Hey guys, how's it going? My name is Micaela, and today I'm in Yamaguchi Prefecture, in
Ube City.
I got a really cool offer to come take some photos, because I love taking photos? If you've
seen my instagram, like, I really love taking photos of scenery and like, architecture and
stuff.
This is going to be a really cool opportunity to take pictures of a construction site that
you can't normally enter, unless you're super special, and I'M special, apparently, so I'm
here today.
UBE CITY is known for it’s large, industrial site. Ube City used to be a coal mining town,
but upon recognising how limited a resource coal was, it began to evolve into an industrial
city with many strengths.
One of those companies was Ube Machinery, originally a manufacturer of coal-digging
machinery, it now manufactures large machinery for use in facilities such as power plans,
automobile construction sites, and even large architectural construction such as bridges.
"Yoroshiku Onegai Shimasu", Hi!
As you can tell, I'm not really well-versed in the world of machinery.
So I had to take a quick tour before I entered the work site.
..And the day was off to a pretty challenging start, as I realized I had no idea
how to wear a hard hat.
A testament to to their global demand, this crane helps load heavy machinery on to boats,
to transport it across the world.
Woah, check out the scale of this place!
It's huge!
This industrial factory is 400 metres long, and everywhere you look, someone is hard at
work on something ten times their size.
This crane can lift up to 150 tonnes!
Oh.
It's so tough!
It's hard to believe that all these giant bits of machinery have been created by such
small and fragile human beings, but it's true. And while Ube Machinery is producing some
pretty heavy material, all the precise work is done by the workers themselves.
"This is Kawamura-san, he's a veteran down here in the factory..."
"You have such a nice smile!"
"Oh please stop!"
"YOU'RE SO CUTE!"
This worker is trying to find the centre of gravity in this metal part, which will be
shaved down. If he makes a mistake in his calculation, the metal will be completely
unusable.
He has to be precise, down to the 1/100th of a milimietre. That’s about as thin as
a piece of plastic saran wrap.
I tried to do it myself, but it was really hard.
"Did you tighten it?"
"It's not really moving."
"Just a little is fine.
That's why for this type of delicate work, the human sense is much more accurate and reliable than
a machine.
This floor is our company's design compartment.
This design group mostly focuses on creating extrusion presses, also our electric department
is on this floor as well. So every diagram that they create here becomes
the machinery that you just saw in the construction site. From the diagrams drawn here, other
workers can gather parts and actually build the machines.
So you could say that everything starts on this floor.
So now we're going to talk to someone whose job it is to sit and think and design these
big huge machines before sending the blueprints down to the construction site, and having
them come alive, basically.
Hello!
So what is this here on the table?
This is the diagram of a die-cast machine that we specialize in building in our company.
How do you learn to make things like this!?
Well, I guess you visit the construction site a lot, listen to your more experienced co-workers,
and everyone around you. Everyone's really kind about teaching you from zero, I just
learned from experience.
How do you feel when the things you've planned in diagrams become real existing things?
It's a really accomplishing feeling.
Does it turn out exactly like you imagined?
When I go to the construction site to see the finished product, sometimes it's a little
from what I imagined, but that's also the fun part of my job.
Today I learned a lot about construction and machinery, and saw I some really cool stuff, but I also took
a few sweet pictures as well! They’re on the Ube Machinery website, so check them out!