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Old 05-22-2010, 09:57 AM   #24
hal
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Buffalo, New York
Default Re: Tactical Shooting: A New World: A Private War On Narcoterrorism

Based upon my own experience working in a factory that produced metal parts, you may want to revise your work crew extimates for a "small factory". Where I worked for 2 years, employed easily, in excess of 150 people housed within two buildings that between them, occupied the space of about 12 houses. We had forklift operators, machinists, chrome platers, cleaners (various stages of cleaning were involved in the process), as well as buffers and the like. This did not include those who operated drill presses, heat baking machinery, etc. Then you had those involved in handling the chemicals involved - such as the shipping recievers, etc.

Suggest you revise the numbers who work in the smallish factory upwards by a factor of about 4, and then split the numbers employed into shifts. A two shift factory such as ours employed roughly 20% of its first shift numbers for second shift. Example? Of the roughly 9 to 10 people we had working second shift, there would have been some 40 people working first shift. Note that this does not include administration, sales, or even packaging personnel - which perhaps employed another 30 or so individuals in that capacity.

The trick to ask yourself is:

What did the factory manufacture? For example, the one I worked at produced specialty metal parts for cars, construction vehicles, and even for oil well caps (locks) - not to mention special orders from other companies who needed very specific machined parts made of metal. We had Steel bins to house the manufactured parts throughout their various stages of manufacture/cleaning, as well as high voltage machines to produce induction heat capable of tempering metal to a depth of 1 to 2 mm's of the surface. We stored a fair number of liquid natural gas cannisters for use in powering the fork lift trucks used to move the bins. Some of these bins (made of 1/8 to1/4" thick steel, would contain milled parts that would weigh tons. They would be about 2.5' in height, and could be stacked as many as 3 or 4 high. The "legs" were made of steel as well, and would leave enough clearance between the bin and the floor to permit the forks of the forklift to enter - so call it about 4" to 5". Thus, two bins stacked atop of each other might have a height of about 5.5 feet.

Keep in mind, that many of the factories would need high voltage lines to power their machines. In one corner of our factory, we had a honking HUGE tank for liquid Gas (I forget what gas it was, perhaps Nitrogen?). In any event, a factory floor contains a LOT of things that people can use for cover, as well as a lot of dangerous chemicals and the like stored in simple plastic drums, steel drums, etc. Then you have coolant - which can have the consistency of soap in some instances. The coolant I used to mill machine parts was in a concentrate form, which when added to the proper amount of water, was utilized to keep machined parts cool enough while the drill bits cut into them and machined them. One machine - the one I used, was originally used to manufacture and mill pistol barrels during world war II. Which meant, that the machine I was working on at the time, was over 30 years old.

Ah well, enough on that... ;)
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