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Jim Wilkins[_2_] Jim Wilkins[_2_] is offline
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Default How do you know you are a good Machinist?

"Bob La Londe" wrote in message
...
On 12/19/2019 12:47 PM, Clare Snyder wrote: On Thu, 19 Dec 2019
07:23:02 -0700, Bob La Londe
wrote:

On 12/19/2019 12:30 AM, wrote:
On Friday, June 11, 1999 at 12:00:00 AM UTC-7, Ostcroix wrote:
Hello :


I've been working at the same place for the past
12 years and I've mastered every thing at my shop
execpt the C N C machines. We have a old 5T
Fanuc control but we only run one part on there.
I would say that I have good fundmental skills on
the conventional machines. However, I would like
to get better. Does anyone have Tips or questions
a machinist should ask themselves to determine
if they are a capable machinst ? Does 12 years
of making the same type parts make me a solid
machinist? How Can I furthur hone my skills where
I am at ? I am really wondering if I am a good machinist


A 20 year old thread... and yet still a good question.

A "good machinist" should be able to take a drawing of something
he's
never made before and figure out how to make it accurately without
making too much scrap - and after figuring it out, repeat it.


How about those of us who work from pencil scrawlings on a scrap of
paper and often have questions for clarification met with "like that
other thing I didn't send you an image of" and "you know what I
mean" instead of actual answers. Or worse, "I just want it ultra
realistic and it has to be 'exactly' perfect." If its in a verbal
conversation their pitch almost always changes when they say the
word exactly.

LOL.

Often my response to customers is, "I have no way of seeing the
pretty picture in your head. Please draw a picture. Even if its
not very good." Some are amazingly bad. The ones that kill me are
the guys who struggle to draw a marginally circular image who then
proceed to tackle a detailed perspective drawing. I have to applaud
the effort. I would love to own some of those images. I'd frame
them and put on a modern art exhibit. Picasso would be bewildered.
Sometimes I really wish I could see it the same way they do. That's
the market I picked though.


I tried to learn drafting and machining well enough to not be that
guy, with the result that the electrical engineers simply handed me
the mechanical problem to solve as I saw fit.

It still helped if an experienced machinist could suggest changes to
make the parts easier, faster and cheaper to produce, though that's
really a production engineer rather than a machinist task.

Aound here the small job shops are used to working with Lockheed / BAE
and are good at (if not always happy about) dealing with engineers.