Anthologies of Awesome

The soul traffic of the morning on the two lane industrial road was another of the transit system’s buses. When it neared one of the curving meanders of the road through what had at one time been a thriving industrial park, the bus stopped at a small metal booth. On the bench and milling around the covered bench was the dregs of the graveyard shift at one of the nondescript warehouse and manufacturing buildings strewn about the petroleum smelling corner of the county. Cigarettes were extinguished and a few tired and unenthusiastic dirty jokes were flung into the early morning air as the waiting men stood. The doors opened and they stepped back to let a sweating and panting man out of the hissing pneumatic doors. He walked swiftly onto the sidewalk and removed his headphones. The half circle of waiting commuters paid him a moment of notice then boarded the bus, a few laughs at his expense escaping before the doors hissed shut again.

John stood in the cool breeze and pulled in a full breath of the morning air. He smelled the aromas of oil and milled metal and exhaust from the surrounding breathing metallic life. He turned and walked with his folded seabag rolled under his left arm and the CD player and a plastic shopping bag with his lunch held in that hand. John walked along the curving road until he found the address given to him the day before. The building was a Quonset hut with its eastern side shining in the morning sun. John walked in the door and found himself in a large metal cavern full of large machinery and a smell of glue and sawdust. In the beck of the building Juan’s voice echoed out of an unseen office in deep conversation with a vendor. John walked through the immaculate shop with stacked layers of gaudy colored formica on pallets along its sides. Inboard of the giant overturned hull, larger neat stacks of particle board sat, and further inboard were the large otherworldly machines rising like pipe organs in a cathedral. Every machine was evenly spaced a yard from the rest and the pallets of material were spaced at regular intervals providing easy access.

The rectangle of yellow light ahead hinted at the door where Juan’s voice was wrapping up his conversation. John stood at the end of the long corridor of of tools and waited in sight of the door. Juan switched to Spanish and finished his conversation and hung up the phone. He turned and leaned into a computer screen smashing his ample belly up against the desk. He used manipulated the mouse as John walked up to the door and knocked.

“Hey John,” Juan glanced quickly and discreetly at a clock, “good to see you. Go over to the north wall where you came in and hit the lights while I finish up here.”

He had not commented on the full half hour John was early. John set on the main lights and the shop came alive with harsh white illumination. Juan was walking toward him with a sheaf of paper in his hand. He stopped halfway and gestured for John to join him. When he got there, Juan reached over and flipped a green switch on the sheet metal side of one of the bigger machines. A small screen at eye level clicked on and displayed a quick rundown of the software running the mill.

“Alright, this is a little different than what you might have done before, but we do a lot of old school routing and cutting too. This machine is called a CNC.”

Computer numerical control, John intoned as he watched the BIOS run and the screen change to a grid.

“Good, you already know something about it. I have this programmed off of my PC in the office over there, so all you need to worry about today is making sure you get the material in square. I’m gonna show you how to do that. Come over here and help me real quick.”

Juan walked over to a table that had a slab of particle board with a layer of orange formica held fast atop it with a complicated series of 2X4s and clamps. John and Juan removed the clamps and picked up the slab. They walked it over to the bed of the machine and laid it on the runners. Juan pulled out a rolled up pattern of tracing paper and layered it on top of the future counter top. He traced his half of the pattern with John holding the thin paper steady then handed the pencil to John and held the paper in place while John finished the contour.

“Ok, that tells us where we can’t have any clamps or screws or anything. Go in that tool box behind you and grab a couple C-clamps. Mount them here and here and take another pair and mount them here and here.”

Juan pointed to four points outside the pattern. After he was done, he went over to the screen. He touched the menu box on the screen and told John, “If you open the menu here, you’ll see a bunch of stuff pop up, what we want to do is is use the arrows to scroll down to ‘datum’ and push that. Ok, see how it goes back to the grid and the X starts flashing? Ok, now, if you have it clamped in, push the ‘cut’ button.”

Juan’s thick finger touched the box and the machine came alive. A spinning vertical tool pulled away from its cradle and ran in a straight line along the long axis of the bed. When it reached some computer determined point, it changed course at a right angle and routed away a thin section of the material. After it made its cut, the tool pulled away in right angles back to its starting point.

John watched the display of robotic prowess and when the tool returned and the chuck quit spinning, he looked up at Juan.

So, now we have a solid edge to get our square off of?

“Right, we take the pattern again, set it on top with its edge right on that new cut. There, see how it’s slightly off? That’s why we had to do that. There’s not a way to get that thing perfectly set in there without that. Now we loosen the clamps a little…take the whole piece and slide it up against the edge of the bed here.”

They moved it until the smooth edge butted up against a stainless steel machine edge with holes drilled into it. Screws were put in place along the smooth face, pulling the piece in and holding it tight. The clamps were replaced and Juan returned to the screen.

“Alright, now we hit ‘menu’ again. Hit ‘job’ and select the file. I always make sure I only have one job loaded on here at a time, so just select the one that’s on there. Ok, now watch.”

The grid popped back onto the screen with a pixelated drawing of the pattern imposed on it. Juan reached over an hit the ‘cut’ box on the screen. The tool popped out of its cradle and started spinning. The router mill ran up to the piece and began cutting an exact edge loosely following their pencil marks from earlier. It went up around the curved counter and came back to Juan, dust falling to the bed beneath. The shaved off material fell away and Juan reached in to remove it. The tool finished the cut and moved away, only to return along its path in reverse and slower. After it had mirrored its earlier run, it returned to its origin and stopped spinning.

Juan blew off the dust with an air hose and the particles were sucked into a waiting vacuum. “Well, that’s how we do that. What I’ll have you do for now is do three more just like that and then stack them over there…” he pointed, “and then come get me and we’ll load another job.”

Not real complicated stuff, here.

“Nope. You’d be surprised, though, some people are easily confused. I have the plans over on that table and you’ll find the measuring tools in the box. Make sure it’s working within a thirty-second of an inch. If any of the cuts veer out of that, let me know and we’ll fix it. This job is for tomorrow morning and then you’ll get to do more carpentering kind of stuff than we’re doing today. Alright, I’ll leave you two love birds alone.”

Juan patted the machine and walked back toward his office as John reached down to loosen the clamps.