Ok, so I thought that the fact that we use PTFE grease for keyboards is ironic - personally.
Not because it's bad or anything like that, its great and it feels awesome in most switches.
I probably have more PTFE in my lungs than in a 2oz tube of krytox 205g0, I used to work as an Industrial oven operator in a CNC/Teflon shop. I have inhaled enough PTFE and other various types of Teflon fumes to kill an elephant and endured temperatures in excess of 600°F. I spent about a year and some change at that job before I finally caught a lucky break as a programmer and I have to say the poetic irony of going from a producer of PTFE and other teflons to being someone who can afford to be a consumer of a product that is closely correlated/related to PTFE is some sort of crazy irony.
So for those of you who are interested I would like to describe my old job for you.....
Also to reward me for all the hard work i did, I earned approximately 400 per week after taxes, this is including my IT duties I had there.
Essentially, Teflon is used for a large portion of things in the world
* power tools
* cars
* space ships/rockets
* oil rigs
* pans/cookware etc
* cutting boards
* obviously keyboard grease
there are a lot of different types, and those types have vastly different properties when it comes to heat/pressure.
on a surface level what my job was responsible for was:
* putting billets (cylinders) of compressed teflon in an industrial oven
* taking billets out at temps of 600 650 degress F the next day and putting them on steel cylinders sized perfectly for the billets anywhere from 1/8th inch to 80ish inches
* billets could be anything from a few ounces to hundreds of lbs
* monitoring cooling billets for defects
* separating cooled billets from steel cylinders (pins) with a hydraulic press
* taking sorted and labeled billets to CNC shop for the next days production
* I also did IT work later on but that is not normal for an oven operator, usually high school jocks with no skills do this job, not Computer nerds
so as for teflon materials here is a high level overview
you have your PTFE based teflon either pure or a mix for different applications.... I am not a chemical/industrial engineer so I have no idea what the different mixes are for
PTFE is the "cheapest" teflon material that my shop dealt with its is fairly fragile and easy to heat and cool. most times as an oven operator you will leave this material in the oven last and load it first so that you have an easier time unloading the other material first. you can pin this material at around/ as low as 450-500 degrees, which is a pretty low temperature compared to 600 however it does not take long for that extra 100 degrees to escape the oven. (and hit you and make you sweat a bunch)
PTFE based teflon is usually white in color, when it is cooked it becomes almost clear, you know you can pin it when the color returns all the way around it. If you pin it too hot it will not cool evenly and it will be oblong, you will have to re-heat it.
Carbon based PFA teflon - color can be anywhere from black/gray - this material is very hard to pin, you need to pin it at as high of a temperature as possible, as soon as the oven doors are open, you have seconds to pin this.
other teflon / eck etc types of teflon - beige,yellow, green, pink - this material is even harder to pin than carbon based teflon. usually this type of teflon is used for highly specialized jobs. you dont really see it a lot... but when you do you know its going to be a pain. sometimes even at a high heat on these you will need to "beat" the billets onto the pins. this is where you take the whole pin, whatever is on it, and slam the billet onto the pin as hard as possible on the ground.
So. Other than the technical aspects of the job, there was the physical labor required. To be quite honest if you ever are in a position where you need a job... I am almost certain you could get a job doing this, its literal hell on earth. You will be staring and reaching into an industrial oven full of material that could kill you if it gets too hot. You will be breathing in fumes that will make you very sick, and enduring temperatures that will make you very sick, at long hours that will also make you sick and tired. Every single day you get done with work you will either A. feel good but be tired B. feel sick and also tired (and there is a good chance you will have a new burn scar). My first month i had heat exhaustion pretty much every single day, I drank anywhere from 3-4 gallons of water a day, and only used the restroom a few times.(sweat it all out) HOWEVER I am not saying that this is a bad or terrible job, it is, but thats not what I am saying. Despite the awful aspects of the job, there are some good points. You can listen to podcasts, audiobooks, youtube all day with proper 3M protective headphones (leave your phone away from you however).
Overall I owe my current career and success to having this ****ty job in the past, my boss at that job kept telling me "you are way too smart to do this" people I met around the facility while working as the IT guy in my down time (2ish hours a day when i got fast at pinning) would tell me much of the same and encourage me to figure out what I was really meant to do. To be quite honest, I hated this job so much it was either success at something else or death. Or at least it felt that way, the job wasn't really that bad looking back, but in the moment for that year and some change i felt pretty awful all the time, super depressed and pretty much just an audio book consuming robot who did my job every day and then went home and played video games on a really ****ty rural connection. I worked 12 hour days and slept for about 5-6 every night, the rest of the time i spent gaming or watching DVDs that I had. My internet was way too poor to bother trying to watch netflix, sometimes it worked, most times it didnt.
TLDR: DON'T YOU EVER WORK AS AN OVEN OPERATOR FOR TEFLON SHOPS
If I didnt make something clear or you are curious about other aspects of that job or my journey from that to software engineer please feel free to ask in the thread.
EDIT: Visual representation of the process of "baking" (sintering) teflon
step 1: the powder form material must be formed into a mold either by injection molding or by compression molding (with a hydraulic press)
this one is a lot nicer than the hand lever operated ones we had
step 2: this fragile billet must be baked in an idustrial oven overnight for at least 8 hours at around 700 + degrees F (too high of a temperature will release a deadly gas)
step 3: billet must be "pinned" onto a steel cylinder, unless it is a solid billet in which case it must be cooled slowly in a closed oven
here is a picture of a cart full of non baked/sintered material with pinned and cooled material in the background, i finally found a picture of some.
step 4: cooling
some pinned material cooling
step 5: stripping
you put the pin, inside of a bigger pin that can fit it without getting stuck and then use the rod of the hydraulic press to press the center of the pin holding the cooled material "stripping" it from the pin.
step 6: sorting/QA
basically just getting all of the material going to the right place.
step 7: moving on to either CNC or shipping for use in creating parts.
Scraps from the CNC process are used/sold to make teflon pans and lubricants
here is a paper on some of the process I found will trying to find pictures for you all
https://www.comsol.fi/paper/download/83999/roday_paper.pdfthere is not a whole lot of information about the process online. I don't really know why that is... It's actually very difficult to find photos to use to show you guys what I am trying to describe....