MOTOMAN

  After seeing Chris Nitz grungy pics and my brother Jim's shots from his tool shop at work I decided to explore my workplace for some interesting, grungy shots. 

  I am a Design Engineer at Tennessee Watercraft, Inc. in Vonore, TN.  We are a Yamaha owned company and we design and produce jet powered sport boats.  You can check our product out at www.yamaha-motor.com. The daily activities for the facility start with the production of all of the fiberglass parts, installing all other purchased parts and everything in between.

  This includes trimming and cutting all the holes in our fiberglass small parts such as hatch lids, helms, and bulkheads.  The machine you see in today's image is a conveyor that shuffles these small parts around a pair of  Motoman robots that do the trimming and cutting.  If you been around fiberglass at all, you know that this is a nasty area when these robots are takin' care o' business. These machines have been in use for about 10 years now (very innovative for the boating industry when we put them in). The caved in protective fence and the rusty fan cover on the conveyor motor are a signs of the wear and tear these machines have endured over that 10 year span.

  I have a shot from another angle that I will show in a later post.  I really enjoyed exploring the facility and have found several other opportunities for these type of images. With the ugly grey colorless outdoors we have in East Tennessee right now, these combined with my basketball photography will help me make it to spring.

Details: Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XS, Tamron 28-80 lens @ 28mm, ISO 100, 3 exposure HDR at f/4.0