1 Day at a Tyme

Sunday, June 8, 2014

Self Assessment (Part 2)

Tina and I are here in San Diego, actually we are in El Cajon, CA. I'm here to take a tig weld assessment test and have a face to face interview with GKN Aerospace. I was contacted by a hiring agency for a e beam welder position. I mentioned all of this in my previous post titled "Self Assessment".
I am very happy that Tina is accompanying me on this venture. She is always very supportive of me and usually up for whatever I suggest. This would have been a very boring trip without her there.
We left Copa (Maricopa, AZ) Thursday evening. The plan was to drive to Yuma, stay the night at the home of Tina's daughter Angela, then head on to El Cajon Friday Morning. Arriving in time to have lunch, check in at the hotel and be on time for my face to face with GKN.
It all went as planned. We were able to visit with Tina's daughter and grandchildren in Yuma and get a good nights sleep before heading onto California.
A straight through drive to San Diego from the Phoenix
area takes right around 5 hours. Yuma is exactly 1/2 way between the two cities. Waking up fresh in Yuma with just a little more than 2 hours of road ahead of us seemed the best option.
I love driving the open road, only recently I'm having issues with frequent stops to use the men's room. This trip was no different and the stops ate up all the time we planned to have once arriving and before my appointment. With a little luck we were able to check in early and have a lite lunch at Chillies in Santee, Calif, a small industrial city adjacent to El Cajon.
I dropped Tina at the hotel, set her up with a movie on the tablet pc, slipped on my steel toe shoes, grabbed my welders hood and headed out. It's a good thing I took the time to find a hotel only 3 miles from GKN as I only had 5 minutes to get there. So much for relaxing at the hotel and going over my welding notes.
Earlier in the week on Wednesday and Thursday I was stressing out because I couldn't find my welders hood. I hadn't seen, used, our needed it in three years. It turned up during a frantic search of my rental storage space along with a few binders and notebooks with notes, weld specs and machine settings that came in handy. Although I had only time to quickly scan trough them.
I arrive at GKN, signed in at the guard shack and was soon escorted through the building and on to the Weld Shop. The shop is spacious and the parts welded here are huge. They are fan blade containment housings. Each is about 8' in diameter. They go around the area of the large turbine engines where the blades are spinning, and is there to prevent blades that have somehow been dislodged from interring into the cabin.
I am introduced to the welders and set up at a weld bench. I am being instructed on what is required of me by a weld engineer who's name has completely slipped my memory. I do however recall that he was upset with whomever set up this weld shakedown test at one o'clock in the afternoon. Said he had been there since 5am and the test would run about six hours. I explained to him that I believe it was done as a courtesy to me, as they knew I would be coming in after a five hour drive from Phoenix. I don't think he gave a shit cause he kept saying "I'm gonna talk to someone about this".
My instructions were to set up the machine and weld six plates. two each Inconell 718, aluminum and titanium. The aluminum and titanium plates were to be but joints with full weld penetration. The inco was to be welded as a T joint with no weld penetration. Each weld must be welded in a 3G position. What is 3G you ask? 3G is where the plates are standing on end and welded from the bottom up. Three very simple joints welded in very difficult positions, especially for me who hasn't done this in years.
I struggled at first, but mainly due to my increasingly poor vision issues. I started with the inco 718 as it is the metal i'm most familiar with. The weld engineer milled around a bit but eventually left for a brief while to have dinner at home. His absence gave me a chance to relax and even cheat a bit with the 3G position requirement. The other welders there were call away for a meeting which left me completely alone. By the time everyone returned I was finishing up the last test plates. I had saved the aluminum plates for last as I had never welded aluminum before, at least not in production let alone a testing environment. It turns out that although I did a decent job on each of the three metals, I was most pleased with the results on the aluminum. I selected my best samples one from each group and submitted them to the weld engineer. I was shocked that he was so impressed with my work. I felt it was sub-par at best.
I reiterated that I had not welded on the bench in years and the weld engineer reassured me that this was not really a test but rather to see if I understand the welding process at all as I have stated on my resume. He assured me that my submitted samples were more than satisfactory.
Five and one half hours later I am done here and escorted out of the facility.
Well I did it. I have proven to myself that I am still viable as a Aerospace quality TIG Welder.

Saturday, May 24, 2014

Self Assessment

I'm in the midst of a most interesting Memorial Day Holiday weekend . It started with my resume on the internet. It's been floating around in cyberspace since my layout from Honeywell Aerospace in 2010.
I received a call from a recruiter a week or so ago asking if I'm still actively seeking employment. I explain to him that I'm currently working but that I am always seeking an opportunity to better my position in life. He seems genuinely impressed by my answer. He goes on to inform me of an e-beam welder (electron beam) position that's open in So-Ca, El Cajon, California to be exact. El Cajon is a small ageing city in the hills just east of San Diego. It's just shy of five hours from my current home in Maricopa, AZ, two hours from Yuma and ten minutes from the beaches of San Diego. Oh yeah, and has absolutely perfect weather.
The recruiter is seeking a candidate for GKN Aerospace, a manufacturer of turbine engine components for both commercial and military aircraft.
This recruiter starts going over items listed as competencies in my resume and asking for clarifications of each. He seems satisfied that I do indeed have the skills necessary to forward my resume on to GKN.
Fast forward to this Memorial Day weekend. GKN Aerospace wants to see me face to face and have me demonstrate my tig (tungsten inert gas) welding abilities.
What? I haven't welded on the bench in years. I'm pretty sure I still can, but to demonstrate in a certification test type environment with no practice, that's a scary thought.
Now I'm starting to think about those competencies I claim to have. Am I really competent in these skills or are they just a list of jobs I once did years ago?... Well it's time to find the answer to that question.

Sunday, May 4, 2014

A Different Yuma Experience

Day/weekend trips to Yuma are a bit different these days, but in some ways still the same. The last two trips to Yuma were mainly to support Angela (Tina's eldest daughter) during her initial divorce hearings. We do manage to make each trip worthwhile, by doing something interesting, like a day trip to Algodones, Mexico or trying some of the unique Mexican eateries in the area.
When I say some things are still the same, I'm referring to the fact that Isaac, Angela's husband is not is not present. His lack of presence is not due the pending divorce, but, more the reason for it.
This blog entry is not about their divorce, I just wanted to mention it to explain the title.
As always I really enjoy traveling to Yuma. I don't know why cause there's not much to do here. I guess I just like to go anywhere anytime, and I love to drive the highway.