Heavy equipment
Heavy equipment refers to heavy-duty vehicles, specially designed for executing construction tasks, most ones involving earthwork operations. They are known as heavy machines, heavy trucks, construction equipment, engineering equipment, heavy vehicles, or heavy hydraulics, they comprise five equipment systems: implement, structure, power train and information. Heavy equipment functions through the mechanical advantage of a simple machine, the ratio between input force applied and force exerted is multiplied; some equipment uses hydraulic drives as a primary source of motion. The use of heavy equipment has a long history; the pile driver was invented around 1500. The first tunnelling shield was patented by Marc Isambard Brunel in 1818; until the 19th century and into the early 20th century heavy machines were drawn under human or animal power. With the advent of portable steam-powered engines the drawn machine precursors were reconfigured with the new engines, such as the combine harvester; the design of a core tractor evolved around the new steam power source into a new machine core traction engine, that can be configured as the steam tractor and the steamroller.
During the 20th century, internal-combustion engines became the major power source of heavy equipment. Kerosene and ethanol engines were used. Mechanical transmission was in many cases replaced by hydraulic machinery; the early 20th century saw new electric-powered machines such as the forklift. Caterpillar Inc. is a present-day brand from these days, starting out as the Holt Manufacturing Company. The first mass-produced heavy machine was the Fordson tractor in 1917; the first commercial continuous track vehicle was the 1901 Lombard Steam Log Hauler. The use of tracks became popular for tanks during World War I, for civilian machinery like the bulldozer; the largest engineering vehicles and mobile land machines are bucket-wheel excavators, built since the 1920s. "Until the twentieth century, one simple tool constituted the primary earthmoving machine: the hand shovel - moved with animal and human powered, sleds and wagons. This tool was the principal method by which material was either sidecast or elevated to load a conveyance a wheelbarrow, or a cart or wagon drawn by a draft animal.
In antiquity, an equivalent of the hand shovel or hoe and head basket—and masses of men—were used to move earth to build civil works. Builders have long used the inclined plane and pulleys to place solid building materials, but these labor-saving devices did not lend themselves to earthmoving, which required digging, raising and placing loose materials; the two elements required for mechanized earthmoving as now, were an independent power source and off-road mobility, neither of which could be provided by the technology of that time."Container cranes were used from the 1950s and onwards, made containerization possible. Nowadays such is the importance of this machinery, some transport companies have developed specific equipment to transport heavy construction equipment to and from sites; these subdivisions, in this order, are the standard heavy equipment categorization. Military engineering vehicles Heavy equipment requires specialized tires for various construction applications. While many types of equipment have continuous tracks applicable to more severe service requirements, tires are used where greater speed or mobility is required.
An understanding of what equipment will be used for during the life of the tires is required for proper selection. Tire selection can have a significant impact on unit cost. There are three types of off-the-road tires, transport for earthmoving machines, work for slow moving earthmoving machines, load and carry for transporting as well as digging. Off-highway tires have six categories of service C compactor, E earthmover, G grader, L loader, LS log-skidder and ML mining and logging. Within these service categories are various tread types designed for use on hard-packed surface, soft surface and rock. Tires are a large expense on any construction project, careful consideration should be given to prevent excessive wear or damage. "The control and information systems. These systems enable the operator to direct and control all the other systems and provide information to guide operations or to monitor the performance and health of the equipment." A heavy equipment operator drives and operates heavy equipment used in engineering and construction projects.
Only skilled workers may operate heavy equipment, there is specialized training for learning to use heavy equipment. Much publication about heavy equipment operators focuses on improving safety for such workers; the field of occupational medicine researches and makes recommendations about safety for these and other workers in safety-sensitive positions. Due to the small profit margins on construction projects it is important to maintain accurate records concerning equipment utilization and maintenance; the two main categories of equipment costs are operating cost. To classify as an ownership cost an expense must have been incurred regardless of if the equipment is used or not; these costs are as follows: Depreciation can be calculated several ways, the simplest is the straight-line method. The annual depreciation is constant, reducing the equipment value annually; the following are simple equations paraphrased from the Peurifoy & Schexnayder text: For an expense to be classified as an operating cost, it must be incurred through use of the equipment.
