Hair's tolerance

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman James Croxon
  • 319th ARW Public Affairs
GRAND FORKS AIR FORCE BASE, N.D. --  One-one thousandth of an inch or smaller, that's the tolerance Metals Technology Airmen here must work within when making parts for 50-year old tankers, tools or special projects, and it's less than one-third the thickness of a human hair.

These Airmen must constantly train and practice to keep their skills sharp, but it's where they apply that training that those skills are tested.

"Everything we do prepares us for deployment," said Staff Sgt. Gary Duffield, a metals technology journeyman currently instructing two Airmen who have only been out of technical school for six months and are in upgrade training. "When we make a hard-to-find part for a tanker or fabricate a special tool to solve a problem for a customer, we're testing and honing skills that are vital in the war-zone," he said.

Preparing for the numerous deployments, often to one-deep shops, begins with a foundation of core skill sets.

"We focus training on the basic skills; welding, mechanical machine work, math and problem solving skills," Sergeant Duffield said. "When we deploy, it might be somewhere with computerized numerically controlled machines and a full array of tools and resources. But it's far more likely that we find ourselves with the most basic of tools - sometimes with just a container of supplies in the middle of the desert," the Clay, W.V., native said.

"Metals Technology airmen are more than machinists and welders, we are also partly engineers due to our design, problem solving, and "out-of-the-box" manufacturing abilities," said Senior Airman Jake Schargus, a metals technology journeyman from Redding, Calif., and a veteran of many deployments. They are certified to weld, machine, and fabricate utilizing six different metals (stainless steel, aluminum, cobalt, magnesium, Inconel and titanium) all of which are found on the KC-135 Stratotankers here. However, when they deploy or move to another base they are immediately certified to work with these metals on different airframes," he said.

The job of an Air Force Metals Technology technician isn't limited to aircraft. According to Sergeant Duffield, the most common tasks they perform are orders for tools or parts from numerous customers. It's common for metals technology Airmen to be the only people in a deployed location able to make tools and parts. When they deploy, these customers might include sister services, local nationals or coalition forces.

"I've made tooling and aircraft parts for the British Royal Air Force and Australian Royal Air Force," said Airman Schargus.

The most challenging, and most rewarding part of the job for these Airmen is their problem-solving skills.

"Usually we are just given a problem to find a solution for," said Airman Schargus. Sometimes, a customer will come to us with a problem; they need a tool to fix a vehicle or a stand to perform maintenance on an aircraft, and it's up to us to design and fabricate the solution, he said.

When the sun goes down, either on a snowy North Dakota Air Force base or on a hot desert air field, the variety and constant challenges keep them sharp and prepared for what ever a customer brings into their shop.

"I can't wait to finish my training and put what I've learned to the test," said Airman 1st Class Brian Bertrand, a St. Louis native completes his apprentice upgrade training in approximately nine months. "I learned the basics at tech. school and far more since I arrived here in May. There's always something new for me to learn and do - it's the reason I love my job."

Whether programming a modern CNC milling machine to make a part for an aging KC-135 or fabricating a part for an Army unit "old-school" with a mechanical lathe, metals technology Airmen enable home-station training missions and deployed mission success.