Flash wrote:


(snip)

I personally favored the "witchcraft" explanation however, because if a big
gob of slag blew out of the burn-table and hit the paper in just the right
place, even uttering harsh imprecations and vile epithets wold not save the
job. This usually happened after the job was 65% cut, and generally when
cutting 8-up in 8" steel. (No, it was just about impossible to save it and
restart).

I spent two nights shoveling out the table while the factory-folk installed
a tape head and controlller on it and two weeks while they debugged it, and
then went on to significant wealth at piece-rate.

Flash



I was talking to a torch operator (late 70s) when his machine took off
after a fly walking across the template!!!! Moved about a half an inch
before the fly flew away then the unit just moved in a small circle
looking for the line. Oscar saw this happening and shut the torches down
before too much bad happened.

Darn funny though, he said it happened often. The drafting machine used
for the templates was 30' long and 8' tall hung along the wall in IE.

Matt