A workshop experience

TA Lab ki kahaaniyaan Part I


I'm back home (some would call that a hostel room; 153/3, IIT Kanpur, to be precise) after another tiring afternoon at the MME lab. Well, of course, enough rest has gone in between to give me the energy to write this, but essentially I'm still not in full form.

Well, this section of the TA201 course (in case you're wondering, that's Technical Arts) is essentially tiring. In the ME Lab at least, the most tiring thing you do is just stand around pulling levers and turning wheels for three hours. By contrast, in MME lab, there are far fewer machines. Here, work rules.

Today, we were supposed to do forging (for the uninitiated, thats when you beat the hell out of a really hot piece of metal to get it into a shape you like). Well, we were paired off, and then work began. It was fun all right, but Boy, Oh Boy!, was it tiring, or what? We were supposed to make a chisel. Guess we all did sort of get it right! But I doubt that chisel would ever cut anything!

One guy was supposed to hold the metal with tongs, while the other did the hammering. I did the hammering most of the time, but I found that neither job was easy. The one holding the metal would get a jolt each time the metal made contact. A really bone-wracking, nerve- jangling jolt. And as for the hammering, well, suffice it to say that I fear there would be a few (ahem) not so (physically) well-endowed fellows who probably won't be able to even lift the ten-pound weight and swing it properly. Of course, the hammer rebounding was an ever-present danger. It nearly banged my head (and my partner's too) quite a few times....

Well, so we shaped it, cut off the edge to make it a straight edge, and then used the grinding wheel to sharpen the tip. Oh well, my improper lunch (if you are a college student, and probably even otherwise, you know what mess food is like) only complicated matters.

Well, so whats over is over. I now look forward with dread to the day it will be our lab turn to do arc welding. May the force be with me then.... Right now, I am just looking forward to a good night's sleep.