How do you know you are a good Machinist?
"Jim Wilkins" on Sat, 21 Dec 2019 07:45:20
-0500 typed in rec.crafts.metalworking the following:
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.
I retrained as a CAD guy. I remember a two part assignment:
design the casting, then design resulting part. I thought "If I make
the casting suchly, then holding it for the machining will be easier."
And transferring "the sketch" to the drawing I said "I can make
that" meaning all the info I need is there. Except for the note about
the material, forgot that. Oops.
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.
--
pyotr filipivich
"With Age comes Wisdom. Although far too often, Age travels alone."
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