Hi all, right I am after a bit of advice, I have the opportunity to leave my current employer with a redundancy offer, for the last 30 years I have worked my way up from a network installation engineer to a network design engineer within the data/tv/telecoms industry. Been here for 30 yrs but at 51 and having always said I left real engineering but real engineering has never left me I am looking to see if I can spend the last 16yrs of my working life back in a job I loved and had a passion for.
Before I joined my current employer I work for a great company called Morfax ( sadly closed down years ago ) this company was involved with making the required components for the aerospace industry, the MOD and Formula one teams, we used to provide work jigs, programming and part proving for British Aerospace along side our own production runs of various MOD related products.
For example I was involved with making parts for the GR5 Harrier jump jet, Exocet missiles, Goal Keeper anti missile ship defence systems and my main project I worked on was the Wheelbarrow which is a remotely controlled robot designed for bomb disposal, as seen on TV when checking over IRA bombs.
My training consisted of a year at the EITB (Engineering Industry Training board) centre in Purley south London, where we learnt broad based skills in all aspects of machining and mechanical skills along with day release to Carshalton College to study City & Guilds in Mechanical Engineering Craft studies. After that year was completed I then did my time on the shop floor learning the required skills in Manual milling, CNC milling/operating/data input, I continued on day release to college to pass my City & Guilds and also pass the EITB certificate of engineering craftmanship which I guess all adds up to a good old fashioned apprenticeship. Most of my work was carried out on ( what is now so basic it is scary ) a Bridgeport VMC CNC and also a manual Bridgeport.
I have always watched from a distance as the world of engineering has changed from punched paper tape and manual ISO code input from drawings made by humans on paper to todays industry where CAD CAM runs the new world of machining and thought DOH! why did I leave, so now I am thinking can I find a way back in which is where ( if you are not asleep yet ) you can help me.
So far at home I have purchased a desktop cnc, purchased some good books, loaded fusion 360, loaded CNC emulator Sinutrain for Siemens, SSCNC and good old CNC simulator pro all of which will keep me busy in the evenings. I also intend to pay for some training with a company like AMRC or CNC solutions etc to get hands on experience again.
Do you think this old engineer has a way back into the industry and have any tips on how to achieve my goal or do you think get back in your box old man and let the youth build an app to take your place.