The Breakroom > The Water Cooler
What will happen?
Spen50:
Cost reductions by large firms may be one contributing factor, but certainly here in the UK the main one is the major decline in education standards. As has been said virtually no schools in the UK have engineering on the curriculum as it is non academic and therefore is not part of the target driven structure that governs our education system today.
So who in the UK gets any manually orientated skills training?
Well here in Lincolnshire it's usually older people like me who want to further their skills base, bored youths on day release to the local Tech or (and this is what I do) the ones that the schools regard as un-educatable are sent to Vocational Training units where they are taught skills they can use in real life. Where I work we teach Metalwork, woodwork and motor mechanics. There are others in the area that teach other skills like bricklaying and plumbing.
So in answer to my question:
who in the UK gets any manually orientated skills training?
Those who outside of mainstream education.
I feel better for that.
But I may continue later ::)
Bernd:
Walk through any high volume production shop. What do you see? Multi axis and multi spindle machines cranking out complicated parts by the thousands. You only need a couple of master monkeys to program the machine. The lower mentality monkeys just need to be trained to put the part on, push the green button, wait for the light to come on to say the parts finish and take the finished part off. "Recycle procedure as needed". And why has it become like this? Because we want the parts delivered "yesterday", not tomorrow or today, but yesterday. We are impatient and greedy that's why we are at this the point in history.
Now getting off soap box.
Bernd
Baldrocker:
:offtopic: slightly
--- Quote ---major decline in education standards
--- End quote ---
Spen50.
Here in Australia there is a move to raise the school leaving age to 17.
The proposed reasoning behind this is to combat the number of 15yr olds
leaving with poor/non-existent literacy and numeracy skills. I cannot see how keeping
an illiterate teenager at school for an extra 2yrs is going to improve matters.
START TEACHING THE BASICS IN PRIMARY SCHOOL NOT REMEDIAL CLASSES IN HIGH SCHOOL :bang:
Sorry for the rant its my favourite hobby horse, or maybe I've turned into an Old Fart in my dotage.
BR
PS I dont blame youngsters for taking the easy way out, after all its the nature of the beast.
PPS Someone start a thread on the lack of discipline for kids.
Bernd:
I need to add to my rant a bit. While taking a nice soak in the whirlpool tube I was rereading for the millionth time maybe one of Guy Lautard's Bedside Reader's. I'm working on one of his projects.
So now on to the soap box:
As I was looking through the book I realized that a majority of his little storys was about making something, such as tooling, or a better way of doing something. In all his Reader's there is no plans of any kind of engine, steam, IC or stirling. It's all about tooling and the process of making it. Same goes for the Wisdom series by Village press. Only Duclos and Kouhoupt has plans for engines. Elmer even includes a section in the end of his book on making some tooling.
What am I getting at. Well take a look at the newbies that come on any of the forums that has metal content in it. They ask what kind of engine they should start out with and the usall answer is a wobbler. Next question usally is what kind of equipment do I need to build it. So he gathers the lathe and mill. He is going to start machining without having any knowledge about tooling how it's made or what have you. Everybody sends him to the Internet catalogs to buy his tooling.
So my questions is were did the Old Model Engineers get there tooling from? No ArcErou or MSC or Enco. They had to make their own tooling. Can you imagine telling a newbie he needs to make a tool post holder before he can turn the piston, or he has to make a milling cutter to mill the flat on the cylinder. This is how the old timers learned. At least they had an understanding of how tools were made and used. I've seen questions asked, I'm sure some of you can relate, "Why can't I used carbide to cut on a small lathe? It squeals and jumps all over the place." Then you tell them they should be using a high speed tool and it needs to be ground a certain shape for it to cut. Oh heaven forbid you mean I need to get near that spinning wheel. I could hurt my fingers.
I think laziness and stupidity is eventually going to kill the model engineering hobby. Plus there's lot's of places out there where you can buy your fun in pretty packages.
Getting off soap box:
Am now going to have a beer and finish reading tonights posts.
Bernd
Darren:
--- Quote from: Bernd on August 31, 2009, 09:09:44 PM --- Can you imagine telling a newbie he needs to make a tool post holder before he can turn the piston,
I think laziness and stupidity is eventually going to kill the model engineering hobby.
Bernd
--- End quote ---
Well said, making tooling is not only satisfying but also valuable learning...... :dremel:
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