a
"Robert Swinney" wrote in message
...
There DE! You heard it from the horse's, errrr, welll mouth.G Thanx
Harold. The great unwashed and inexperienced set can learn much from old
heads like you. I am happy to hear you never used a DRO and still did
tool-grade work. That statement presages a vast amount of honesty and no
small amount of pride, I'm sure. We should all have your experience but
'taint no way, no how, not in this lifetime! So, Harold, now that we are
on
the soapbox, give us your take on those that purport to jump right into
CNC
with absolutely no manual experience. I suspect they are mostly computer
programmers (or less) that believe all they peck out on a keyboard can be
easily done in the physical world.

Bob Swinney

With all due respect for the skills and talent these folks have, most of
which I envy like you'll never know, they wouldn't last a day in an old
method machine shop, assuming they could get in to begin with.

The ongoing struggle those of us have that have worked in the trade,
especially the "old way" (sans CNC) is with people that can't differentiate
between making chips and making parts. I've witnessed a tremendous amount
of that since I began following machining forums a few years ago. You
could likely teach a monkey to turn on a machine and start making
chips----well proven by the fact that I can do it. The problems start
when you have to leave behind the item you're striving to extract from the
metal you're carving-----and only the item----to specs.

At first glance, machining doesn't appear to be much of a challenge. Like
welding, folks get the idea that because they've burned some rod (made some
chips) that they understand the process, and the difference between them and
a guy that does it full time is they enjoy it, and the guy that does it full
time doesn't (he's likely half right). Such people, in my opinion, are
*new*, or very uninitiated. It takes skill and experience to make parts,
repetitively, to print, in a timely fashion. There is no substitute for
the skill (CNC excepted)-----it does not come from a book, it does not come
from your best buddy-----damned few are born with it. It comes from the
school of hard knocks, with long, hard hours of getting your hands dirty,
and with proper guidance, so you use good procedures that insure a minimum
risk of scrap and injury.

Nothing serves as a come to Jesus session better than handing an unskilled
person a print, material, no op. sheet, and point them to a machine, and ask
them to produce a given number of parts that will pass inspection. Sorts
them out right now! Like welding, you can't fake it. You can do
it-----------or you can't. Those that know the difference can see
through you with no effort. It's like playing a piano. Almost no one
does that without paying dues.

I don't suggest the CNC guys don't have the proper knowledge to do their
magic on a CNC-----and probably better than most of us can on a manual
machine------but one skill set has little to do with the
other----unless-------the operator has been in both places. Our very own
michael is one such----as are others. These guys are the best of all
worlds, for they can do it by either method. To the man, though, I have a
dime that says that once they've done it with CNC, they don't really want to
revert to the manual machines again. Not if they're trying to make a
living. The work is simply too difficult.

I'll go out on a limb and state that a guy with nothing but CNC experience
is unlikely to be any better on a manual machine than I am on a
CNC---------and that speaks volumes about their inability, at least in my
mind.

Harold