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TIL that tapping the mast section with a wrench before every pick tells you more than any load chart app
I was fighting a boom that felt spongy on a 60 ton at a job in Fresno and couldn't find the play with a flashlight or a gauge. An old operator named Ray walked up, gave the second mast section three light taps with a 1 inch wrench, and said 'hear how that one rings flat? pin boss is wore.' He was right, the pin boss was worn oval and we caught it before anything let go. No app on my phone would have told me that, and I had been trusting the app way too much. I have done the tap test on every machine since and it has saved me twice. Anybody else got a trick that old timers use that beats the load chart readout?
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ivan87313d ago
hear how that one rings flat" sounds good in a story but that's not a real test, that's a guy who already knew where to look because he'd been around that machine for years. Tap a mast on a cold morning versus a hot afternoon and it rings different just from grease temps and how the pins are sitting, so you'd be chasing ghosts half the time. The app and the chart exist because your ear can't tell you pin boss wear down to a thousandth, and telling new guys to trust a wrench tap over the numbers is how somebody drops a boom.
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