These costs are as follows: The biggest distinction from a cost
Factory
A factory or manufacturing plant is an industrial site consisting of buildings and machinery, or more a complex having several buildings, where workers manufacture goods or operate machines processing one product into another. Factories arose with the introduction of machinery during the Industrial Revolution when the capital and space requirements became too great for cottage industry or workshops. Early factories that contained small amounts of machinery, such as one or two spinning mules, fewer than a dozen workers have been called "glorified workshops". Most modern factories have large warehouses or warehouse-like facilities that contain heavy equipment used for assembly line production. Large factories tend to be located with access to multiple modes of transportation, with some having rail and water loading and unloading facilities. Factories may either make discrete products or some type of material continuously produced such as chemicals and paper, or refined oil products. Factories manufacturing chemicals are called plants and may have most of their equipment – tanks, pressure vessels, chemical reactors and piping – outdoors and operated from control rooms.
Oil refineries have most of their equipment outdoors. Discrete products may be final consumer goods, or parts and sub-assemblies which are made into final products elsewhere. Factories may make them from raw materials. Continuous production industries use heat or electricity to transform streams of raw materials into finished products; the term mill referred to the milling of grain, which used natural resources such as water or wind power until those were displaced by steam power in the 19th century. Because many processes like spinning and weaving, iron rolling, paper manufacturing were powered by water, the term survives as in steel mill, paper mill, etc. Max Weber considered production during ancient times as never warranting classification as factories, with methods of production and the contemporary economic situation incomparable to modern or pre-modern developments of industry. In ancient times, the earliest production limited to the household, developed into a separate endeavour independent to the place of inhabitation with production at that time only beginning to be characteristic of industry, termed as "unfree shop industry", a situation caused under the reign of the Egyptian pharaoh, with slave employment and no differentiation of skills within the slave group comparable to modern definitions as division of labour.
According to translations of Demosthenes and Herodotus, Naucratis was a, or the only, factory in the entirety of ancient Egypt. A source of 1983, states the largest factory production in ancient times was of 120 slaves within 4th century BC Athens. An article within the New York Times article dated 13 October 2011 states: "In African Cave, Signs of an Ancient Paint Factory" –... discovered at Blombos Cave, a cave on the south coast of South Africa where 100,000-year-old tools and ingredients were found with which early modern humans mixed an ochre-based paint. Although The Cambridge Online Dictionary definition of factory states: a building or set of buildings where large amounts of goods are made using machines elsewhere:... the utilization of machines presupposes social cooperation and the division of labour The first machine is stated by one source to have been traps used to assist with the capturing of animals, corresponding to the machine as a mechanism operating independently or with little force by interaction from a human, with a capacity for use with operation the same on every occasion of functioning.
The wheel was invented c. 3000 BC, the spoked wheel c. 2000 BC. The Iron Age began 1200–1000 BC. However, other sources define machinery as a means of production. Archaeology provides a date for the earliest city as 5000 BC as Tell Brak, therefore a date for cooperation and factors of demand, by an increased community size and population to make something like factory level production a conceivable necessity. According to one text the water-mill was first made in 555 A. D. by Belisarius, although according to another they were known to Pliny the Elder and Vitruvius in the first century B. C. By the time of the 4th century A. D. mills with a capacity to grind 3 tonnes of cereal an hour, a rate sufficient to meet the needs of 80,000 persons, were in use by the Roman Empire. The Venice Arsenal provides one of the first examples of a factory in the modern sense of the word. Founded in 1104 in Venice, Republic of Venice, several hundred years before the Industrial Revolution, it mass-produced ships on assembly lines using manufactured parts.
The Venice Arsenal produced nearly one ship every day and, at its height, employed 16,000 people. One of the earliest factories was John Lombe's water-powered silk mill at Derby, operational by 1721. By 1746, an integrated brass mill was working at Warmley near Bristol. Raw material went in at one end, was smelted into brass and was turned into pans, pins and other goods. Housing was provided for workers on site. Josiah Wedgwood in Staffordshire and Matthew Boulton at his Soho Manufactory were other prominent early industrialists, who employed the factory system; the factory system began widespread use somewhat when cotton spinning was mechanized. Richard Arkwright is the person credited with inventing the prototype of the modern factory. After he patented his water frame in 1769, he established Cromford Mill, in Derbyshire, England expanding the village of Cromford to accommodate the migrant workers new to the area; the factory system was a new way of organizing labour made necessary by the developm
2013 Savar building collapse
The 2013 Savar building collapse or Rana Plaza collapse was a structural failure that occurred on 24 April 2013 in the Savar Upazila of Dhaka District, where an eight-story commercial building named Rana Plaza collapsed. The search for the dead ended on 13 May 2013 with a death toll of 1,134. 2,500 injured people were rescued from the building alive. It is considered the deadliest structural failure accident in modern human history, therefore the deadliest garment-factory accident in history; the building contained clothing factories, a bank and several shops. The shops and the bank on the lower floors were closed after cracks were discovered in the building; the building's owners ignored warnings to avoid using the building after cracks had appeared the day before. Garment workers were ordered to return the following day, the building collapsed during the morning rush-hour; the building, Rana Plaza, was owned by Sohel Rana a member of the local unit of Jubo League, the youth wing of Bangladesh Awami League, the political party in power.
