"Jim Wilkins" writes:

...


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.

When I started to need to machine things, during my research into
hydrogen in welds, I used to sketch how I thought it could be done,
then head down the machine-shop and lay-out my sketches and ask the
machine-shop staff how it should be done.
Answering their questions and studying their sketches, answers quickly
came. Funnily enough, they often had a broader-sweeping imagination
than some academics.
Being in Sheffield (UK), at that time
* the staff were all time-served machinists
* in the University, they were used to converting ideas driven by
science into equipment and tests which would achieve those ideas
Hopefully it is true that I got things reasonably right, because I was
quickly guided to implementations which worked well.
It much contributed to the scientific achievement of my research -
however by the time it was over, so was the industry in the UK ...
Working as a welder now.