View allAll Photos Tagged PrecisionEngineering
For the Macro Mondays group theme '90 degrees'...
I had so many shots that I could have used for this week's theme that it was hard to choose! I've included this one because my snazzy orange pipe benders are already in the MM pool under the 'Tools' theme!
These little dovetail slides were my chief project at work today...
These particular ones are for use in vacuum applications, so each individual component has to be ultrasonically cleaned, then assembled with the relevant vacuum-compatible lubricant - all without touching the thing with bare hands! So, I have spent the day with my fingers encased in miniature condoms... ;-)
Not only did I spend time taking pictures of my Dad's watch today, but I was pressed into service to attempt some hasty pictures of components made by my company to use on our new website...
These are for use in fibre optic connectors - the ceramic ferrules have a minute hole down the centre if you look carefully. In fact, all these tubes have a central hole for a fibre. My problem today was that I had no way of securing these to the background, and every time my lens bumped the sheet of card with the company logo on, the bloody tubes would roll away!
One of the huge bar-feeds on our CNC machines at work. It reminds me of those old Gatling guns you see in war movies...
Colour tweaked to warm things up and make the sticky oil residue look like it's doing something artistic...
As precision engineers, we were reknowned for producing microscopic components for the fibre optics and telecommunications industries...
Lately, we have diversified into other fields and now produce parts for the gas and oil industry as well as components for the aerospace market - which seem humungous compared to the miniscule parts of yesteryear!
These part-finished chunks caught my eye and I just HAD to shoot them for posterity...
I detest stocktaking.
It's bad enough that I have to count all the components that I assemble, but I ALWAYS get lumbered with counting the contents of the bloody screw cabinets... There must be at least a gazillion of the little buggers from M1 up to M6, with variations of each sort, and if there's anything that's more boring than counting screws so small that one sneeze scatters them across the room, it's reading about counting screws....
I'll shut up then, shall I?
Wandering around the empty workshop after hours, I discovered this box of components awaiting cleaning...
How many times have I said these aren't to be piled up like this??? That aside, I rather liked the monochrome look, highlighted as it was by the rich amber of the oil pooled in odd corners.
Heads will still roll tomorrow though...
I thought I'd put all this kind of thing behind me when I left Junior school...
One of today's charming little tasks at work was to fill the engraved lines in these knobs with engraver's wax, a filthy, repetitive job whereby one rubs the wax crayon into the grooves with a finger, leaves it to warm up on a hotplate, then polishes off the surplus.
So, when you next see something with engraved lines on it, think of the poor sap that has to do the 'colouring-in'!
An MDE 330 to be precise...
What else could I use for today's shot other than an assembly called an MDE 330 flexure stage, one of the weird and wonderful things I assemble for a living?!
It's a thingummajig that aligns whatsits in the scientific instrument world...
I've got 25 of these small dovetail slides to assemble for use in a vacuum application, so they - and all their relevant fixings and fastenings - have to be ultrasonically cleaned and dried before use. After cleaning, they mustn't come into contact with my skin or any greasy deposits will cause problems in the vacuum environment, so I have to wear little condoms on my fingers to prevent this!