Of course a picture is worth a thousand words, but what happens when you don’t have a picture? Customers call from the field to describe how they want their steel curved. We love everyday references to help us describe the section bending:
Everyday References:
–The “belt around your waist” (easyway flat bar) versus the “flat washer” (hardway flat bar).
“Like an old-timey straw hat without the top” (angle leg out where the brim would be the leg out).
In describing the degrees of arc, many people use the clock as a reference. One guy called and said the hand on his clock (radius) was 84 inches, and he needed enough arc to go from 12:00 to 9:00.
“Ok, great. You need 270 degrees of arc (almost a full turn).”
“No, I only need 90 degrees,” he replied. We had a good laugh about which way his clock runs.
Many customers split our rolled pipes in half to make half-pipes, which can be split “pocket in,” “pocket out,” or “like a bagel.”
The threads on a screw describe a right hand helix.
Got any more everyday references to describe steel bending?
Related posts:
“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity”–George Orwell.
It is only tangentially relevant to this blog, but I just read that quote and liked it and thought I could post it here. Here I am commenting on my own blog– not the first conversation I’ve had with myself. I guess it is kind of relevant—these metaphors are representative of clear language and CMRP is earnest in its efforts to supply correct product.