On 4/23/2011 11:16 AM, John R. Carroll wrote:
David R. Birch wrote:
On 4/23/2011 3:21 AM, John R. Carroll wrote:
wrote:

Now an engineer uses a cad program to generate a drawing. That
drafting job has been replaced by a computer. The cad drawing
is then used to generate a cnc program. And the machinist has
been replaced by computers.

Hardly. Machinists without computer skills are unemployed. Nobody
programs anything from drawings today.

Really? Small shops do, like where I work. I've gotten sketches on
napkins and a shim traced onto the bottom of a cardboard box with
no dimensions and then that image faxed to us. Of course, the
faxing meant all scale was lost. I called to get some dimensions
and they said they had sent the box with the tracing over. Someone
had shown up at our loading dock and, without explanation, handed
the empty box to "someone". I wonder how long that box bounced
around the dock before it was canned? With a little guestimating,
I was able to make a DXF we could cut. I measured the round box
manufacturer's logo showing on the FAX, compared it to similar
logos on other boxes, and came up with numbers close enough to
fractional dimensions to make a dimensioned drawing to send to the
customer for approval. It worked!

I've been flat out refusing that sort of work for five years and
discouraging it for a decade.

Sometimes large customers have small jobs for us. Or its another shop
that we cut for as a favor, and they mill or turn gratis in return.
Sometimes there are donuts involved...

Any customer that can't tell me what they want isn't a customer with
the exception of people who want to contract for product designs.

You should see some of the artwork I've turned into something we can
cut! Keeps me from getting bored doing yet another GE Medical cabinet.

I do some of that but it isn't "included" or for free. Pushing costs
down the chain onto vendors is the oldest trick in the book. Unless
someone wants to pay for it, I won't do it anymore and it's less and
less expected.

No donuts for you!


They went the way of the Dodo a decade or more ago.

You'd be surprised how many dodos there are still out there.

I don't think I know even a single one. They can all use
micrometer's as well and if they can't, they aren't machinists. They
are button pushers.

I know a 75 year old tool & die maker who uses AutoCAD in his one man
shop for design, but all the cutting is manual. He's barely competitive,
but still can do things an engineer with CAD/CAM and 5 axis machines can't.

Software is just another productivity tool.

Yes, once you have something to load into the software.

Or like your example, create it.

At some point, someone has to create it. One of our biggest problems is
the clowns just released into the world with an engineering degree who
don't know how to design stuff. I had to point out to the D&E dept of
one of the two largest mining equipment makers (both local to Milwaukee)
that it was a bad idea to have the 1/4-20 screws holding on an access
panel go into holes tapped in 14 gauge steel. They agreed with my
suggestion for weld nuts on the inside of the assembly.



Nucor has at least one plant that makes nuts and bolts. It
runs 24 hours a day and on the graveyard shift they save on
electricity. Why? Because they run lights out with no humans
actually working on the graveyard shift.

I guess you don't know much about machine tools. The nuts and
bolts business is pretty energy intensive. What they save on
electricity is trivial. They don't have humans on the graveyard
shift because they pack and ship during the day. That is also
when the material handling and other tasks are done. In other
words, there simply isn't anything for a human to do on
graveyard except get into trouble messing around with something.

I think you missed his point. The savings isn't in electricity,
it's in labor.

No, you did. There isn't any labor on the premises because there
isn't anything for that labor to do. Peeps would be working if there
were. What Dan said was that the purpose of arranging things this
way was to save the cost of electricity expended on graveyard.
That's ridiculous and ignores the fact that the labor component in
the actual process is tiny.

So you're saying that the savings is electricity is more than the
savings in labor by not needing anyone working on the premises? Silly
me, I thought the main point of lights out was the savings on labor.


The only reason we don't run lights out all weekend is that we
have to have a LASER operator checking to make sure the machines
are still cutting properly. If a machine loses its cut, we can end
up with a weekend's worth of scrap. We have 14kw among our 4
LASERS and keeping the lights on is trivial, but we can get lots
of cutting done with almost no labor.

You can sense all of that. Modern MAZAK's, for example, will know if
they lose a cut and restart.

Two of our four LASERS are modern MAZAKs and if you think that's how
they work, guess again. Or do you believe what the MAZAK salesmen tell
you? My boss did...at first.


Anyway, saying that computers will displace 80 percent of the
work force is just silly. The structural impediments to growth
will be removed eventually. They will have to be. The only
question is what the circumstances will be.

No shortage of growth, it's just not occurring within our borders.

Manufacturing output continues to climb. So are experts but its been
a little up and down. As I said, there are a lot of structural
impediments to hiring right now. Capital formation has been given
huge incentives at the expense of profit taking and labor.

Yes, fewer people making more, which means fewer to buy what's made.

David