It housed a number of separate garment factories employing around 5,000 people, several shops, a bank. The factories manufactured apparel for brands including Benetton, Bonmarché, the Children's Place, El Corte Inglés, Joe Fresh, Monsoon Accessorize, Matalan and Walmart; the head of the Bangladesh Fire Service & Civil Defence, Ali Ahmed Khan, said that the upper four floors had been built without a permit. Rana Plaza's architect, Massood Reza, said the building was planned for shops and offices – but not factories. Other architects stressed the risks involved in placing factories inside a building designed only for shops and offices, noting the structure was not strong enough to bear the weight and vibration of heavy machinery. On 23 April 2013, a TV channel recorded footage. Afterward, the building was evacuated, the shops and the bank on the lower floors were closed. In the day, Sohel Rana said to the media that the building was safe and workers should return tomorrow. Managers at Ether Tex threatened to withhold a month's pay from workers.
On the morning of 24 April, there was a power outage, diesel generators on the top floor were started. The building collapsed at about 08:57 am BST; the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association president confirmed that 3,122 workers were in the building at the time of the collapse. One local resident described the scene as if "an earthquake had struck."The United Nations' urban search and rescue coordination group – known as the International Search and Rescue Advisory Group, or INSARAG – offered assistance from its members, but this offer was rejected by the government of Bangladesh. The government made a statement suggesting that the area's local rescue emergency services were well equipped. Prior to offering assistance to Bangladesh, the UN held consultations to assess the country's ability to mount an effective rescue operation, they reached the conclusion that they lacked that capability. Bangladeshi officials, desiring to take "face-saving" actions and protect national sensibilities, refused to accept the assistance offered to them by the UN.
A large portion of the rescue operation consisted of inadequately equipped volunteers, many of whom had no protective clothing and wore sandals. Some buried. Not only was the Bangladeshi government accused of favouring national pride over those buried alive, but many relatives of those trapped in the debris criticised the government for trying to end the rescue mission prematurely. One of the garment manufacturers' websites indicates that more than half of the victims were women, along with a number of their children who were in nursery facilities within the building. Bangladeshi Home Minister Muhiuddin Khan Alamgir confirmed that fire service personnel and military troops were assisting with the rescue effort. Volunteer rescue workers used bolts of fabric to assist survivors to escape from the building. A national day of mourning was held on 25 April. On 8 May, army spokesman Mir Rabbi said the army's attempt to recover more bodies from the rubble would continue for at least another week. On 10 May, 17 days after the collapse, a woman named Reshma was found and rescued alive and unhurt under the rubble.
The direct reasons for the building problems were: Building built on a filled-in pond which compromised structural integrity, Conversion from commercial use to industrial use, Addition of three floors above the original permit, The use of substandard construction material. Those various elements indicated dubious business practices by Sohel Rana and dubious administrative practices in Savar. One good example to illustrate the dubious administrative practices is the evacuation of the building after the cracks, it was reported that the industrial police first requested the evacuation of the building until an inspection had been conducted. It was reported that Abdur Razak Khan, an engineer, declared the building unsafe and requested public authorities to conduct a more thorough inspection, it is reported that Kabir Hossain Sardar, the Upazila Nirbahi Officer who visited the site, met with Sohel Rana, declared the building safe. Sohel Rana said to the media that the building was safe and workers should return to work the next day.
