OT Survey: Age & Years of Machining Experience

Tom:

What, and give someone else some information that might later be used against him, like he would do? You've got to be kidding, he's too fearful and paranoid to do THAT. LMAO!

Terry:

Why thank you. But it's obvious why I'm a machinist and not a poet. LOL

BB,

Well we know Cliff has never Programmed, Setup or Operated a CNC Lathe.

I doubt Cliff has ever programmed, setup or operated any CNC.

I was just curious if Cliff had answered the OP questions and I missed it.

Tom

BottleBob wrote:

Tom:

Well, I don't know if he's EVER programmed a lathe, but it's clear he'd have some trouble manually programming one NOW, without some training/practice.

Other than BD's joke posting as Cliff, no Cliff didn't respond to the survey.

I'm 53, and I've been at it for 35 years.

In case anybody's interested, I got into machining by sheer dumb good luck. I was poor and clueless when I was a kid. Family split up when I was 16. Worked my way through high school. Didn't have a pot to piss in, and all that. Started college with a scholarship; but was still poor at the end of the school day, so I dropped out (for a while) to see if I could maybe earn an actual living. I had no useful experience, unless you count washing dishes, cutting lawns, or pumping gas. And I had no education other than high school and a single year of college.

So I worked at whatever I could find, and watched the newspapers for jobs that might be worth doing. In Detroit, in 1971, there weren't a lot of jobs in the papers for anybody, let alone a clueless college dropout. But the most common listings I can remember were for Bridgeport operators. I had no clue what a Bridgeport was, or why anybody'd want to operate on one; but there always jobs available. And, occasionally, the ads would include the wages offered, which were WAY more than I was making.

I worked for a while at a Pontiac car dealership in Northwest Detroit. My job was driving the company pickup truck. I'd drive up Telegraph Road every morning to the GM parts warehouse in the city of Pontiac, to pick up all the parts that the dealership had ordered the day before. I'd take those back to the dealership and put them on the shelves or in the racks. Then I'd spend the rest of my day delivering bumpers and fenders and stuff to garages and body shops.

Telegraph Road, especially North of 8 Mile Road (yes, the same one as in the Eminem movie) is literally lined with small and medium size industrial buildings. I didn't know anything about what went on inside them; but I drove right past a hundred of those buildings every single day. One day, on my way to Pontiac, I saw this little sign in front of one of the nicer and cleaner buildings. It said "Help Wanted. Bridgeport Operator Trainee."

Now, I still had no idea what a Bridgeport was, but I knew that operating one was the ticket to all those jobs I'd seen in the paper. And here was someone who wanted to train me! I almost killed myself, and a half dozen other people, as I swerved the pickup truck across three lanes of traffic to get into that company's driveway and apply for that job.

I'd taken some shop classes in high school, just for fun. I had a little box full of hand tools that I (sorta) knew how to use, as a natural part of driving $100 cars, which were all I could afford, and which needed repairs almost daily. I'd taken all the math and science classes my high school offered, and had done math and physics courses during my year in college. I even knew how to read a micrometer and a vernier, since physics lab work involved a variety of measurement activities. So, the foreman of this little shop hired me. It was one of the best days of my life.

There was another day, four years later, when I decided to STAY in the machining business. But that's another story.

To finish this story: I showed up for my first day in that little shop, and was immediately put to work on a Bridgeport. Someone else had set up the machine with a cutter and a little fixture. All I had to do was load the parts into the fixture, close a DeStaCo clamp, and turn the handle till I got to the red grease pencil line that had been made on the dial. Then I'd unload the parts and check them with a micrometer. But it was a Bridgeport! And I was operating it! And, in my very first hour on that very first job, I fell in love with the whole idea of cutting metal.

And I've been doing it, and loving it, ever since.

KG

Poets express their thoughts in words, machinists do the same in metal.

So what'd the attraction of machining? The smell of singed hair or burning flesh from blue hot chips hitting your arms? The feel of pain from cuts on your hands? The infections you get because you didn't immediately treat those cuts? That refreshing coolant shower? The joy of calling college educated engineers "ignorant fucktards"? You've inhaled enough machine shop air that would kill 20 people but you're still alive and feel imortal?

What's the attraction?

McQ

It is what I've decided to be the best in the world at.

I'm smart enough to close the doors first.

I use OIL no infections.

See #1.

YES, that is the best part, like a print I just got with a 1/4 X 20 OD thread called out 1/4" X 20 2B...

Just smoke a cigarette to filter the air .

If you don't know you wouldn't understand...

============= Start with the fact that you produce concrete items of value.

Rosebeth Moss Kanter in "Men and Women of the Corporation" has several pages detailing how it is common for executives (most with a manufacturing background) to spend time outside of working hours in the plants simply to see the sights and sounds of actual production and the concrete results. Rosebeth Moss Kanter is a well respected sociologist that has studied the generally unknown but exotic tribe know as "American Corporate Employees." Her book is now somewhat dated, with the internationalization, downsizing, etc, but still well worth the time to read. See

Then there is the satisfaction of precision workmanship/craftmanship in the making of useful items.

