190 Narrative by Charlie Benton, a sugar industry veteran who has seen a lot of changes in the industry and is currently a Senior Buyer I started my career in the sugar industry in 1973 in Gering, Nebraska as a warehouseman throwing and stacking 100 lb. bags of sugar in the heat of the Nebraska day. Shortly thereafter, when the campaign began I became a “Low Raw Sugar Cutter” which meant a centrifugal operator. The Great Western Sugar Company had 10 Roberts manual centrifuges in a row running off of a jack shaft and off of a line shaft driven by a 900 HP steam engine that ran the plant. The engine had 2 - 20’ diameter flywheels 36” wide with 36” wide 5 ply leather belts driving the line shaft. The Roberts machines were driven off of a horizontal jack shaft by 6” belts. The belts came off a jackshaft and made a ½ turn from horizontal to vertical to drive the centrifuges. The operation was entirely manual. The 10 centrifugals had a brake, a clutch and a hand crank discharger. I would release the brake, slowly let out the clutch and get the machine turning before I raised the charge gate from the mixer to fill the tub. When the tub was full I would fully engage the clutch to get the machine running up to speed. I would continue down the line filling the machines and spinning the massecuite to separate the syrup from the crystals. A pail of water was tossed in each machine after they were all spinning to wash the sugar. There were two Sugar Cutters and we took turns filling and discharging the machines. We had to work fast to keep up with the pan operator. When the molasses separated from the crystals, we would release the clutch, engage the brake and slow the machine down and stop it to begin the discharge operation. Once the machine stopped we would reach in and pull up the bell (discharge cover) and release the discharger to position it inside the tub. We then released the brake and slightly engaged the clutch to turn the tub while hand cranking the discharger down the wall of sugar inside the tub into a screw conveyor below the centrifugal. We would then crank the discharger up, re-latch it, drop the bell over the discharge opening and start the sequence all over. Sometimes a very loose charge of massecuite would come into the mixer and that would be a problem. The loose CHAPTER 14