[JimPAC]

hi,
i am a CNC and manual machinnist working for a small privately owned high precision machineshop in Cincinnati Ohio. i started out as a floor sweeper in a small northern cincinnati shop in 1984. i had no clu. since then i have worked for about a dozen companies working on a great multitude of different CNC machines and all types of manual machines. now 24 years later i can do anything from stock removal to double offset center taperbores and hold precision aerospace tolerances. i hold an associates degree in machine tool technology wich in my opinion has proven completely useless next to actual shop time i use solidworks and gibbscam on a daily basis. our company services oil & gas, aerospace, defense and automotive industries. from 1998-2003 i was the training director and chief instructor for the CNC programing and machine tool operation school for the MAZAK corporation at thier north american headquarter facility in northern kentucky. i rarely have any problems and when i do there small ones and im not bragging but i havent crashed a machine in 13 years (knock on wood) .

i am very glad to have found this site i look forward to conversing with everyone and i would like to offer a word of advice to all CNC new comers..."Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes.”

Mistakes are experience and the struggle to become competent becomes your experience!
You Yankees think you so good!!!

Texan

[mc-motorsports]

Mistakes are experience and the struggle to become competent becomes your experience!
You Yankees think you so good!!!

Texan

Definition:
Experience = made every mistake and learned from it. See also: from NORTHERN America

Thanks,
MC

[JimPAC]

OUTSTANDING!!! I always admire a man who is willing to put in the time and effort it takes to pass along such a valuable skill. I didn't have a mentor when I became a mechanic, so it was a lot more difficult to learn the trade. Without the benefit of a mentor I developed a few bad habits that took some time to shake. :cheers:

Anything you need you got it

[email protected]

[JimPAC]

I am a certified "Red Seal" Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT) trained machinist. For my entire apprenticeship I worked on evry machine in the shop. Manual mills (knee type, horizontal boring, vertical boring) manual lathes (from tool room to 36" swing), operated cnc lathes and mills, surface and cylindrical gringing. After 2 years working as a journeyman, I got into programing and operating the 4 cnc mills we have. Now I mainly program and schedule.

I think a "machinist" should be able to make any part, from start to finish. Now granted, I have more experiance and skill in some areas, I can say confidently, that I think I could fill any position relating to "machinist".

Let's see what you got BOY

[JimPAC]

I live in eastern Wisconsin. There is a history of good work ethic and machine shop facilities.
I started with a good mentor in a small shop. I got the feel of the whole scheme of things by operating drill presses and saws, small touret lathes and vertical mills. My old boss was a perfectionist BUT and I emphasis BUT, he would not stand for anything that resembled slow. If you were all amazed with your accomplishments or struggling in some simple set up, his very loud German voice could be heard all over the plant, then he would show you how to do it. Kind of rough on the weak at heart but very effective on the ones who could take the heat. He could tell the ones that were to be kept and the floor swweper by the number of times he had to show them something. Actually after having spent some 7 years with him (the last 4 his personal assistant) I have had no trouble in any position I have heald at any of the shops I have worked in since.
Learning work ethic goes with any form of work. Learning from the manual machines helps develop a hands on feel for machine operation. You feel and hear what a dull drill sounds like, what a dull tap feels like. Feel is something some people can develop and some people never get. I don't care what type of machine you operate, CNC or manual, having a feel for the operations being performed is invaluable.
I guess that is pretty much true in life in general. Either you have the ability to understand thouroughly what you are doing or it is simply what you do for a living. If you aren't challenged by what you do, and prefer it that way, then it's probably just your 'job'. If you feel driven to understand every aspect of what you are doing. If you study what you do and how other people do a similar job. If you are always challenging YOURSELF to improve a process, or proceedure to streamline whatever it is you are doing. Things like 'feel' and 'finess' happen all by themselves.
The bottom line, I would guess a lot of up and comers aren't going to like this, start from the bottom up. Sweep the floors and watch and learn how things work. Work your way into more and more sophisticated challenges. Then all of a sudden you are the one people are coming to for answers. You are the problem solver, the go to guy, I would guess that to be where anybody with any ambition would strive to be.
My old boss would laugh at engineers that struggled with complicated assemblies because the ones that most often struggled had never gotten their hands dirty.

