CAMAGÜEY.-At the age of eighteen, Landy started as an assistant in the sugar factory Argentina, between irons as he likes to say; two years he was in the military service and when he returned from fulfilling the sacred duty of defending the Homeland, in 1987, he went back to the Florida industry, also as an assistant, but in the machine shop specializing in machine tools.

He continued to improve himself as a milling machine and turner, a time in which he embraced the 4th Forum of Science and Technology sheltered from the movement of innovators and rationalizers, where he channeled his efforts to solve pressing problems in the means of transportation of cane by rail.

After his status as Featured in that national event for the recovery of the ASEA centrifuge discharge screw sleeve, his participation grew and became stronger. He treasures multiple awards in it and in others such as the railway branch forum, the transport forum, the parts recovery fairs, the Forgers of the Future Exhibition, with the antifrictional composite, the locomotive cylinder caps and other works. For three consecutive years, he chaired the municipal commission of the Florida Spare Parts Forum.

Luis Orlando Martín Carvajal, Landy for his acquaintances, entered in 1991 in the course for workers in the Mechanical Engineering career of the University of Camagüey Ignacio Agramonte Loynaz and in 1997, graduation date, a job jump took him to the 60th Anniversary workshop, a kind of school, associated with the railway branch.

As head of mechanical productions, with the assistance of other workers and the unconditional support of university professors such as doctors Alfredo Cisneros and Asdrúbal García, he developed everything he defended in his diploma work: the recovery of the axles of the transport cage cars of cane, the study of wear in the elements of the tribological pair (shaft-bearing) and the proposal of technologies for the improvement of these pieces.

This man's fruitful career did not end with engineering and master's degrees. Through efforts, to investigate and innovate, he is today part of the dozens of Doctors in Technical Sciences of the House of Higher Studies in Camagüey.

Currently, as head of the Center for the Study of Exploitation, Manufacture and Recovery of Equipment and Parts (CEEFREP) of the University, he is unveiled to ensure alliances with companies in the province and other territories of the country.

"Our most significant experience at the national level was when the center assumed the preparation of all the technical documentation to establish a technology for the elaboration of metal mold modules for the manufacture of buildings, an activity developed by the links with the Camagüey Mechanical Plant and the University of Holguín ”, Landy pointed out.

The center's collective maintains as a dream to have an advanced manufacturing laboratory to develop part manufacturing technologies for subsequent introduction on an industrial scale, as well as other mechanical and tribological testing services.

In the broad curriculum of the interviewee, two inventions appear: the device for the surface treatment of the trunnions of the cane cage carriages and the aluminum-silicon alloyed cast iron to replace the bronze of the bearings.

Landy considers that it is necessary to awaken the movement of innovators and rationalizers, prosperous from the decade of the '80s of last century to the first of this century. “But today it is almost null and I am not saying null so as not to be completely wrong. There are companies where they do not even talk about it, nor do they remember that it once existed and was the protagonist of many production centers continuing to work despite the total lack of spare parts.

“Not only to move forward, but to revive it at all levels and then strengthen it, you need stimulation and not just morale, that is important, but it does not meet all expectations, you need the financial one. This does not mean being a consumer, but rather the application of knowledge, solving a problem efficiently and effectively, responding to difficulties that occur in the industry or on any productive front, all of this deserves remuneration.

“I have had the opportunity to read a lot on the subject of parts recovery. Many believe that it is a practice of poor countries, when in fact it began in developed ones. Under our conditions as an underdeveloped nation that is an importer of a wide range of technology from different origins, it is essential to have an innovative movement as an executing force for solutions and that today also has the opportunity to be linked to universities. Therefore, the direction of the country has to give it back the value and importance it has earned ”.

Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez