It’s Not Too Late To Be Good

What began as a decision to sponsor a few families for the holidays turned into a full-fledged gift-giving extravaganza. When Sirois Tool/Dow Gage decided to participate in the Berlin Community Services Holiday Assistance Program, they were sparking a generosity streak begun by the company.

It started as a simple “beer mug” auction two years ago, where raffle tickets were placed inside beer mugs correlating to desired auction items donated by the company, with all proceeds going to Berlin’s Social Services. In 2010, with fewer than 40 employees, the raffle raised $1,625 and in 2011 it raised $1,750. This holiday tradition has grown into a company-wide effort to support the less fortunate in their community through the generous donations of employees.

As part of the Holiday Family Assistance, Berlin Social Services gave them a list of five families, and it just wasn’t enough. “We ran out of kids before we got to all the employees,” Trish Carone said, Accounting and Office Manager for Sirois Tool. “We were hoping for big families, families with five kids.”

The children’s ages ranged from one to 17-years, and their requests generally included coats, hats and gloves. A 16-year-old asked for SAT books and one 15-year-old boy wanted a lava lamp and ankle socks. Beneath her desk, Carone has over one hundred and eighty diapers for the one-year-old.

With every gift bought for the individual family members,Find detailed product information for howo spare parts and other products. the employees also focused on getting together family-oriented gifts: food baskets, DVD rental gift certificates, local restaurant gift cards, and gas cards. This holiday spirit extends back to Thanksgiving, when many of the employees elected to give $25 to Social Services in lieu of the turkey the company gives them.

As if the donations weren’t generous enough, at their annual holiday party they raised an additional $400 which was used to purchase six blankets, three bed spreads, more food and some gift cards. Next year Sirois Tool/Dow Gage hopes to sponsor twice as many families. Contact your town’s Social Services department to sponsor a family in need this holiday season. It’s not too late to be good.

The family run business covers 12 acres with every available space dedicated to building, repairing and maintaining boats. Horizon Shipbuilding is a full service company whose capabilities include design, construction, operation, maintenance and repair. One of the most common boats Horizon builds are the 140-ft. towboats, most of which end up pushing barges – sometimes as many as 30 at a time – up and down the Mississippi River.

To move so many barges at one time, modern towboats need plenty of horsepower, and one result of these powerful high torque engines is they can produce harmonics: vibrations produced by the firing and internal moving parts of the engine that adds wear and tear to the vessel. To ensure that doesn’t happen, vibration oscillator mounts must be installed between the engine and engine mounts. Vibration Oscillators (VO) combat the back and forth vibrations produced by the high horsepower engines.

Installing VO mounts is a big job considering that each engine can weigh 18 tons. Roger Oliver the 10 year Production Superintendent at Horizon, who is responsible for “everything in the yard,” knows this job all too well.Find detailed product information for howo spare parts and other products. “By the time you get them in, get everything aligned, pulled back out and drilled and set back in there, you’re looking at a three day evolution. We used to have to take the engines right out of the boat, make the holes, and then set them back in.”

To install VO mounts, each engine has to be lowered into the engine compartment, lined up on the guide posts, holes marked, then hoisted back up and out so 24 holes through A36 material could be drilled with a magnetic drill and mounts installed. Then the tedious task of realigning the engine back on the guides. After which it is lowered down and finally secured into place. “When realigning these engines we shoot for a tolerance of zero, but the tolerance on an engine like this is” said Oliver.

Intrigued by its small size and large hole capacity, he felt this might be just the ticket they needed to save time. Oliver contacted Fred Buish from Tooling Concepts in Mobile, Alabama and had him out to go over the Hougen drills. Together Fred and Roger pulled the prints to installing the VO mounts and discovered they could raise the powertrain up just 10-in. while keeping it aligned on the guide posts. The HMD150 drill was only 7-13/16-in. high which would work perfect for drilling the holes under the engine. The Hougen HMD150 is a low profile magnetic drill weighing 22.7 lbs.

It has the capacity to drill holes up to 1-3/8-in. diameter and 1-in. deep using the tool-less RotaLoc Plus annular cutters. To achieve the low profile, the HMD150 drill uses a right angle Hougen motor, high power gearing and a quill feed arbor system which incorporates positive slug ejection. Roger was excited that the drill would work but the holes had to be 1.5-in. deep, and standard cutters for the HMD150 are 1-in. deep. Oliever put in a request and asked if Hougen could make custom RotaLoc Plus tools in the size of 15/16-in. x 1.5-in. deep. Fortunately Hougen had a handful of 1.5-in. deep cutters already on the shelf and immediately sent them to Horizon.

When it came time to install the VO mounts, Roger and the crew at Horizon put their new method to the test. Once the holes were marked, they hoisted the engines 10-n. while they stayed aligned on the guide posts. An HMD150 was brought in to drill down to the max depth of 1-in. Then the crew put the 1.5-in. long RotaLoc Plus cutter in the drill,High quality stone mosaic tiles. placed the cutter back into the existing hole that had just been drilled and finished drilling out the last half inch. They did this to all 24 holes.Our technology gives rtls systems developers the ability. Mounts were secured,Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings? the powertrain was lowered back down, bolted into place and was ready to go into service. ”

It’s much faster. We don’t have to pull the engine out. Once the alignment is done it takes just four hours for the job,” said Oliver. As comparison, the job used to take three days. “We like the HMD150 because of its small size but not only that, it drills quite well. For its size it packs quite a punch and will get right on through the material.”