I thought I would post why, IMO, Gary S. is the "ultimate electrician".
Some 7 or 8 years ago, I worked for a small commercial EC here in Houston. When I say small, I mean we had 4 electricians, and I was one of the 2 apprentices that we had.
Gary S. was one of the electricians. We did have an idustrial account with a salt mine not far outside of Houston. Gary S. spent most of his time at the salt mine. This particular mine was an "injection" mine, which means that instead of digging the salt out of the ground, they injected water onto the salt dome, pulled the "salt water" out, and evaporated the H2O off to come up with salt.
We've all seen the cardboard cans of salt that the store sells. This mine had a "can line" that had caught fire, and burned to the ground. Gary S. became heavily involved in the rebuild of the can line.
He, along with a mechanical engineer, designed the entire line. I don't know where they started in the design process, but some of the equipment that was installed had never been built before.
They determined how much load the can line would carry, sized all the feeders, switchgear, branch circuits, designed all the conveyors with freq drives, and determined what kind of PLC's would be needed to run the entire line. When the company wouldn't go out and spend money for a DC power supply needed for part of the controls, Gary S. got them to buy the components, and he built the power supply from scratch. He took part in programing the PLC's.
Then, we wired it all, and made it run. Much of the hardware, and brackets we fabricated out of stainless steel.
So, now, basically they feed cardboard into one end of this production line. The cardboard is rolled into tubes, and cut. The cut tubes are stood up, and a bottom is glued on. Then it is filled with salt. A top is put on, and it is labeled. It is then put into boxes of 24, and paletized.
I remember not long after we finished the can line, I met him out at a customer's house where we spent the day doing a service change.
Gary S. can do it "all". He never told me how involved he was in the design of that production line. I was told by someone else.
I could tell you another story about 64 parallel RMC's that he, and another guy ran. Concentric bends....the works....but that, as they say, "Is another story."
Regards,
Doc
