Robot Update and More

The robot project finally went through and it was not at all what I was expecting.

Before I dive into that, I’ve got some other updates for you. I’ve officially been in the trade for a year! I’m trusted alone with more tasks (Journeyman still on site). The thing about that is that I make more mistakes due to the small things that the Journeyman would usually catch. Things like measuring from inconsistent sides of the conduit for bends or cuts. Not realizing that using the arrow on the bender means the offset won’t be where you measured it to be. It’s good and bad. Just another level of learning that is motivated by guilt of wasted materials. We’ve also got a couple new crew members.

A journeywoman has joined us. She joined up when I was on vacation and spent some days with my usual partner. (This shop usually has one apprentice to one Journeyman.) Then, when I got back, it was the three of us. This went on until another apprentice was hired. I’m now partnered with the Journeywoman and the new apprentice with my usual Journeyman. This has made for a big change in my day-to-day.

I went from working with a very experienced electrician to a very new Journeywoman. It’s been struggle after struggle and we’ve been pretty stressed. My coworkers assure me that everyone goes through that after licensing, and I probably will too.

The new apprentice has been doing well as far as I can tell. His schooling was done at a tech school in SD and he’s here to get hours in. I have no doubts he’ll excel in the industry.

Now for the fruit of this post: the robot install. Turns out there is another crew that does all the robot hookup, testing, and programming. Five of us were there to roll out wire for conveyer photoeyes and power. Those were landed in the PLC cabinet by our Master Electrician. We ran all the conduit for incoming power for the cabinets and motors. We also did the shit work in the freezer for IT and the other electrical team. On top of these things, we were being directed on locations of J-boxes by the head of the other electrical team.

It was a dirty trick to get info from someone who considers us a competitor. He was giving us wrong information from the get-go, then coming in and telling us that what we did was wrong, and we’d modify locations of control boxes and photoeyes only to find out from the programmers coming in at tail-end of the project that everything he told us was wrong and there were additional materials that came with the equipment to make our jobs much easier. We were working long hours from 6AM to 8:30PM or 11PM. Some members were out until 2AM. The team is fried and after being thrown under the bus several times about deadlines. Now the client has apologized after watching footage of what was all taking place and a talking to from our shop owner.

All in all, not a great update. I think I haven’t felt the need to update the blog because I haven’t had many positives to talk about. There are, however, a few.

It was my first time working with cable tray and I got to satisfy a little OCD in making the cables lay nice in order and landing the wire into the majority of the conveyer feeders and motors. This was a solo task of mine much of the project while The Journeyman kept his apprentice and my new partner with him to run conduit, pull wire into conduit, and assemble basket tray. This resulted in me knowing much of the details of the project and what wire needed to go where for what purpose. There was an incident on site which resulted in me directing the team for some hours. I’m proud of myself for being able to keep the pace going without too much stress. Everything and everyone was ok by the end of the day.

That’s all for today’s post. I may have more to write about in the days to come; assuming this overall negative period is over.

Best to you all,

-Vessa

P.S. Don’t be shy to comment on here. I don’t care if you work in the trades or not. Feel free to chime in a little. I could use the motivation. 🙂