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After reading the thread about everyone getting hurt by their TIG torch from all the silly mistakes that we make, I was thinking that there have been a lot of things I've done that I've learned never to do again or to watch out for. People learn from their mistakes, but even better, other people could learn from them too. I think one of the dumbest, but innocent, (and kind of funny) mistakes I've made was working a shutdown in a coal fired power plant which had air line connections on just about every level. We probably had about 6-7 welders working in the superheat section so it was a mess with leads and air hoses, and I needed to reconnect an air hose I was using the day before for my die grinder. So I followed the line and saw where it was disconnected out on the platform where someone took the Y off the connection I was using, but there was another connection right by it. I didn't happen to notice the color, but the fitting was the same. So I connected it and opened the valve and went back in the boiler to get to work. People had mentioned the air lines having a lot of moisture, and when I tried to use my die grinder, it started spurting out water. I was like "there IS a lot of water in the lines!" Then my buddy yells "You idiot! You connected it to the water line!" Sure enough, it was the water line and I completely screwed the die grinder, even after pumping it full of tool oil. Left a muddy mess in there too with all the fly ash and some not-so-happy coworkers.
Reply:Don't forget to reconnect the ground clamp when switching from stick back to tig. It's um, like, really hard to get a clean arc with the clamp just sitting on the floor by the leg of your table. |
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