Saturday, February 28, 2015

Why Only God Could Help Fix A Jammed Stapler Machine

I now work in a mail room where there are a lot of machines.  One of these machines is called a saddle stitcher, it is used to staple fliers and booklets in the middle fold.  This stapler is supposed to operate over a million punches before it needs servicing.  I use it several times a week.

It jammed.  The staples were no longer going through the pages correctly but were being bent in a twisted kink instead of folding down.  Looking closely at the machine I saw a tiny shiny fragment of a staple in the black hardened metal part that cinches and folds the staple wire.  I tried to pry it loose with the smallest screwdriver that would get in the tight space, but without success.

I found tools and began to take it apart hoping to free the shard, but the part that was jammed was a solid unit, I was able to get the part out but not free the piece from the part.  There was some movement but the shard was still stuck in there.

The machine had a manual which described all the things that could go wrong and how they could be corrected, but there was no help for the piece being jammed in the way it was; apparently it is not supposed to be able to happen like that.  Feeling hopeless I put it all back together.

For the next few days whenever I looked at the machine I prayed for God to help make it work.

Later in the week I tried it repair it again and took it apart but this time I sprayed it with oil.  It didn't work.  I put it together and tried to operate it but still a bad result.  I made adjustments here and there and still it wouldn't work.  I gave up.

So I began to think it would need to be replaced and went to the internet to find out how much a saddle stitcher would cost and was shocked to find out that it would cost about three months of my wages for one.

With new motivation, I tried to fix it again.  This time I dismounted it from the stand and laid it on the table.  It was much heavier than I thought and it slipped out of my hand and dropped the last inch onto the table.  "Just great," I thought, "I bet it is worse now than before."  I fiddled with the thing here and there trying to move the parts from other directions but it was still jammed.

I asked God to show me what to do.


I thought to myself that this machine was not going to be fixed.  After remounting it I tried one last time to move the parts again.  It was still jammed.  OK, I figured it was broke and it couldn't get worse, so I put a screwdriver inside and pushed the moving part as hard as I can.  Nothing happened. I saturated the part with oil put the screwdriver in and pushed as hard as I can and this time it finally moved!  The shard was nowhere to be seen.

I gave it more oil and moved the pieces back and forth a few times then put it all back together.

I picked up some papers, put them in, and hit the button.  The stitcher made all the right sounds then punched and folded the staple through the papers.  It was a beautiful sight to see.

I am not a machine repair kind of guy, the only reason the saddle stitcher works is because God helped me fix it.

(c) Adron 2/28/15