CNC Training - For Real! (I hope)

P.V. (Kriss Hogg) wouldn't know because he's not a machinist and he's proven he's not much of a problem solver.

Take a specific like being obsessed with attention to detail... that would be a draw back not an asset in some professions.

Jon Banquer San Diego, CA

Amen! I hope I'm up to that part of the challenge.

KG

Opps, sorry, I didn't see this till after I responded to Jon.

-- Tom

Kirk, I think moving them through the steps as quick as possible would help you to retain good apprentices. Having "hard" steps in responsibilities and duties is a turn off in my opinion. You have to spend 6 months doing janitor duty before you can catch parts coming off a machine discourages hard chargers. Keep the steps flexible so that they can move along as quickly as possible.

You may have mentioned it before, but how large is your company? Number of machinists or spindles is what I'm looking for. Approximations are OK.

Best, Steve

You're just a tool / fool Brewer and I so enjoy using an idiot / liar like you.

It's just so easy to do. ;>)

ROTFLMFAO

Jon Banquer San Diego, CA

good point.

Couple of things, but they are related. I've never trained a machininst or anyone else. I've probably mentored a hundred kids or more. Having that perspective and letting the kids know that is how you look at this is important. This part of the trade is the people part, not the technical side. You'll never really quantify it.

I also used a two interview process. The first was to let me decide what I wanted to do with an applicant. The second, if there was one, was to tour the shop talking to the guys and let them know just how exceptional the group they were being invited to join was and that I'd decided that the applicant was worth the investment we were all going to make. I'd also tell them that they needed to be assigned work in the shop that both needed doing and that would basically let them hang around while they learned how not to kill themselves or others. They would move ahead when I, or any of the others, thought the time was right. Thenm, you just have to watch and interact with them. Their behavior will let you know when the time is right, either to move up or on. LOL

Finally, nearly everyone was a referal. Some from existing employees, others from vendors or customers.That referal, in fact, is really the first step in the interview process. The best I ever had were High School juniors and seniors who had been brought in by a parent who worked with me.

I never ran an ad for an apprentice mold maker and there was usually a least one or two that were waiting for a slot.

In the end, the only thing that matters ( beyond the necessary raw ability ) is the willingness of all of the parties to invest in the future. That, and the respect for that investment - on both sides of the deal.

And just what are you doing to improve the future of the younger generation?

All I've seen from you is condemning other people or products because they don't go along with your view of how things should be.

I don't like certain brands of cars, electronics, etc., but the ones I don't care for must still work for the people who like them, or they wouldn't still be in business.

Don't condemn someone who's trying to improve the future because you don't agree with the way he is doing it. At least he's doing something.

As I think I said earlier, you're right about moving the kids quickly. No doubt boredom will kill the deal. But I'm worried about moving too quick, and missing chances to teach the most basic stuff while I still can. I don't want trainees who spend three days on a machine adjusting the offsets to control a boring bar, and then asking "Which one's the boring bar?". I see that too often already.

The company has 23 front-line machines. 2 five-axis mills, 1 HMC, 2 Mazak Mulitplex's, 5 Integrex's, and 13 CNC swiss types of vaious sizes from 10mm up to 32. We'll have three more mills by the end of the year, and will be replacing the Multiplex's with new Integrex's by the end of this month. We're weak in "basic" equipment. Not a Bridgeport or an engine lathe in the whole shop. Floor space is used for production, and growing workloads make it hard to invest time, money, or anything else, on things that can't make shipable work right now. That will change, I hope, and we'll one day have space for a proper tool room, which can also serve as classroom. The owner is looking for land for a new building; but right now he's spending on production equipment and people. If we can get those right, then real estate would be easier.

Total people is around 50. It should be 75, given workloads and growth potential. But that only works if they're good people. Adding warm bodies at this point just gets in the way.

KG

We have a very successful 23 year old who works in our shop. He's a real machinist and very talented. The company I work for is almost always listed in the top 10 companies in the U.S. to work for.

The question really should be what is your company doing about the situation? You know who I work for but you refuse to say who you work for. What are you ashamed of / afraid of?

I've got an opinion. I express it. Here's another opinion for you... CAMWorks is crap and isn't developed the way it should be developed.

It's a b.s. program that is very poorly thought out and I'm calling Kirk on it. Deal with it.

Jon Banquer San Diego, CA

Interesting perspective. I've been in this business 38 years. I've never been laid off, and never worked for a company that ever laid off anybody. The folks who've picked "the honeywell type of shop" are filling up the unemployment lines, right now. I"m hoping that serves as a lesson, and perhaps a motivator, to the next generation of kids that I'm trying to reach.

KG

Kirk, Sounds like a nice place to work with modern up to date equipment. Sounds like a decent toolroom would be an excellent addition when space and time permit. The idea of using the toolroom as a training ground is an excellent one in my opinion. They are generally somewhat less frantic than production and the machinists are in most cases have lots of years of experience with solving problems.

I feel very fortunate that I served my apprenticeship at a gov. research facility where money wasn't the prime concern. We were moved every 3-6 months to a new area. I spent 6 months at a smaller satellite shop while my Q clearance was being approved. Then on to the main machine shop, 3 months in machine repair, 3 months in drafting, 6 months in the precision machine shop.

Some of the best training that your tax dollars could provide! I feel fortunate to have had that kind of training as opposed to some of the apprentices who I meet at the mandatory night school who hung on a radial drill press for two years.

This company in PA seems to have their act together. From what Kirk described of his employer they are a lot bigger.

Jon Banqeur San Diego, CA

========= Lots of good intentions and extensive/intensive thought in both this and your original post.

