Most of us probably have worked with a guy we’ll call the Old Hand. He’ll often say that he’s been doing the job longer than you’ve been alive, and he’s forgotten more about valves and fittings than you’ve ever learned. The trouble is, he may be right about the forgetting part.
Sure, there’s no substitute for years of experience. We rely on Old Hands to spot problems before they become obvious to the rest of us, and to recall various tips and tweaks that can only be learned by doing the job over and over.
Where the Old Hand can get into trouble, however, is in gradually drifting away from the right way to do simple jobs. Take the task of attaching a fitting to a piece of tubing. Swagelok makes it easy. But there’s still a right way and a wrong way to install a Swagelok® tube fitting. The right way is to firmly seat the tube in the bottom of the fitting, mark the nut at the six o'clock position, and then give the nut one and a quarter turns (3/4 turn for 1/16"-3/16"). Anyone can tell at a glance if the mark on the nut has ended up in the right place. Try to do it by feel or some other way, and you’ll get leaks or other problems. In fact, the No. 1 cause of leaks in our surveys is under-tightening, and installer error is the primary cause of under-tightened fittings.
How do we know the Old Hand isn’t always sticking with best practices? We’ve had him in our training classes. Here’s how it usually plays out: The boss sends a group of Old Hands to us for a refresher class. We can tell they don’t think they need more than five minutes of reminders on how to do the job right.
The first thing we do is pass out some tubing and fittings and have them install them any way they like. Then we check the results. Usually we discover that 25 percent to 75 percent of them have done it wrong.
“Some of them are really under-tightened,” says Mike Valentine, our training manager. “If you pressurized them, there is a good chance they would leak.”
Regardless of why it’s done poorly, once the Old Hands see the results of their work, they quickly realize they need to pay attention.
“All of a sudden you see heads nodding and eyes blinking,” Valentine says. “And if there is a supervisor in the group, he is usually frantically writing notes at that point. I had 16 people in one class at an integrator – guys who use our stuff regularly -- and half of them didn't install them correctly. The manager was shocked. He left and got his manager and pulled him into the class.”
Once we have their attention, we then spend the next 30 or 40 minutes looking at slides that show exactly what is going on inside a tube fitting. We spend time explaining the materials and the design.
“This isn't like the plumbing that you have under your sink. This is highly engineered and manufactured with precision,” Valentine says.
If you have some Old Hands at your company and want to make sure they are still at the top of their game, arrange for one of our trainers to come in. We can cover fitting installation, tube bending, welding and other important topics. And if you have some Young Hands, send them too. They deserve to get off on the right foot. You can learn more about our training here »
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