The weekend before the ALS was scheduled to start up again after the most recent shutdown, mechanical technician Monroe Thomas kept things running on schedule by coming in on a Saturday to pull a 300-pound capacitor “uphill” out of the new RF power supply. It’s just another “(not so) typical” day at work for him, he says. But it’s his reliability operating cranes and supervising moves of heavy equipment around the ALS that plays an integral role in keeping the facility going.
Monroe has been a part of the ALS “mech tech” team for the past 14 years and is the point person for all critical equipment and endstation moves. Though he’s training another mechanical technician to operate the crane, it’s Monroe who is called upon for critical moves. He plays a key role in shutdowns—whether it’s installing magnets and undulators or taking an endstation on- or off-line. For bigger jobs he coordinates with the riggers from the Facilities division.
“The biggest challenge of this job is simply picking things up, because they’re not engineered to lift,” says Monroe. “So you have to figure out how to pick up each individual piece without damaging other parts.”
Monroe came to the ALS after 20 years in the military and about 10 years in the aftermarket motorcycle business, where he worked assembling and packaging parts for resale. He maintains this interest, riding his motorcycle every day and performing all his own maintenance work.
Though he’s a common sight around the ALS, Monroe surmises it’s his epic homemade cheesecakes that have made him well-known (he once brought in about 24 cheesecakes to share; his recipes are a well-guarded secret).
When asked to recall a particularly memorable moment in his time at the ALS, Monroe harkens back to his first year here, when he and a few other members of his team spent 17 hours straight working with the crane to change out a magnet cooling coil. And yet, he’s stayed on 14 years running after that grueling event.
“It’s the variety of work and the variety of people I get to interact with here that I like the most about this job,” he says.