I had to laugh at a report from CNN:
The reason for my laughter was this photograph. Click the image for a larger view.
Those are bodged-up pressure vessels, used when "cooking" the methamphetamine - and they're held together by an immense number of vise grips and locking pliers! Whoever put them together clearly decided that "quantity has a quality all its own" (to quote Josef Stalin out of context), and that using so many grips would make it unnecessary to render the setup pressure-proof in the usual way, using nuts and bolts. The fact that such grips were never designed or intended for such pressure-containing use clearly didn't bother the designer . . .
Life is cheap in Africa, as we've noted in these pages on several previous occasions. Nevertheless, I wouldn't have liked to be the person standing near those things, monitoring their operation. My skin crawls just looking at it! I wonder how much of the poisonous fumes escaped during operation - and how many "cookers" they went through before they figured out how many vise grips were needed?
Peter
18 comments:
Harbor Freight musta had a 2 for 1 sale with an additional 20% off coupon for the "Pittsburg" vice grips...in a 2-pack. Win-win.
What was the cost of those pliers compared to some nuts and bolts?
Supposedly the "boss man" is making bank on these drugs and he can't be bothered to buy a crate of bolts and nuts?
Scary to put it mildly...
@Steve: Who says they bought them? They probably stole a shipment of them, or offered locals a buck or two apiece for every one they brought in. I doubt very much they paid retail prices for them.
They didn't use duct tape over the vise grips.
Any fool knows that.
Idiots!
I was at one time construction manager of a chemical plant in which 1 reaction was rather high pressure, using an ishikawa reagent. You can look it up. That 2000 liter hastalloy vessel Cost as much as most of the other tanks and equipment in that particular step of the process.
Vice grips were not specified for reactor head clamps……🤣
Why is it I'm not surprised? Some year back, I worked an engineering designer job for a company working in the railroad industry. One of their major customers was a South African company, and there were both legacy drawings from the good old days, as well as newer drawings from the post-apartheid period.
Let's just say that the newer drawings were total garbage(the 3D CAD models were even more of a horror show). We had to redo everything from the modern era(and to be fair, the 3D models from the older days because they didn't have certain technical aspects).
Even worse were drawings and models done by Nigerian engineers; I didn't have to work on those, thank a kind God for small mercies.
And here I thought super glue on electrical connections was disturbing.
The vice grips give new meaning to "quick disconnect" when the vessel PSI exceeds the grip hold-down power.
Seriously, can any of you engineers tell us about the max allowable PSI vs. clamping force?
The unsecured gas tank may be more lethal than the vice-grip secured tubs.
The Mexican Cartels have arrived....
https://www.borderlandbeat.com/2024/07/two-mexican-meth-cooks-arrested-at-drug.html?m=1
The labs can thin out the gene pool.
Weren't they also the ones that "engineered" the MCAS system for the 737Max? I'm pretty sure that's who boeing contracted.
Old Guy -
Plural gas tanks. I see three, and seeing the hose on the ground just past the green one in the foreground implies at least one shorter tank we can't see.
Sam
I'm no meth cook, but they don't appear to be pressure vessels. They look more like condensate pots. The top pipe is too large and it leads at a downward angle. Also if the welders who created these "cookers" are of the same expertise as the entire setup, then bolted flanges are the least of your concern
Not knowing the entire process.... but if you consider the vise-grips as 'quick disconnects' it does make sense.
Lot shorter time to flip & reset the vise-grips instead of dealing with nuts/bolts/wrenches.
Africa is poor because it's full of Africans.
Many years ago I attended a brief from a DEA agent about meth cookers in the back of tractor trailers driving the interstates of California. I still have a picture of a huge meth lab in Thailand that doesn't look much better.
I think some ex GE management instructed these yahoos to keep capital costs to a minimum.
Africa wins again!
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