Andrew Sales

I currently work at Aco Technologies as a light gauge stainless tig welder and brake press operator. My time here has been making drainage solutions. Mostly fuse welding. The brake presses are amada machines that i had previously used.

I started at Alma Engineering as a stainless steel tig welder fabricator. The work included light gauge work ranging from 1mm to 6mm. Most of the work included cabinets and conveyor products.

I moved onto the brake press as lead brake press operator. The work I did at Alma was very similar to the work i had previously done at Kmg systems.

My first year at KMG was welding and fabricating conveyor systems, mostly light gauge stainless tig welding including -

• Chutes
• Pans
• Box section
• Square to rounds
• Cyclones
• Flavour drums
• and more

After this I moved to the brake press department taking over as head of department due to previous brake press operator leaving. Here I continued to develop my brake press skills to include -

• Bar bending
• Square to rounds
• Cyclones
• Bumping radius
• Bumping pre-sets for rolled jobs

Folding from 1.5mm to 8 mm, very small components to 4-metre-long pans

This was my first experience of leading a department, a small team of 2 working across 3 Amada machines.

I worked at Babcock for a short amount of time. During my time at Babcock I continued to develop some of the skills that I previously learned whilst at Formet, whilst learning to use different machinery. Some but not all of the duties that I performed at Babcock included -

• Tig/mig welding
• Guillotine
• Saw
• Drilling
• Cleaning
• Small amount of sign making,
• Small amount of soldering
• Most of my time with Babcock was spent welding and fabricating large storage cages for the raf.

To begin with my duties were limited to general workshop tasks as Formet was my first job doing metal work.

Some of my duties included -

• Pressing inserts
• Drilling
• Tapping
• Countersinking
• Using the saw
• Graining
• Cleaning
• Deburring
• Many other small tasks

I wanted to progress so the company then trained me to use the press brake machines and I decided to learn to weld.

I learned to weld through evening college and work.

I went on to do all of the company's tig welding and a large amount of there press brake work. Some examples of welding tasks include but are not limited to -

• Mig welding mild steel box section, angle, sheet, making a small variety of frames, bases and stands.
• Tig weld mild steel, mostly small to medium components, covers, brackets, metal cabinets, hospital trolleys and equipment.
• Tig weld stainless steel, mostly small to medium components, sheet, tube, box section. Also some larger stainless welding making parts for a company that built conveyor systems.
• Tig welding aluminium, mostly small components using sheet.
• I used both of the companies press brake machines to fold mild steel, stainless steel, aluminium and Zintec. 1mm - 6 mm. Most of the work was fine limit batch work to tolerances of 0.2mm.