'd produced most of the menorah and then just had to attach the topmost screw-thread fittings (where the candles go) and the legs that keep it stable when it is sitting on a table.
But then as I was doing that, pieces that I'd thought were soldered kept breaking loose. Some were so loose that it was as if I'd completely forgotten to solder them. This kept happening, even into the stage where I was filing away the excess solder. I was forced to test the joints by tugging and twisting at them to see if they would give way. On one occasion when I returned to the garage to re-solder a failed joint, the torch still had a tiny flame licking out of the end of it, which I didn't notice until it burned a hole through the right arm of my hoodie as I was setting up.
A little before 3:00pm, I checked to see what we had that I might be able to make a dinner from. We had a bunch of bok choy but no rice, tempeh, or tofu. This ultimately caused me to drive to Uptown Kingston and do some shopping at the Ghettoford Hannaford.
Back at the house, I mostly worked at cleaning up the menorah, as it was raining too much to take the dogs for a walk. Eventually I make a bok choy stir fry with mushrooms and tofu. It was pretty good, though I'd used a bit too much ginger.
In addition to Jeopardy!, Gretchen and I watched the first episode of the second season of Severance. Then I took a bath so I'd be clean for an in-person job interview tomorrow.
Today's acursed menorah. Click to enlarge.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?250305 feedback
previous | next |
