Vakkotaur

For a while in the late 1980s I worked in a place that rebuilt electric motors. Actually they did more than that and I was usually doing things not at all related to rebuilding motors. Usually. There was a time of about a month or so where the area I was in didn't have much going on, but the motor shop had plenty to do.

I spent most of that time at a machine winding coils. It was from there that I sort of witnessed a rather memorable event. The shop was divided into sections, with walls that didn't quite reach the ceiling. This was similar to cubical walls only higher and far more substantial. I was up front at the winding machine and a few others were stuffing the coils into place and such.

The rebuilt motors had to be tested, of course, and that was done in the next area over. The sound of electric motors starting was common. After a while a person hardly even noticed it. It was just another factory sound.

We all heard it. It was the sound of a large electric motor starting... almost. It didn't sound right. It was too growly. We all stopped and looked over toward the test area and then we saw it. The area was bathed in an intense orange glow that we saw above the wall. Something popped with a loud electric snap and the glow went out. A cloud of white smoke came up. All this happened in about a second or two.

The supervisor came tearing out of his office and rushed to the test area to see that everyone was ok. Everyone was. It was unnerving, but all that had happened was a bit of dirt was on a contact. It was what kept the motor from starting properly and the current had cooked it. That's where the glow and snap and smoke came from. It wasn't bad, but it sure looked and sounded bad.