Work

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I got here on a thursday and thursday is the only day the factory is closed. They keep it open 6 days a week without taking saturday or sunday off. They say most business' here have sunday off but the whole automotive has thursday off instead. It's a weird tradition that has been going on for 30 something years but oddly enough they are changing it to sunday while im here.

The main factory they own makes anti-roll bars (sway bars) for almost 8 different companies. All unfamiliar to me besides Fiat.

I came at a strange time because they are moving into a larger facility. The moving is almost completely done except for the furnaces, which i will come back to later.

So far I have only been observing everything that is going on. On my first day I went to the older smaller part of the factory where they do the heat treatment. It starts with these straight solid bars that go into a huge furnace that is at 1800 degrees F. They produce 8 different types of bars at once so they go in, in a repeating pattern. As they come out, 1 of 8 men grab the red hot bar with big plier things and carry to their own specific station. They put the bar in a hydraulic die that bends it into the specific shape that the customer asked for. Then the whole die and still red hot bar get lowered into a cooled and circulated oil bath. The point of this is too increase the hardness of the steel dramitically. It increases about 50 points on the rockwell scale ( if any engineers are reading). The problem now is that the bars are extremely hard but as hardness goes up, ductility goes down. The bars need to be ductile because sway bars work by resisting axial torque. To improve ductility, they go through another oven thats at about 1200 degrees for four hours while the first oven was only twenty minutes. This brings the hardness down to a total of around 48.



I have to go to the factory now. Will add the rest of the process later.

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Comments

[nick]

so you got a bit of a tour it sounds like, but do you know what you're going to do all day every day is there like a plan? just go through each part of the process? are you talking to the lead engineers or who exactly? have you gone out at night? are you taking pictures?

[tomharter]

Not quite a plan yet. I am speaking to the engineers, there 4 of them i think. Ill explain more about what the engineers do here in my next post. I went out for the first time last night. We went to a lounge/restaurant for drinks then this outdoor club thing after. It was a really cool structure, it's built into a hill and you go in on top and after you go in, you walk downstairs and your basically outside with a huge slanted roof facing down the hill. Extremely fancy lights, tree's, water falls, and water pond type things going in between tables. There was a dj with lights and all that. Behind the stage was a railing and since it was on a hill, over the railing it looked over a huge valley of trees. Wasn't too many people since it was a sunday night so we just chilled and drank. For how sick the place was it was only about 10 dollars to get in and cheap drinks.

[Mom]

Interesting
I think it is so interesting. Can't wait to hear more. What are the family members like? Does Sharon's sister (Babu) and brother (Ravi) live in the same condo building? What are there children like? What do they do with there day? How do you get to the factory each day? Is it walking distance? Do some people stay at the factory? Sleep there?

[tomharter]

I will make a post soon explaining the living conditions and everyone I live with.

[Johnny]

hey
Mom said you moved to stay with the other part of their family? Shawn I think? whats that like are you working full days at the factory? What do you do with your spare time? Hows the weather? Food? Is everyone very friendly do you feel at home? Hows the jet lag treating you? Is the city generally very westernized and industrial? Does it have very wealthy areas to it as well? What stands out to the most compared to the US in your first week there?