My dad
He used to work as a quality manager in a high tech glass components factory (making bits for fancy radar and the like) I worked a summer there as a sort of work experience type deal (i.e do the grunt work and get paid buttons)

One of the foibles of making stuff with glass is the hilarious heat treatment process it all goes through after machining - basically whack it all in a big oven preheated to gas mark something or other and leave for a few days.

One day there was a power cut which led to the big ovens shutting down (ruining all the nearly completed stuff) - quick thinking dad had us chuck all of the reject components in there along with the good stuff before submitting the insurance claim.

Dodgy as hell, it worked though.
(Parsnip No, I'm Spartacus, Tue 12 Jul 2011, 14:16, 8 replies)

Happens all the time, doesn't it?
High tech glass components factories which make bits for fancy radars and the like. They often have power cuts which lead to the ovens shutting down, leading the managers to having to submit insurance claims on the ruined components.

There's definitely no way anyone could track this claim down.
( clockworkrat has nice pants, Tue 12 Jul 2011, 15:38, closed)

Pretty universal, I reckon
A mate of mine was called out on Christmas morning because the shop he ran had been burgled. It was nothing organised, just an opportunistic theft of some booze. The copper asked what had been taken.

Mate: "Er, looks like three bottles of whiskey."

Copper: (takes two bottles and puts them in the boot of the car) "Let's say five, shall we?"

Mate: "And a couple of vodka, too"

Copper: "Four bottles of vodka was it, sir?"

And so on.
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Tue 12 Jul 2011, 15:41, closed)

No point in voting for replies,
but I like this.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Tue 12 Jul 2011, 21:53, closed)

Was the insurance still cheaper than generators afterwards?
Actually, oven? Wouldn't that just need some UPSs for the gas-control electronics?
(Me, I'm not... in any way intoxicated, Tue 12 Jul 2011, 17:37, closed)

Akshally...
if it's anything like the glass kilns I know about, the heating elements are electrical. It's the only way to control the temperature accurately enough (and we're talking to within a degree or so over a good few hundred at least).
(regularfry, Tue 12 Jul 2011, 21:56, closed)

A generator may not be able to supply the sort of load an electric oven requires in the amount of time it would take to spin up, and a UPS capable of bridging the gap would be seriously expensive (if you can even dump a large inductive load on an UPS, which I'd be surprised at).
( Alex Save a Tree, Eat a Beaver!, Wed 13 Jul 2011, 0:22, closed)

plus
there'd likely be trace combustion residues from gas. OK for pizza, but probably not so good for precision components.
(The Incredible Sulk Finally remembered his password on, Wed 13 Jul 2011, 5:05, closed)

I know next to nothing about what was involved (either from a "how it works" or "how much it costs" point of view) - my rudimentary knowledge stretched to knowing about working with metal and just equated chucking glass in the oven with chucking metal in the oven.

As far as I was aware, there were no generators (I did wonder why) - Can't say that the glass machining process ever captivated me enough to find out - I just assumed it was a corner that was cut somewhere along the line.
(Parsnip No, I'm Spartacus, Wed 13 Jul 2011, 9:59, closed)