You the man!

Anything you need just ask

[email protected]

[JimPAC]

Definition:
Experience = made every mistake and learned from it. See also: from NORTHERN America

Thanks,
MC

Charles was a pin Head!

[JimPAC]

Definition:
Experience = made every mistake and learned from it. See also: from NORTHERN America

Thanks,
MC

Say that to Ron Popeel ~ You WIN!!!!

[wldchld]

I got laid off of construction back in 1989. My uncle was lead man at a local screw machine outfit and asked if I wanted a job. I said not really... I was hoping to cash in them unemployment checks and ice fish all winter! But I had to do what I had to do.... so I took the job. I’ve been machining twenty years now and I have never missed shoveling concrete all that much.
I switched to CNC’s after 10 years and now run an Index G300 nine axis lathe. (A machine that the Index corporation calls their “special monster” lol)
If the trade has taught me anything it’s that ….
“Good judgment comes from experience, Experience comes from bad judgment.”
:cheers:

[aaron p]

Went to a 2 year automotive race engine machinist school, got tired of making $400 a week, and went to work for a high precision CNC job shop with zero industrial CNC machine work experience. Started at $9/hr to learn vertical 3axis and 4axis machines. 6months later, I was programing my own parts on EZ-Cam and doing regular setups on titanium and inconnel parts. Been machining for 4 years now. No school or book can teach what real hands on, real world experience can teach a person.
wldchld, I like your quote man. Kinda like "its only a mistake if you do it twice"

[mc-motorsports]

Anyone in the Mentor Ohio area, as in right on lake Erie, a company called CRT was looking for apprentices at the end of last year. Toolmakers and general machinists and operators.
PM me if you want any info, I can tell you what I remember reading and where the company is located.

[charger19690]

First of all, my story is in the "About" section of my website http://www.cncbasics.com

Basically just started out part-time in an assembly department and soaked it up.

Doubled my wage in the first 2 years, but pretty much topped out now for wages.

It has been a good run, just trying to figure out what the next step is, went from knowing nothing about CNC to Senior CNC Programmer/Process Engineer in a decade.

Mike in MN

[tgeng]

i did 5 year apprenticship starting with the dreaded filing the square block and a square hole for it to go thro with less than 2tho clearance all ways, that took care of the first six months. then im pleased to say i spent the remaining years in the company of old men who knew the toolmaking game, i seem to recall the phrase " i think we had better make another one of them" happening alot, but it wasnt untill later years and new jobs i came to realise how well they had taught me, i really dont struggle with anything no mater where i work now.

[theAmishEscapee]

I was in Vo Tech School for Graphic Arts. I wanted to learn photography but the teacher only ever allowed this "prodigy" to use the only camera we had. So I skipped class and hung out in the machine shop with my buddy. He talked me into joining the class the next year (we had been in metal shop together) and I found my calling! Now I have had a variety of types of machining jobs including CNC and now I'm with an R&D company developing inventions....fun!

[peaceandcalm]

combo of lots of diffirnt things, my first job was on CNC lathe in Iscar Headquarters in Israel worked there for 2 years..then on i started to learn from books and own experiance, but while at iscar i was tough there for 1 month on basics..afterwads you need to get your but moving on reading lots of technical englishi...

[thudson]

I don't consider myself a true machinist, mainly because I was lucky enough to get in an old school training program, and I will never compare myself to the true craftsmen that taught the program. Any of the three instructors I had could probably single handedly rebuild civilization's manufacturing capacity if it ever went away.

