-=> TOM WALKER wrote to WAYNE CHIRNSIDE <=-

 -> It's certainly not a universal lubricant or water displacement
 -> product for all applications but it does have it's niche
 -> uses.

 TW>  But at best it is just a Crutch for Lubricating purposes. I am sure
 TW> there was some lubricant out there that would have done a better job
 TW> for the presses. And it would have been somewhat longer lasting.
 TW>  OF course I am sure it would NOT have been Cheaper.

Well I went for WD-40 as it displaces water and the process
was water based.

Anyway even if it were not the very best it cut down on
maintanance costs 20 fold as well as vastly reducing downtime.

I ran those presses for 5 years 6 days a week 11 hours
a day putting out an average of 235,000 feet of material a
day.

One day for kicks I wanted to see how much material I
could put out by bypassing certain maintanance procedures
and put out 327,000 feet but because that included not lubricating the
bearings the printers had slowed 20 - 25 FPM the following
day when I went back to routine.

Pretty obvious the WD-40 was cutting friction as well as
displacing water.

Another procedural and technical alteration I insisted upon
was replacing the copper wipers at the edge of the inking cylinders
with polypropelene plastic wipers.

Machine shop insisted too costly but I also insisted.
The copper wipers had limited speed to just over half of
what the presses were capable of before slinging ink all
over the plates, machine, printed stock, me, ect.

Once I got some polypropelene into the machine shop they failed miserably
the way they had cut them.
So I took them off the machine, walked over to the machine shop,
went over to the bandsaw and cut them as I saw fit.
Slapped them back on and away I went at full throttle
without problem near doubling production.

Copper wipers worked badly and required at least one replacement
a day while the polypropelene wipers lasted a month or more
and never required adjustment.

The machine shop saw the light and cut them to my specification there-
after and sent them off to all the plants that way.
I kept a phillips  screwdriver on hand and a supply of wipers
and changed them on the locking collars as needed myself in
about a minute taking the machine shop entirely out of the loop.

Boy I made  that company a LOT of money and boy did they resist me
tooth and nail all the way... until one day a Walmart
purchasing agent appeared.

I produced a specialized custom plate of my own design on a
half hours notice and production ran the final product
which was accepted in less than an hour.
30 percent jump in sales on that one account!!!

Good job, good pay, lousy working environment with regards
to the shift supervisor.

I've horror stories galore about major malfunctions
that company perpetrated ;-)
 
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