What do y'all use for marking stuff in a machine shop environment? Ahm thinkin mebbe plain ole #1 (soft) pencils may be the easiest fallback -- altho it rubs off right quick. But at least it's able to mark most stuff..
There is this yellow marker used in construction that releases a kind of paint, that appears to be able to mark pure tramp oil, but that's a bit overkill, and no real point to speak of.
I've never had a problem with sharpies on reasonably clean metal -- they cut right through the film of oil that you get when you work on something then swipe it with a rag, and they certainly work on dry metal.
Nail polish seems to cut through oil too. I paint a white patch on and then write the type of steel with a fine Sharpie. Red and black can fix chipped pointers and index lines. Have a good retort ready for when the clerk questions why a man needs it.
They've come out with a silver-gray Sharpie lately that I use a lot, good for marking on dark surfaces. Some wally worlds have them. Great for marking wall warts and black cables, also mill scale on hot- rolled steel. There are white and yellow paint markers that are like Sharpies, also ball-bearing versions of same that are harder to use. I tend to take a swipe with a Magnum Marker, then scribe my cut line into that. Magnum Markers have about a 1" square tip. They also have welding markers in red and silver along with rod and flat soapstones. Each has their place, no one marker is going to do it all.
Maybe you should notify someone at Boeing beings this is the first time I've heard such a thing and since I spent 15 years as a machinist there and scribing lines onto parts painted with dykem was a common everyday occurance.
I bought one once a couple of years ago & the paint corroded the ball mechanism from the inside & it became unusable pretty quickly. The white paint had a strong rust brown tint from day one till it ultimately corroded itself shut. The company did not followup to my phone complaint.
I hope you didn't scribe lines for bending structural parts. If you did, please tell me what aircraft you worked on, so I can avoid flying on them.
I think that Jim was talking about bends, right? Because if you're marking an edge for cutting, it doesn't matter.
Pencil is a little bit different. At one time it was part of a maintenance regulation, and, IIRC, a military regulation. Bends are the big issue, again, but there is a corrosion potential with something in lead pencils. I assume it's the graphite but I don't know for sure.
It's been around for a long time, back to the Duralumin days.
Come to think of it, I do recall RED Dykem as perhaps having been a restricted item for some reason.
Basically everybody that worked the shop floor routinely scribed lines on parts...some, on a daily basis.
Occasionally, we straightened....
Sorry, I worked on all of them but you're probably safe if it was made after
1999 or thereabouts
Most of the time I was assigned to work Dept A45xx which makes flight control hardware, everything from cockpit systems such as throttle and rudder controls to control surface and landing gear actuators.
After deburr, shot blast and paint I'm pretty sure there's not going to be much left in the way of a scribed mark.
Commonly, a set of crosshair were scribed some distance from the primary datums, for hole rough verification of locations, etc and also to be subsequently used as a reference point when staging on a sine plate for further layout or inspection.
Pretty sure you'd be hard pressed to find even a small patch of bare aluminum on a commercial jet these days.
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