One manager of the factories in the Rana Plaza reported that Sohel Rana told them that the building was safe. Manag
Spindle (textiles)
A spindle is a straight spike made from wood used for spinning, twisting fibers such as wool, hemp, cotton into yarn. It is weighted at either the bottom, middle, or top by a disc or spherical object called a whorl, but many spindles exist that are not weighted by a whorl, but by thickening their shape towards the bottom, such as Orenburg and French spindles; the spindle may have a hook, groove, or notch at the top to guide the yarn. Spindles come in many different sizes and weights depending on the thickness of the yarn one desires to spin; the origin of the first wooden spindle is lost to history. Whorl-weighted spindles date back at least to Neolithic times. A spindle is part of traditional spinning wheels where it is horizontal, such as the Indian charkha and the great or walking wheel. In industrial yarn production, spindles are used as well; the wood traditionally favoured for making spindles was that of Euonymus europaeus, from which derives the traditional English name spindle bush. Modern hand spindles fall into three basic categories: suspended spindles, supported spindles and grasped spindles.
Supported and suspended spindles are held vertically, grasped spindles may be held vertically, horizontally or at an angle depending on the tradition. Suspended spindles are so named because they are suspended to swing from the yarn after rotation has been started. Drop Spindles are a popular type of suspended spindle and get their name because the spindle is allowed to drop down while the thread is formed, allowing for a greater length of yarn to be spun before winding on. Suspended spindles permit the spinner to move around while spinning, going about their day. However, there are practical limits to their size/weight. Most supported spindles continue to rest with the tip on one's thigh, on the ground, on a table, or in a small bowl while rotating. Supported spindles come in a great variety of sizes, such as the large, ~30" Navajo spindle, the small fast, metal takli for spinning cotton, the tiniest Orenburg spindles for spinning gossamer lace yarns. Grasped spindles are known as hand spindles, in the hand spindles, in hand spindles and twiddled spindles.
Grasped spindles remain held in the hand using wrist movements to turn the spindle. French spindles are "twiddled" between the fingers of one hand while some types of Romanian spindles are grasped in the fist and turned through rotation of the wrist. While spindle types are divided into these three main categories, some traditional spinning styles employ multiple or blended techniques. For example the Akha spindle, a short spindle with a large centre-whorl disc, is supported by the hand of the spinner during drafting of cotton fibre, but during the adding of extra twist to stabilize the yarn, the spindle is dropped to rest on the yarn. A familiar sight from history books is a spindle used in conjunction with a distaff, an upright stick with a large quantity of loose fibre wound around it, to be accessed. There are many other methods for controlling the pre-spun fibre, such as coiling it around one's lower arm, or through a bracelet, or wrapping it loosely around a yarn braid hanging from one's wrist.
Another way spindles are categorised. The whorl, where present, may be located near the bottom or centre of the spindle. For example a top-whorl drop spindle will have the whorl located near the top of the shaft underneath a hook that allows the spindle to suspend as it is being spun; the newly spun yarn is wound below the whorl and forms a ‘cop’. Depending on the location of the whorl and style of the spindle, the cop can be conical, football or ball shaped and it can be wound above, below or over the whorl. Spindles can be used for plying: intertwining two or more single strands of yarn together in order to create a stronger, more balanced, more durable yarn. While hand spindles vary, there are some similarities in the parts. Spindle shafts can be made out of a variety of materials such as wood, bone or plastic, they may have little shaping or be shaped enough to form part of the whorl. Shafts may be decorated with painting or carving; the shaft is how the spinner inserts twist through turning it between the fingers or rolling it between the hand and another part of their anatomy, such as their thigh.
The thickness of the shaft affects how fast the spindles spins with narrower shafts contributing to a faster spinning spindle. Many spindles will have a point at the top of the shaft to fix the thread to. Options include a simple length of shaft to tie the thread around, a shaped notch or bulb, or a hook. A whorl is a weight, added to many types of spindles and can be made out of a large variety of materials including wood, glass, stone, clay or bone. Whorls may be decorated or left plain, they may be affixed permanently to the shaft or they may be removable. Whorl shapes vary and can include ball-shaped, disk-shaped and cross shaped whorls; the shape and mass distribution of the whorl affects the momentum it gives to the spindle while it is spinning. For example a centre weighted whorl will spin fast and short, while a rim-weighte
David Nevins Sr.
