Source: http://ift.tt/vggwU1 --- Monday, February 27, 2017
Brian Gossett worked the late shift, running an H-28 job: Football-size vases, about the most difficult ware he made. A 2,400-degree lava-like ribbon of glass flowed out of Tank 3, a refractory furnace, and down a steel sluice to a pair of opposing automated blades shaped like prone V’s. The two V’s sliced together to pinch off a gob of glass from the ribbon. The gob dropped into a mold. Brian wore heat-resistant overalls, steel-toed boots, safety glasses over his own retro horn-rims, earplugs, and ear cups over the earplugs. Even with the hearing protection, his head filled with the hiss of air compressors and the rhythmic clanging rotation of the H-28 as it presented one mold after another to the gob feeder. Ka-chunk plop, ka-chunk plop, ka-chunk plop, each mold closed. A plunger forced the gob against the sides. Air blew into the mold so the glass was both pressed and blown. The combination made it look more polished than, say, a pressed-glass baking dish. Then the molds opened, each in its turn, to regurgitate the still-glowing ware onto a steel conveyor line. Brian walked along a narrow platform that ringed the machine at about a foot off the concrete floor. Operators like Brian prepared new molds, reached into the moving merry-go-round, grabbed a mold from its spindle, and replaced it with the fresh one. They tried to do all this quickly, without losing a finger or a hand or burning an arm. The glass in a mold was about 1,6 ...
from Football http://ift.tt/2mozdRG
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