I see rec.crafts.machining usenet group but no rec.crafts.accounting, no rec.crafts.stocks&bonds, no rec.crafts.telemarketing....

Unka George (George McDuffee)

There is something to be said for government by a great aristocracy which has furnished leaders to the nation in peace and war for generations; even a democrat like myself must admit this. But there is absolutely nothing to be said for government by a plutocracy, for government by men very powerful in certain lines and gifted with the "money touch," but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawnbrokers.

Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), U.S. Republican (later Progressive) politician, president. Letter, 15 Nov. 1913.

McQ:

You answered the survey with - Age 52 with 28 years machining. What was the attraction for YOU and what made you stay in the machining industry for 28 years? There probably comes a time for many where machining burn-out sets in and the trade isn't as much fun as it used to be. Might that be happening in your case? When I started out it was a good paying occupation, equivalent to the other trades that use your hands, electrician, plumbing, auto mechanics, etc. But now the pay has significantly lagged behind the others for a standard 40 hour week. Personally, I would NOT recommend the machining trade to anyone just starting out, since you have to know too much for the amount of remuneration you receive.

There is also the question of "Return on investment" or ROI.

To be a machinist required the investment of considerable time and money in acquiring the skills, plus the opportunity costs of the wages you could have earned in a higher paying job while learning them. Then there are your personal tools, frequently running into the thousands of dollars.

Unka George (George McDuffee)

There is something to be said for government by a great aristocracy which has furnished leaders to the nation in peace and war for generations; even a democrat like myself must admit this. But there is absolutely nothing to be said for government by a plutocracy, for government by men very powerful in certain lines and gifted with the "money touch," but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawnbrokers.

Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), U.S. Republican (later Progressive) politician, president. Letter, 15 Nov. 1913.

Bob, Sad to hear the above from someone who I believe personally enjoys the trade, as do I.

Not sure that I would give the same advice to someone who has a passion for manufacturing, if that person exists now days. Personally I haven't found anyone like that in the past 15 years.

Best, Steve

If they like to work with their hands & get paid very good money tell them to be a plumber. Sad but that can't be outsourced to China. YET?

This is where the undocumented or guest workers come in.

Only reason that plumbing and electrical are still good trades is because of the licensure requirements and union strength. Look for big drive in the next few years to break the unions and eliminate licensure in the name of "competition" and the "free market."

Just who do the policy makers think will pay the taxes and their salaries when we are all working for minimum wage or less with no overtime, no retirement, no health insurance, etc.?

If you want to see the end game for this goto

Unka George (George McDuffee)

There is something to be said for government by a great aristocracy which has furnished leaders to the nation in peace and war for generations; even a democrat like myself must admit this. But there is absolutely nothing to be said for government by a plutocracy, for government by men very powerful in certain lines and gifted with the "money touch," but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawnbrokers.

Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), U.S. Republican (later Progressive) politician, president. Letter, 15 Nov. 1913.

I'm not burned out. I was asking what the attraction was for everybody else. Unka George hit the nail on the head when he said you're making something of value. Very, very, very few people can do it. Sure, there are a lot of people who can scrap out eleven and a half feet of a twelve foot bar before they make the first good part, but a good machinist who can do it right right off the bat is a pleasure to be around.

A *good* machinist will have a great deal more common sense than people who work in other fields. Would you let the engineer who designed the part anywhere near your $500,000.00 horizontal? Of course not.

My wife loves the machine shop atmosphere. She likes the smoky air, the salty language and the occasional pat on the ass by a passing machinist. Unfortunately she has moved into the corporate field and she miss's the shop a lot. She has to dress up, watch her language and can no longer flirt with the men. She says the *paper men* of the corporate world don't even come close to the real men of the machine shops.

McQ

You've never run manual equipment?

McQ

BottleBob wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.net:

Maybe increases have lagged, but I'm not so sure about fallen behind.

In 2004 the average manufacturing compensation was $64,854.00 per employee compared to the average national compensation of $52,553.00 per worker.

So manufacturing jobs pay on average 23% more over the "average" job.

Here is an article written by a very smart guy that I know where this is discussed:

In it he talks about how offshore labor and the effect it has on wages in manufacturing.

The best line in the article, IMO, is; "Low wages alone will never provide a sustainable source of competitive advantage".

It's very true and it's often the one thing that the "handwringers" always leave out of their protectionist rhetoric.

In that vein, I see that Haas has officially opened it's first Haas Factory Outlet in China. It's owned by an American company that owns several HFO's here in the U.S.

The point being, are we better off molding CD cases for a penny profit per 1,000 units? Or are we better off exporting machine tools?

Which factory pays more?

pawnbrokers.

politician, president. Letter, 15 Nov. 1913.

The illegal emmagrants are already into the trades and working cheaper.

John