David Nevins Sr. was a wealthy New England industrialist. Born in Salem, New Hampshire, he owned the Pemberton Mill in Massachusetts. Nevins is the namesake of the Nevins Memorial Library, fathered the Methuen family of whom an author wrote, "The public spirit and generosity of the Nevins family seems to have no bounds in the town in which they made their home"
Lawrence, Massachusetts
Lawrence is a city in Essex County, United States, on the Merrimack River. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 76,377, which had risen to an estimated 78,197 as of 2014. Surrounding communities include Methuen to the north, Andover to the southwest, North Andover to the southeast. Lawrence and Salem were the county seats of Essex County, until the Commonwealth abolished county government in 1999. Lawrence is part of the Merrimack Valley. Manufacturing products of the city include electronic equipment, footwear, paper products and foodstuffs. Lawrence was the residence of poet Robert Frost for his early school years. Native Americans, namely the Pennacook or Pentucket tribe, had a presence in this area. Evidence of farming at Den Rock Park and arrowhead manufacturing on the site of where the Wood Mill now sits have been discovered. Europeans first settled the Haverhill area in 1640, colonists from Newbury following the Merrimack River in from the coast; the area that would become Lawrence was part of Methuen and Andover.
The first settlement came in 1655 with the establishment of a blockhouse in Shawsheen Fields, now South Lawrence. The future site of the city, was purchased by a consortium of local industrialists; the Water Power Association members: Abbott Lawrence, Edmund Bartlett, Thomas Hopkinson of Lowell, John Nesmith and Daniel Saunders, had purchased control of Peter's Falls on the Merrimack River and hence controlled Bodwell's Falls the site of the present Great Stone Dam. The group allotted fifty thousand dollars to buy land along the river to develop. In 1844, the group petitioned the legislature to act as a corporation, known as the Essex Company, which incorporated on April 16, 1845; the first excavations for the Great Stone Dam to harness the Merrimack River's water power were done on August 1, 1845. The Essex Company would sell the water power to corporations such as the Arlington Mills, as well as organize construction of mills and build to suit; until 1847, when the state legislature recognized the community as a town, it was called interchangeably the "New City", "Essex" or "Merrimac".
The post office, built in 1846, used the designation "Merrimac". Incorporation as a city would come in 1853, the name "Lawrence" chosen as a token of respect to Abbott Lawrence, who it cannot be verified saw the city named after him. Canals were dug on both the north and the south banks to provide power to the factories that would soon be built on its banks as both mill owners and workers from across the city and the world flocked to the city in droves; the work was dangerous: injuries and death were not uncommon. Working conditions in the mills were unsafe and in 1860 the Pemberton Mill collapsed, killing 145 workers; as immigrants flooded into the United States in the mid to late 19th century, the population of Lawrence abounded with skilled and unskilled workers from several countries. Lawrence was the scene of the infamous Bread and Roses Strike known as the Lawrence Textile Strike, one of the more important labor actions in American history. Lawrence was a great wool-processing center; the decline left Lawrence a struggling city.
The population of Lawrence declined from over 80,000 residents in 1950 to 64,000 residents in 1980, the low point of Lawrence's population. Like other northeastern cities suffering from the effects of post-World War II industrial decline, Lawrence has made efforts at revitalization, some of them controversial. For example, half of the enormous Wood Mill, powered by the Great Stone Dam and once the largest mills in the world, was knocked down in the 1950s; the Lawrence Redevelopment Authority and city officials utilized eminent domain for a perceived public benefit, via a top down approach, to revitalize the city throughout the 1960s. Known first as urban redevelopment, urban renewal, Lawrence's local government's actions towards vulnerable immigrant and poor communities, contained an undercurrent of gentrification which lies beneath the goals to revitalize Lawrence. There was a clash of differing ideals and perceptions of blight and what constituted a desirable community; the discussion left out those members of the community who would be directly impacted by urban redevelopment.
Under the guise of urban renewal, large tracts of downtown Lawrence were razed in the 1970s, replaced with parking lots and a three-story parking garage connected to a new Intown Mall intended to compete with newly constructed suburban malls. The historic Theater Row along Broadway was razed, destroying ornate movie palaces of the 1920s and 1930s that entertained mill workers through the Great Depression and the Second World War; the city's main post office, an ornate federalist style building at the corner of Broadway and Essex Street, was razed. Most of the structures were replaced with one-story, steel-frame structures with large parking lots, housing such establishments as fast food restaurants and chain drug stores, fundamentally changing the character of the center of Lawrence. Lawrence attempted to increase its employment base by attracting industries unwanted in other communities, such as waste treatment facilities and incinerators. From 1980 until 1998, private corporations operated two trash incinerators in Lawrence.
Activist residents blocked the approval of a waste treatment center on the banks of the Merrimack River near the current site of Salvatore's Pizza on Merrimack Street. The focus of Lawrence's urban renewal has shifted to preservat
