On 4/23/2011 2:20 PM, John R. Carroll wrote:
David R. Birch wrote:
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drafting job has been replaced by a computer.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been replaced by computers.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 use Interflux for this sort of thing.
I understand you can get DXF out of scanned images using Illustrator
directly but it was always such a pain.
Yup, raster to vector is usually iffy but with most artwork precision
isn't a big deal. OTOH, I had a customer complain about a curve on his
sign not being smooth enough when he looked at it from 10". The sign was
intended to be 15' off the ground. Sigh...
I did my apprenticeship as a mold maker in the sixties.
I don't know of any apprenticeship programs anymore locally.
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.
That's what will change.
Beginning in the late 70's it made good sense to give capital an advantage.
We began a tech revolution that needed a lot of investment.
That is not the case today but tax and capital structures haven't caught up
with reality.
They are going to start. When? I don't know.
I'll hold my breath.
A lot of the productivity benefits that have flowed into capital and profits
are now going to have to be redirected into labor or the American consumer
will be to feeble to drive the economy forcefully.
So far, they've been redirected into the owner's pockets, productivity
goes up, profits go up, the guy doing the work at the bottom gets the
same real dollar value as he did 15 years ago.
What happens in an economy 70 percent driven by consumer spending has
financially impaired consumers is what we are seeing today.
Poor performance in recovery. Unfunded government. You know, bad stuff.
No first world economy operates with the income disparity that has grown up
in America.
It's the hallmark of a banana republic, which is what America has become.
Hey mister tally man, tally me banana, daylight come an' me wanna go home.
David