Paper machine supervisor....Paper mac-----crap

[Pimento]

Well, first off, this isnt really MIM. I love my supervisor, he makes sure were taken care of, he lets us bend the rules, and in turn we are the most productive crew on the paper machine.

The other night, we had to stay on brown paper, the chemical plant next to us had an explosion so we couldnt switch over to white, on top of that problem, due to the spring run off, our filters were plugging up with mud and we were losing water.

The back end kept trying to reach the supervisor to see if he could get a few trades dudes on the water issue, as my understanding is that they can bypass to another filter system. Without water we cannot make paper.

Heres the radio conversation as we heard it in the break room:

BE (back end)

BE: Paper machine supervisor

(2 minutes)

BE: Paper machine supervisor, were losing water

(2 minutes)

BE: PAPER MACHINE SUPERVISOR! Were losing water, we might need to cut the sheet!

(1 minute)

BE: PAPER MACHINE SUPERVISOR (background: "F--- it im cutting it")

*cue siren for sheet break and machine in the ditch* lol

Supervisor bought us pizza though

[teh_blumchenkinder]

Technical Question: why is breaking a sheet bad? Too small a roll? Yeah, I imagine sheet can break for other reasons, like a tear/weakness...
EDIT: wait! Where was the supervisor?

[Pimento]

Imagine a sheet of paper 20 feet wide, that travels 200 feet across several different rolls/felts .etc

When a sheet breaks, we have to turn the machine off, pull out all the bunched up paper, wash up any wayward stock on the wet end, thread a new tail through and then widen the sheet again to proper size. Rarely do we stay perfectly on grade after a sheet breaks as well.
plus the roll it breaks on is most likely too small, and therefore a culled reel, which is $22,000 in paper they will cut up and turn back into pulp lol.


were not sure where he was, in the basement dealing with something though, hes not a slacker hehe

[teh_blumchenkinder]

aahh, I get it. For some reason I was picturing it just coming off and not going through several constriction points. 22k? that's a fair chunk of change. Three of those is a good job's annual earnings! What kind of paper(s) do you produce? News type?

[Gerrinson]

Oy, I remember my paper mill days. It's a decent enough job if you can deal with swing shift. As for me, do not want.

[Pimento]

We dont have swing shift, its a consistant type shift, for example.

I have friday/sat/sun off this week, next week ill be nights on mon/tues and days on fri/sat/sun.

Really i work less than half the year and still pull in very good money lol. We have 4 crews so things run 24/7 lol.

For this company 22k isnt that much. They just put 3 million into our wrap line....to make it "more automated" in reality they made it slower, and more manual lol. They are getting rid of a man on every crew as well, hooray.

I forsee shutting the machine down 1-3 times a shift as we get backed up because we cant keep up on the new wrap line with the extra man, let alone without him hahahaha.