![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
So, today I got to wear comfortably grubby things to work.
I got to do this because Mr. Mike and I spent the morning (that's from 8, when I finished slogging through morning emails, to 11) cleaning. We were cleaning the gritty, grimy, salt- and rust- and mud-encrusted insides of two corrosions booths, plus the reservoir tanks associated with these booths.
If you have ever been to a salt lake, such as the one in Utah or the Dead Sea in Israel, you know that you get huge head-sized chuncks of muddy salt just sort of lying around, along with smaller but no less digusting flakes. That's pretty much what was coating every solid surface in these booths. We had to pick and scrape it off with screwdrivers and then vacuum them out and then wash the tanks. They are drying now.
Then we pulled a monsterous reservoir tank out from under the first booth. The stuff that is sprayed on these parts lives in these; it's mostly salt water but also with very dilute sulfuric and nitrous acids, plus a fine kind of clay called fireclay. When it dries out, it forms an abrasive grit for the actuators to abrade parts with. It was, of course, full of the water we'd rinsed the booth with too. Completely full, these things probably hold about 200 gallons. There was no fucking way we could have lifted it without draining it first.
It took about 15 minutes for the first of these to drain. During that time, we were cleaning the second booth. Then we slid the mostly empty tank out from under the booth and I got to clean the housing while Mr. Mike went and sprayed it out and incedentally got a shower he hadn't been planning on. You know how whn you clean out a fishbowl with salt it turns into this mostly-salt-and-a-little paste, and you clean with that? This was mostly-salt-with-mud-and-water paste. I did have to scrape more dried salt off the fixturing, then mop it out.
What we still have left to do:
Clean tank of second booth.
Clean housing for tank of second booth.
Replace tanks.
Fill tanks with R/O water.
Add salt.
Add acid.
Add fireclay.
Hook everything up and hope like hell that it sprays correctly the first time. Else, we're gonna have to disassemble the spray mechanisms also, and clean those.
This was three solid hours of heavy-dut cleaning. If there's an upshot, I'm getting my excersize.
On the flip side, Friday.
EDIT: So . . . the heavy-corrosive environment has broken the motors on the reservoir tanks. These motors keep the liquid in the tanks stirred up so the fireclay doesn't all settle at the bottom. Only three out of four motors are broken, each in a different and interesting way.
Which is to say that reservoirs and tasks associated with refilling them don't happen until Motor A is descaled, Motor B has another drive shaft, and Motor C's rusted wiring no longer removes the "off" option.
I have lots of muddy clay-brown sploches all over my clothing, and I feel accomplished. Also, I should totally go do work but I don't rlly feel like it . . .
I got to do this because Mr. Mike and I spent the morning (that's from 8, when I finished slogging through morning emails, to 11) cleaning. We were cleaning the gritty, grimy, salt- and rust- and mud-encrusted insides of two corrosions booths, plus the reservoir tanks associated with these booths.
If you have ever been to a salt lake, such as the one in Utah or the Dead Sea in Israel, you know that you get huge head-sized chuncks of muddy salt just sort of lying around, along with smaller but no less digusting flakes. That's pretty much what was coating every solid surface in these booths. We had to pick and scrape it off with screwdrivers and then vacuum them out and then wash the tanks. They are drying now.
Then we pulled a monsterous reservoir tank out from under the first booth. The stuff that is sprayed on these parts lives in these; it's mostly salt water but also with very dilute sulfuric and nitrous acids, plus a fine kind of clay called fireclay. When it dries out, it forms an abrasive grit for the actuators to abrade parts with. It was, of course, full of the water we'd rinsed the booth with too. Completely full, these things probably hold about 200 gallons. There was no fucking way we could have lifted it without draining it first.
It took about 15 minutes for the first of these to drain. During that time, we were cleaning the second booth. Then we slid the mostly empty tank out from under the booth and I got to clean the housing while Mr. Mike went and sprayed it out and incedentally got a shower he hadn't been planning on. You know how whn you clean out a fishbowl with salt it turns into this mostly-salt-and-a-little paste, and you clean with that? This was mostly-salt-with-mud-and-water paste. I did have to scrape more dried salt off the fixturing, then mop it out.
What we still have left to do:
Clean tank of second booth.
Clean housing for tank of second booth.
Replace tanks.
Fill tanks with R/O water.
Add salt.
Add acid.
Add fireclay.
Hook everything up and hope like hell that it sprays correctly the first time. Else, we're gonna have to disassemble the spray mechanisms also, and clean those.
This was three solid hours of heavy-dut cleaning. If there's an upshot, I'm getting my excersize.
On the flip side, Friday.
EDIT: So . . . the heavy-corrosive environment has broken the motors on the reservoir tanks. These motors keep the liquid in the tanks stirred up so the fireclay doesn't all settle at the bottom. Only three out of four motors are broken, each in a different and interesting way.
Which is to say that reservoirs and tasks associated with refilling them don't happen until Motor A is descaled, Motor B has another drive shaft, and Motor C's rusted wiring no longer removes the "off" option.
I have lots of muddy clay-brown sploches all over my clothing, and I feel accomplished. Also, I should totally go do work but I don't rlly feel like it . . .
