Ok, Bert then I have another one for you. Det cord is watch they call a dry process, the other process is called wet which is mostly your oil and gas process. Any of the cord business, what they call cuts are voids in the cord, which would stop it from going off. Therefore ever thing runs thru an exam machine that stops when a void comes thru, then you have to stop fix the cut then proceed, thus time is money. Spools have anywhere from 500' to 10,000' depending on the product.
Now we had one product called HNS that we made that goes to the deepest wells there is because of the heat. This cord was very hard to make just because of the way it was mixed, we just added water and mixed by hand. I think the powder was $300 a pound and was having lets say 15 cuts in a 500' spool. When I started working in that process I kept trying to figure out how to reduce those cuts. We came up with a screen that we worked the powder thru, with doing that we took the cuts down by half! There is one process in the dry cord that at one time, was so secret that when they had visitors, they covered the windows so nobody could see that process, it was what made det cord shoot so fast! There are some awesome videos on youtube that shows what I made!! It's under Dyno Nobel. I had a blast while I was working there!!!
One more thing, you should see the layout of this place where I worked, each building is so many feet apart with a berm taller than each building, separating each building, reason every thing goes up not sideways to shield each building in case of an "EVENT" Hope I am not boring yawl!