Is shim stock made of gold ?

[bricol]

We use plastic shim now - less risk of damage to tender modern fitter fingers in trying too peel brass shim stock apart . .

 

[bricol]

Are they still steel, nearly everything is alu these days.
I have heard about this business, because my cousin had a career working for the Metal Box Company, and his (very well paid) job was to work out new ways of making beer and baked bean tins out of ever-thinner metal!
Also to use even thinner layers of laquer on the insides. Crazy world we live in..

Still happening - makes sense as when you make millions of cans, or ends, a day, and you own many plants around the world - those fractions of a pence and cent add up to many many pennies.

Problem is converting machines that just about ran okay on thicker gauge now cause many more wrecks on the thinner gauge and need comprehensive refurbing to come back to spec - which plants don't want to do. And the faster you try to go, the better and faster you create wrecks.

Lacquer seems to have gone the other way - plants much rather over-apply than under - if you get problems and customers reject production, it costs more than a few litres of lacquer. A design of mine won a Queens Award this year for applying the stuff

I assume he was Wantage based?

 

[jerrytug]

Yes Wantage rings a bell but he used to go round various factories, fiddling with their machines.

 

[Mick Annick]

Yes Wantage rings a bell but he used to go round various factories, fiddling with their machines.

Largest employer in town when I lived there, now called Crown Cork & Seal. I did smile when we drove through a large town not far from here recently - they too have a Crown Cork & Seal factory

 

[MattF]

I have two round tins of the stuff, steel & brass, all diffeent thicknesses. Found them in a skip at the college where i used to work!

How to make yourself popular, you jammy git.

 

[brightspark]

me bruv has tins of the stuff so if I need any I can scrounge it

 

[mechman]

I think my shed is made of shimming, done a small repair a while ago and decided to mic the thickness. 12 thou including the paint.

 

[bricol]

Yes Wantage rings a bell but he used to go round various factories, fiddling with their machines.

Every Tom, Dick and Shirley in every plant in the world fiddles with the machines as each one of them has their own theory - night shift changing settings that worked all day . . . day shift changing night settings trying to get back to something that works . . .

The knowledgeable ones get paid more to go around the place and reset everything back every once in a while . . .unless the plant calls "warranty" . . .

Amazing what effects what though - an issue in a machine right at the beginning of the line affects something in one stage of a machine a long way down the production . . .

 

[bricol]

Largest employer in town when I lived there, now called Crown Cork & Seal. I did smile when we drove through a large town not far from here recently - they too have a Crown Cork & Seal factory

Crown Holdings now - they've closed plants, but still got a fair old few around the world.

 

[bourbon]

My brother was European Logistics Manager for them, based in Brussels, Didn't bother to learn any European languages. He had a sign above his desk. ' I SAY, YOU DO.' his expenses each month were twice my wages.

 

[WorkshopChris]

T

Amazing what effects what though - an issue in a machine right at the beginning of the line affects something in one stage of a machine a long way down the production . . .

This was the story of my life at one point when a machine operator thinks they can make there own improvements or alterations, with absolutely no idea how they affect the end product or a process along the line and that there one small change took a day to track down and cost several thousands of pounds in reject.