I dropped out of college in the middle of pure exhaustion from working two jobs trying to put my wife and I through college, and then going into a nasty divorce.

I moved back home and took odd jobs until I got an opportunity to get into a "pre-employment training program" with Michelin Tire Corporation, whose manufacturing headquarters are in Greenville, SC, where I grew up. For those that don't know, Michelin is a family owned French company, that has always been rabid about quality.

I was twenty one at the time and I'm not sure I was prepared for what would transpire, but Michelin paid better than any company in the area, so I went for it.

The program was six months long, eight hours a day, five days a week, starting *sharply* at 7:30 with *exactly* 30 minutes for lunch. It felt just a little like military school. It included drafting, math, and mostly hacksaws and hand filing.

We started out two to a bench, each with a bench vise, a shared surface plate, a set of files, a hacksaw, a square, a micrometer, a dial caliper, a marking tool, and Dykem and Engineers Blue. We all shared one drill press.

Our first task was to saw off a piece of 3/4 inch steel plate, about 3 inch by 3 inch, and make all sides flat and parallel to 0.04 mm (a little more than a thousand of an inch).

We used these files that had a bump in them. They were like flat files for three quarters of their length, and then tapered in both width and thickness, and you could rock the file and find "Le Bump" and work on just the high spots on the surface (the shiny part from rubbing it on the surface plate after putting on blue). If anyone knows the proper name for these type of files, I'd really like to get a set.

Meanwhile, in drafting class (not on a computer), we had to make drawings that they would literally tear up, saying things like "If you make a machinist calculate a dimension, you will never a be a draftsman!" We were taught the importance of making a drawing that dimensioned things off of setup edges. Seems simple to me now, but I still to this day come across drawings that don't take into account how it is going to be machined.

Once we had our piece filed to perfection, we had to mark it up for a square in the center and drill clearance holes in the corner and holes inside the edge to break it out. Then we had to file the faces parallel and square to the other surfaces. The hole also had to be square within 0.04 mm.

Now we had to make a perfect cube, such that every orientation of the cube had a press fit into that square hole.

Now everyone taking this course was just a good old southern boy looking for an opportunity to make more money, but getting yelled at by a Frenchman, a German, and a Checkoslovakian (whose favorite term was '**** Caramba') grated on a few. One guy after filing too much off on the cube and told to start over, threw his cube right through a glass window, walked out and was never seen again. Actually the Chech was the most fun, he would get the German and Frenchman arguing about which had the better engineering and then walk off.

I finished the course and was asked to apply. The interview included drafting and math portions, which I aced. The last part of the interview, they gave me a file, hacksaw, block of steel, etc. and asked me to make a part similar to some of the things I made in the course, but I only had four hours.

Apparently, I did well enough on the test. I got hired and started as a plunge EDM operator, designed a quick change fixture for the two operations done on the machine, was promoted to designer, took mill and lathe courses, and then became a CNC programmer, and then a programmer for specialized CAD and CAM systems. I went on to specialize in general purpose programming, eventually working for companies like Red Hat and Amazon.

Now I'm fifty one years old, and I realize that training thirty years ago has permeated everything I have ever done.

Patience, technique, and measurement(1) will allow your to create things that don't seem humanly possible.


1: Lord Kelvin: "To measure is to know." and "If you can not measure it, you can not improve it."

[Nzoldun]

10,000 hours apprenticeship 1955-60

[Wing Nut]

Northeast Wisconsin Technical College. Class of '98. And my dad was a toolmaker, he helped me choose my career path.

[machinechick]

I lied on resumes, kept learning a little more, then finally after a couple of jobs all those lies actually almost were the truth and I knew enough of what I was doing to pull it off.
In retrospect I feel kinda guilty, most of my employers were good people and the first few sure deserved better than they got!

[DSIF]

HKU. School of Hard Knocks! 20 yrs and counting...

[judleroy]

learn? Trade? What does that mean? Some things are just are.