My summer job while I'm in college is working at a local fitness center as a locker room attendant. AKA, I collect, wash, dry, fold, and restock the towels as well as all the amenities our locker rooms offer. Our fitness center was designed to sustain an average of 1,500 - 2,000 active members however we tend to hover between 5,000 and 7,000 members! One of the perks of our fitness center is unlimited full size bath towels. In order to wash all these towels, the center bought two 75lb capacity Unimac soft mount washers and two 120lb capacity Unimac dryers. For the first 2 years, these machines worked just fine, but then we surpassed 2,000 active members and management thought nothing of it, merely excited about the extra cash these members would bring in. They did not anticipate huge problems in the laundry room to develop! My supervisor's plan to deal with the extra towels was to stuff the washers until we couldn't stuff anymore in. This "worked" for a little while. Then our numbers began to climb again and this no longer worked. Management was asked what we should do about it, their answer was just to stuff more into the washers. So we did. For 2 years, we ran the washing by stuffing them to the max, then turning them on, letting the load get saturated and weighed down, then stopping the machine and stuffing more in. This worked in the summer time (slow season) but in the winter we were stopping the machine 3-4 times and re-stuffing to try and keep up with the towel demand. Obviously, by this point, the towels coming out were gross, but no one cared, not even the members complained about the severe staining the towels had. The dryers reached 180F and the towels were deemed sanitized after that. After dealing with a machine breaking down every other week (the machines are under full warranty until the end of August) washer number 1 finally had a big failure. It was on main bearing number 2 which was already failing after less than a year. The machine stopped spinning at all and when the repair guys came out to fix it, they told us that the bearing support structure had cracked. So, they fixed it. They welded it back together, slapped bearing number 3 in and it worked again... For a year. On August 1, 2012, I was working the noon to 4:30pm shift and the washer had begun accelerating for the final spin. Mind you, these are soft mount washers, they spin at 1,000 RPM which is impressive for a 75lb capacity washer. But then it started to make an odd chattering noise as it accelerated, it had reached 500 RPM now and it was apparent that something was wrong. The chattering got louder until it had reached 900 RPM and then the machine made the most horrible metal on metal scraping sound I have ever heard and I slammed the E-stop and ran out of the room. The entire fitness center heard the noise that washer made! After collecting myself and getting over the hyperventilation, I started screaming at my boss. I had been telling her for years that something different had to be done, that we couldn't just keep overloading the washers and expect them not to break.
The repair guys came out again, and sure enough, their weld had broken the bearing support had cracked all the way through and the bearing was completely trashed. They decided to replace the bearing support and the bearing rather than welding it back together again and then ran across another problem that they were not prepared for. The inner drum had cracked. When the weld in the bearing support failed, the drum had come into contact with the outer drum at 900 RPM (the metal on metal sound everyone heard) and caused it to fail as well. They had to replace the bearing, the bearing support, and the inner drum. A few months before that, the other washer got a new bearing and a new motor.
The lesson learned here according to management was: stuff the shit out of them now that they are fixed and we'll buy rigid mount washers next.
**sigh** Oh well, I've got one more year at school and then hopefully I'll be done there for good!
Here are some pics of the machine that failed:
The repair guys came out again, and sure enough, their weld had broken the bearing support had cracked all the way through and the bearing was completely trashed. They decided to replace the bearing support and the bearing rather than welding it back together again and then ran across another problem that they were not prepared for. The inner drum had cracked. When the weld in the bearing support failed, the drum had come into contact with the outer drum at 900 RPM (the metal on metal sound everyone heard) and caused it to fail as well. They had to replace the bearing, the bearing support, and the inner drum. A few months before that, the other washer got a new bearing and a new motor.
The lesson learned here according to management was: stuff the shit out of them now that they are fixed and we'll buy rigid mount washers next.
**sigh** Oh well, I've got one more year at school and then hopefully I'll be done there for good!
Here are some pics of the machine that failed:
