Monday

As some know, I didn't do my work experience at the same time as everybody else because I had a few little problems with my leg. You can read about these problems on my other blog, but for now, let's just stick to work experience.

I went on my work experience at Spear System; a company that prints labels, based in Cwmbran, though they have other factories based all over the world; South Africa, Germany, Canada, the US, and so on. My step-father works there as the Art Studio Manager, so it's all good.

Seeing as I live in Abertridwr, and I had to go to Cwmbran for my work experience, I had to get up quite early. Monday, I got up at 6:30, so that we could leave at 7:30 in order to be at Spear in time for 9 o'clock. It was a rather long drive, and it was made quite annoying by my step-dad's insistence that we listen to Radio 4. He doesn't necessarily like Radio 4; he just finds it really funny.

Anyway, after getting there at 8:45ish, my step-dad went to a scheduling meeting. The boss, Scott, was in that meeting too, so I had to wait for the meeting to finish to go and see him. He gave me a little project thing to do, see.

Anyway, when he finally got out of the meeting, I went to see him. He wanted me to draw a scale plan of the factory's shop floor. And that involved a lot of measuring. Luckily, Scott had a laser measuring thing, that meant you could just point it at something and it'll tell you how far away it is. Unfortunately, it wasn't giving accurate readings (i.e. from one side of the factory to the other, it gave a reading of eight meters), so Scott and I went to see the maintenance guy. He didn't have a long enough measuring tape, either.

So Scott gave up, and said, "Come on, let's go down to B&Q and get some measuring tapes. Go tell your dad that we're going down there, and meet me in my office in a few minutes." So I did, and we went to B&Q in his car. It was a big car, an American one. He said that he doesn't really like it, but it was only £8k, so he got it for now. There was a rattling on the passenger side of the car that I didn't notice until he pointed it out to me. And then it was really annoying me. He said it had been bugging him for ages, so on the weekend he's going to take the car apart and see what it is that's making the annoying rattling. He knows what he's doing with stuff like that, see. Because he's a Mechanical Engineer. You wouldn't expect him to be, just by looking at him; he looks like the 'bumbling old grandpa' type, but he is really clever.

Anyway, we went to B&Q and got a 30m tape, and an 8m tape. He didn't know whether to go to B&Q for the tapes, or to Aldi; he said that they sometimes have some cheap tools in Aldi. He then decided against it. The conversation went a little bit like this.

Scott: "I don't know whether to go to Aldi for the tapes, they have some cheap tools in there sometimes." (Sees loads of old people in Aldi's) "Actually, I think we should go to B&Q."
Me: "Yeah, that's probably the best idea. Aldi's is always full of weird people buying trolleys full of beans."

Me + Scott: (laughs)

So that was pretty eventful.

Then we got back to the factory. We measured things, a lot of things, in fact. It's surprising just how many measurements you need to take to get things in the right place on the drawing. Luckily, he knew what he was doing, so all I had to do was hold the tape and tell him what the measurement was.

After about an hour and a half of measuring things, we went back to his office where he drew me a clearer version of the factory, so that I could roughly see where things were, but the drawing still wasn't to scale. That was my job.

So I went back to the Studio (the Artwork Studio where my step-dad works), and set up the boss's laptop. I had to use the laptop, because it was the only computer that had Microsoft Visio on it, which is the software I had to use. And his laptop was rather very quite... shit, to put it nicely. It was a Dell computer, but it was ancient. It's like the Ancient Egyptians found it and thought it was shit, so they sent it forward in time to Scott.

And the screen on the laptop was awful. So my step-dad got me a monitor from the cupboard. Which is cool. Everyone in the Studio use iMacs, but Scott didn't have the disk for Visio, so I had to use a PC. Gareth wasn't there see, so I was on his desk all week.

Anyway, back to Visio. It took me a while to get used to it; Scott had given me his laptop over the weekend, so that I could get used to the software, but I really couldn't be bothered with it, so I learned it on Monday.

And then, at 1 o'clock, I had my lunch break. We sat by a guy they call "Fat Phil". I can see why they call him that though; he's round. Not just round around the waist, he's spherical. Lunch break was a bit... uneventful.

And after lunch, I carried on with the Visio drawing. I had to plot all the printing presses on there, and where they are in relation to the steel I-beams. We used the I-beams because other than the walls, they are the only things that are unmovable in the factory.

In between doing the floor plan, my step-dad was taking me around the factory, showing me where everything is, and what everything does, and how everything's done. He showed me the Cerutti press, the Jumbo Slitter, the Ashe cutters, the Arsoma presses, the Kammann presses, and the Slitter machines. Oh, and don't forget the GMC presses.

My step-dad explained how everything works, too. The Cerutti press is massive, and it can print up to eight different colours. It's the only press in the factory that uses steel cylinders, rather than screens, or plates. The Cerutti, as I said, can print up to eight colours, and every colour needs its own separate cylinder. So say a label has eight colours, eight cylinders will be needed. Now, each cylinder cost £1,500 each. So if someone fucks up, it's going to cost a lot of money. And if the mistake isn't recognized before the job goes onto press, it could cost millions. The Cerutti, you see, prints labels at an alarming speed; so fast that you can't see the labels when they're on press, because the web (the material the labels are printing on) is moving so fast; it just looks like a blur. So thousands of pounds worth of labels could be printed before anyone even realizes there's a mistake. And if the labels are already on the bottles, Spear would have to pay the cost of the material, the cost of the ink, the cost of the bottle, and the cost of what's in the bottle. Spear print labels for Johnny Walker whisky, which is quite expensive for one bottle. So imagine if the labels were wrong, and they made it onto the bottles. It would cost Spear thousands of pounds.

And for that reason, everything is double checked by different people, at every stage of the printing process; from receiving the artwork, right up to when the job is sent out, every single thing is checked. Which means that there's a huge amount of communication going on within Spear.

Anyway, I'd finished what I was asked to do, and then it was time to go home. Well, it was past the time to go home; we were supposed to leave at 5:00pm, but we left at about 5:35pm. And then I got home at about 6:30pm - 7:00pm ish. Tiredness.

Click the pics to enlarge.

Here's a picture of the Cerutti press:



And a picture of one of the cylinders: