The Breakroom > The Water Cooler

our trade goes by. its a shame

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ieezitin:
The decline in craftsmanship.


Well lads, I am 47 years old and my apprenticeship was with Bowater Scott co in south east England. I was a fitter turner, that term has vanished . I now live in the USA and have lived here for 20 years, my profession is now a pipe fitter welder,  welding was a side skill that was in my teaching, but here is the USA it’s a trade.

Machining here in the US is looked upon as a pastime, the real machinists are long gone from here, the trade is not looked upon as a trade!. Computers are filling in the jobs. There are machinists here but they are few to be noticed.

This world may revolve and keep going as it is and the US will continue ignoring tradesman that it has left behind  but I say  if it does not wake up It will play in a great demise even further to where it is now. A skill will always be a skill.

I am sorry I had to vent.     God bless.  Anthony.

tinkerer:
Anthony,
I know what you are talking about. Lockheed Marietta used to be the largest machine shop under one roof. I remember during the C5A days giant mills turning out fuselage frames. They had a spinning lathe they made engine fairings on. It was told, it was the last one around. Now very little is done except assembly of parts made all over the world. The airlines used to have a lot of machines and some still do. CNC and 3D laser scanning is common now, but tons of the work are shipped to the OEM's as the repair work is in the purchase contracts. It is easier and cheaper to farm it out than it is to do it inhouse.

Bernd:
I have to agree. I used to work for one of the premiere manufacturers of gear cutting machines. The business is slowly dieing out because of CNC machines and modern software.

Bernd

jim:
its as bad here.

how the hell we've ended up in a world where the far east supply most of the CNC's is amazing.

we where talking at work about about where the best quality measuring stuff is made, everyone said Mititoyo, JAPAN :bang:


i can't see it changing. India is reckoned to be the next growth area in engineering

Raggle:
Sad, isn't it?

But there IS a way to get it back. It won't happen in my lifetime (pushing 68) now because it has to start again from scratch. It has to do with education.

Whenever I travel around and see factory estates  -  dunno what the term is in US  -  I wonder what people are making in the factories. If I visit city centre shops I try to see if there are any goods made in those factories and so far I have been unable to match the two.

When a kid gets disposable income he spends it on foreign-made cellphones, PCs, clothing, etc with NO conception of keeping his fellow countrymen in work. His parents have likely made more "money" in the value of their homes than the fruits of their labour over the past few years. Therefore their jobs have been exported. Their now unneeded skills have not been passed to the next generation.

So where do we start? With the Unimat 1  -  a machine much derided in hobby groups all over the 'net as being "not up to the job". This attitude misses the point of what the job is and is largely based on the basic machine with no upgrade.

Here is the job  -  http://www.unimateducation.com/

The modular nature of the system can be seen to be almost open ended in its scope, up to full CNC at present.

A child entering into such technical education will have a very full understanding not only of how things work but how they are made. He should also have a feeling of national pride. You can't get that if you forbid kids to go near anything sharp or hot.

The system has a Chinese clone  -  http://www.xendoll.com/english/file/products_1.asp  -  where the units are strangely yellow.

As I said earlier, I think it will take a generation. But only if we stop electing gov'ts that are only concerned with redistributing wealth instead of creating obstacles for its creation.

Ray (joining in the rant)

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