Typical Day
It's 9:00AM and Milford Wright is on duty at the fancy-shmancy, environmentally-friendly waste-to-energy facility where he earns his living as part of a big crew of millwrights. He's currently listening to his boss, Old Man Witchins, give the daily "toolbox talk"—the low-down on what still needs to get done this week. Milford's heard it all before and his mind wanders a bit.
He'd much rather be at home tinkering with the convection oven he picked up at a rummage sale last week. He almost had it this morning but the fan burned out again after a whirring death wail. It's nothing he can't handle but...duty calls. He had to take a break from fixing things to go fix some things.
They've been assigned to perform maintenance on a turbine that's been running nonstop for the past five years. It's time it received a little TLC. Milford and the gang will be taking it apart, inspecting every piece, fixing anything that's broken, cleaning it until it shines, and reinstalling it.
Milford thinks aloud that he could use a little TLC, too. Like the turbine, he feels like he's been working nonstop for five years—probably because he has been. The big industrial machines that millwrights fix are important cogs in the economic infrastructure. When they break down—and that happens a lot—they need to be repaired quickly, so millwrights often keep a busy schedule.
Old Man Witchins snickers. "You should've known what you were getting yourself into when you signed up to fix anything and everything that breaks down. Someone has to do it. But in all seriousness everyone, be careful out there. It's kind of icy; I don't want anyone getting hurt. And, as always, let me know if you see anything else that might be hazardous. Let's have a safe day out there, okay?"
Everyone nods, so Old Man Witchins says, "Alright, meeting's over. Get to work."
With the daily toolbox talk over, Milford and his buddy Ron go off to sign the attendance sheet. Once they're done with that, they can go about their assigned tasks for the day. First on the list? Take off the turbine cover. Milford fetches a socket wrench and a ratchet from the storage drawers and starts unhinging all those pesky bolts.
As Milford removes the bolts, he makes sure each one is labeled so the machine will be easy to reassemble. He's only forgotten to label bolts once in his entire career, but the memory is incredibly painful. It was hours and hours of squinting at little bolts, saying, "Now does this one go there?"—and having the answer usually turn out to be "no."
Once the turbine cover has been un-bolted, Milford and Ron go over the blueprints with Old Man Witchins to decide how to lift the massive cover off the turbine without damaging it.
"Looks like we're going to need an overhead crane, huh, Ron?" Milford asks.
"In my professional opinion...yes," Ron says. Ron loves getting to use the crane. He's trying to be cool about it, but it's not working.
Old Man Witchins scratches his head. "We may need the whole team for this. Round 'em up, will ya?"
The turbine cover is loaded onto the crane. Milford stays on the ground so he can monitor the whole process. Despite being huge and heavy, the turbine cover would be easy to damage; it has to be lifted delicately off the machine. Milford uses special millwright hand signals to communicate with Ron and all the other coworkers who are too far away to yell to.
When it's finally off, Milford can start inspecting the inside. He takes measurements, makes sure everything's aligned properly, and writes down every tiny little thing he sees. Old Man Witchins is going to want to know everything, and he's going to want to be extra-sure that everything is as it should be. That's why, when Milford is done, Ron goes in to double-check everything.
Ron's assessment? Everything's looking good.
Now it's all about checking for cracks and damages. This is Milford's favorite part of the job because he gets to use a special test called a dye penetrant inspection. He puts a special dye into the turbine so that all the defects will show under ultraviolet light. It's just like CSI.
The test results indicate trouble: one of the rotating shafts is changing color. Milford takes a look at the damage and decides that it's probably been overheated because it wasn't lubricated properly. He tells Old Man Witchins, then gets new bearings from storage to replace the damaged ones.
By the time he's done cleaning and prepping the shaft for the new bearings, Milford realizes that it's nearly 5:00PM—quittin' time. He finishes his work, cleans and puts away his tools, and lets the boss know what he's completed today.
By 5:30PM, he's home just in time to take another crack at that convection oven before dinner. He hopes this time's the last. Dinner is a frozen lasagna and the hairdryer didn't work too well last time.