Internally, both posts are congruent and logical.

The major problem is that the society/culture/economy for which your proposed program is ideal no longer exists in the US, and has been extinct for at least a generation. FWIW -- you are not unique here. Several years ago, Brasil attempted to import and implement the German trade education model. Because of the very different social/cultural conditions that didn't work either, although large sums of money were expended.

The current economic situation makes inhale-exhale staffing the new US business paradigm, thus rendering intensive long-term education/training cost ineffective for both the employer and employee in other than very select technical and professional specialties, e.g. neurosurgery (and even here this is generally an employee expense).

In this current atmosphere of increasingly rapid-fire job change and employment instability, long-term investment of time and money in a trade or profession, subject to overnight obsolescence, is not a viable option. To be sure there are still some areas such as medicine, engineering, IT and law that are legally protected by licensure and education requirements, but even here, many of the traditional entry level jobs in these fields are being exported by telecommunicating to India and other low wage [relative to the US] countries.

Rather than spending large amounts of your employer's money and your time/efforts on attempts to select and train "all-rounders," the more cost effective approach may well be "work simplification" to reduce the job content for a given position to the minimum required, and to intensively train for just those tasks.

As a technical educator, I don't like this suggestion any better than you do, but it fits the new socio-economic realities.

Unka' George [George McDuffee]

------------------------------------------- He that will not apply new remedies, must expect new evils: for Time is the greatest innovator: and if Time, of course, alter things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end?

Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, essayist, statesman. Essays, "Of Innovations" (1597-1625).

In the beginning when they are cleaning the plant, they should be going to school taking a course in machine shop. Because in the beginning they don't know any safety rules, so they can be a danger to themselves and others. I have seen this happen. School would give them time to learn the safety rules and give them the basics of the trade. Plus they can begin on school machines and get their feet wet in the idea of cutting metal. This lets them be more productive on the shop floor when they get to that point when they are asked to run machines.

Also we found that people who were mechanically inclined work out the best. Just have a high GPA in school doesn't mean to much, if you don't know which way to turn a bolt to loosen it. I seen them to and they didn't last long. If your state offers what they call a GAT B (not sure of spelling, been 38 years since I did it.) test through the employment office for free. Then you should require all perspective applicants to score well on the test. This test was used to begin the sorting process for apprenticeship when I was young. It measures everything including how fast you could stack and move parts to reading and math.

My thoughts

Richard W.

Good thoughts, George. But I sincerely hope you're wrong.

We already do "work simplification"; but how simple can things get with precision CNC machining? "Take this single bar of titanium, and this single print, and that one CNC machine right there, and make me some bone screws" isn't really very simple. And even if we go as far as "push this button first, then that one, then apply the micrometer right here..." we still need somebody - more somebody's than we currently have

- to give those instructions, and to know what instructions to give in the first place.

I'm not trying to change the world, or even the prevailing business paradigms. I just need a few good people for one modest size shop, and I'm hoping to succeed precisely because there are exceptions to the rules you cite.

And maybe, just maybe, I can find a small steady stream of people who don't want to spend their lives being inhaled and exhaled, and who'll believe that I can show them something more promising.

It may be totally Quixotic, but I'm committed to trying. Wish me luck, at least?

KG

Some additional thoughts, now that you've started me thinking.

The machining business is, by nature and necessity, built on a willingness and ability to make large-scale long term investments. Machine tools aren't cheap, and they take a long time to pay for themselves. Same with big assed buildings, with utility bills that most people wouldn't believe. And payrolls. And fixtures and tooling. And lines of credit to fund work that's in progress for substantial time periods, and outsource costs for heat-treating and plating and more.

If long-term investments aren't feasible, then machining itself can't happen. But if companies can and do make big investments in other things, then they MUST be able to find a way to invest in skilled labor, which is at least as important to success as any other investment.

I'm still hoping you're wrong of course. Please be wrong.

KG

No, it fits your narrow minded one sitting on your ass in Kansas rather than say you being active in a very, very successful engineering oriented high tech company in San Diego, CA.

There will always be a place for exceptional machinists who are very well rounded rather than the limited button pushing idiots you wish to produce. While a well rounded machinist may have to move around, his type of job can=92t be exported easily. The need for well rounded machinists like this will remain and the salaries for this type of machinist who can be flexible will continue to climb.... if the machinist is willing to keep moving if necessary rather than what a complete idiot like Bottlebob did which was to stay on one place for many years and work for "coolie wages" for someone with his type of experience.

Jon Banquer San Diego, CA

Thanks, Richard. Good thoughts.

Teaching safety won't be a problem. I'm a fanatic about it. Anybody who gets hurt working for me had better be dead, 'cause I'm gonna kill 'em when I find out about it.

Using a school's machines to teach basics is a good idea. As I explained in another post, we don't have a toolroom or any basic, manual equipment. Maybe I can plan a co-op program with one of the local schools - something that would dovetail closely with what's happening on the job. An ideal version of that might be: "Take this turning tool to school with you tonight. Try it on the lathe there, and experiment with feeds and speeds, and how to break the chips and get a good finish. Then bring it back to work tomorrow and we'll put it in the Integrex and see/use what you've learned."

The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that I need to find some way to do this. It's hard to learn metalcutting when everything happens behind the guards, obscured by the splashing coolant. And when modern machines deliver a finished part at the end of every cycle, how do you get the hang of drilling properly before reaming, or of rough and finish passes?

Once I have a decent group of kids to teach, some of the teaching will be harder than I like.

Additional thoughts or suggestions?

KG