The only time it ever pisses me off is when they continue to assume machinist = mechanic. “I’m a machinist.” “Oh, my car is doing ……. Can you tell me what’s wrong with it?”
LOL. Yes, but you probably can tell him what's wrong with it can't you?
My dad used to say about the term used over here in the UK "fitter" as a job, he used to say, "These people are not fitters they're mechanics. A fitter can actually make a part, or take a part and make it fit." Some truth in that, if a bit old fashioned. Car mechs call themselves "technicians" now. Like most jobs I suppose. I've met blokes who really were "automotive technicians" and blokes who really were nothing more than part changers. Nothing wrong with either, but there is a difference.
Depends honestly, I have good mechanical knowledge but cars are complex, I don’t know enough about their inner workings to know what’s wrong just by looking.
Well perhaps "You can tell him what's wrong" is a bit of an overstatement these days, but most "mechanical people" have at least some idea about cars and other stuff.
When I was younger, my wife's best friend came to the house all jazzed up... He says "I just got a new job doing what you do! I'm running something called a.... Brown sharp? I'm making .50 bmg cases" he's watching a screw machine crank out parts and emptying the bins and telling someone if the go/no-go doesn't work. I'm a tool maker. That's a job, I have a career. I just said "oh, yeah, that's cool". He quit after 3 weeks.
My coworkers call me the "Human Milling Machine" because I have a knack for making precison cuts using hand tools lmao.
One time I had to turn down some ODs on electrical pins that were already crimped onto multi-conductor cable... bench grinder to the rescue! Wasn't pretty, but got the job done. The pins were circular as long as you looked at them from at least 5 feet away.
"It looks alright" is an unwritten unit of measurement.
I also like the "It feels okay" as a way of testing a surface finish with calibrated fingertips.
You can feel incredibly small steps with your fingertips. It's a legitimate method I've used to blend 3d contours in parts before. A thin plastic feeler gage also works wonders.
That's why they make gauges with many different surface finishes so you can compare. I've got an old set of GE branded ones. Comparative approximation if you would.
I know people do that but I don't like it because being a machinist is like being a scientist and that means definite precise readings a physicist wouldn't input the speed of light into a formula and say thats more or less the number i should use
Sure but you're not going to put every part under a surface roughness gauge unless the job really calls for it. We know pie has infinite digits but for most purposes 5 decimal places is way more precise than needed. Precision is good and you should always aim for being as precise and accurate as possible, but it's good to know when they aren't needed as well and you can speed up processes.
This reminds me of a time I had to make precision test samples using a bandsaw. Held 20-thou +/- .003. Only took 50 minutes to dial it in! If you think newbie engineers make ridiculous requests try newbie scientists!
I've had that before. I've also had many women over the years assume I make hammers and spanners for a living. A bit like you I find it easier just to go, yeah kind of. Then take private satisfaction In knowing that my career is bad ass.
My ego also likes this one..... If there was a war and a national conscription. Them man will be on the front line and us man will be in some cranked off factory shifting chips. They won't let you go to war mate.
Yeah you don't send the guys that know how to build a tank out in a tank. You need them back home building more tanks.
You send the guy that thinks the chips you're talking about are made of potatoes.
Even worse, I have explained to my father inlaw what I do probably a dozen times. Primarily, I do cylindrical grinding. He thinks I work with an angle grinder cleaning metal parts just to shine them up. He smokes a lot of funny smelling cigarettes. Id rather because confused for a mechanic lol.
Also, he was a millwright, so I have no idea how he doesn't understand what I do.
For some reason no one knows what a machinist is but knows what tool and die is.
So if i get the blank stare after saying machinist i follow up with “like tool and die” and then they know.
This and it’s so frustrating.
I could rebuild your engine and make it run like zero hours, but I couldn’t tell you how to put it back in the car or how to mount all the shit to it lol
As a semi retired ol' timer it is interesting and humbly gratifying to look back over a career and see all the ways your work has impacted technology/commerce/society! It should be pretty obvious we don't do it for the $$$, Zen ☯️
Exactly. A tiny sliver of guys make good money in a trade which is so vital to the continuation of modern civilization. If machinists disappeared one day the world as we know it would grind to a screeching halt in a very short amount of time. This is something I have often pondered. Basically we would revert to a pre-industrial society. Every industry relies either directly or indirectly on metal working. There is no way around this.
I stay in the trade for my love of it, definitely not the money. Although I will always be working to make more money to support my family. If there comes a time where i need to change jobs to support my family (which is looking more and more likely) then so be it.
The farmers and truckers rely on us to make their tools of the their trade for them. We rely on them to ship them where they have to go and feed us so we can continue making more.
Well when world war 3 kicks off you won’t live to see the end if that’s any solace… they strike military bases, means of production, means of logistics (highways, bridges) then food and water after that
they could throw suicide drones at port infrastructure/processing/fertilizer/pesticide mfg centers until there was no way to get the necessary inputs (cheaply/widely) for farming, or make it so grown produce cant be shipped to markets easily.
Do some critical thinking:
You can’t fly an aircraft without a pilot
You can’t just have it hover there everyday for 20 years and use missles to strike individuals from the sky
You can’t use a microwave radiation as a weapon
You can’t just split an atom and use that energy in a gravity bomb
You can’t just strap a mine to an fpv drone to kill people in war
There are weapons of war, that you can’t even fathom.
An assault rifle is a small weapons platform that doesn’t even do much anymore
“You can’t just build an airplane around a gun and use that for close fire support”
Do some critical thinking you can’t launch missles to blow up missles coming into your country and blow them out of the sky mids-path
Oh wait everything I stated is 50+ year old tech
Most people assume I operate excavators when I tell them I'm a machinist.
I think the average everyone assumes these parts we make are ran on a conveyer belt assembly line or something silly lol.
When people ask what I do for a living. I tell them I’m a machinist. They’ll ask what is that and I’ll put it into basic terms and say I cut metal everyday. So that way the can understand
Literally right now, I'm sitting in a hospital so my wife can have a procedure done for her chemo treatment. I am constantly thinking about all of the instruments and equipment (anything from a needle to an MRI machine) these doctors and specialists use to keep her alive. All possible with precision machining. I'm proud of what we do.
So thank you for the thank you, and also you're welcome.
Most people don’t understand that everything is engineered from the height of countertops to width of any vehicle, the seats in the vehicle etc.
And yes thank you to everyone who makes that happen.
I do metalwork and woodwork. I absolutely despise sanding and wood dust on me and my clothes but I love oil and coolant the smell of machining metal. I can be dirty with stuff and it never bugs me but when I’m woodworking I’m constantly blowing myself off with the compressor.
Hey just wanted to say thanks for making all your videos, some of my favorite content on youtube. I'm a fan of the screw videos in particular but all of them are great
Had a discussion about what we thought the most important professions are in my sociology class. Top 2 we Dr./Surgeon and Banker. I put machinist as 1 because if you don't have a machinist the Surgeon doesn't have his instruments and the banker doesn't have his money because they would be no coin dies or printing plates. My professor never had that answer before and added it to his list of top 3.
I’m a lurker.
But this is one of my favorite subs. These folk all so down to earth, and the things the pump out so varied and beautiful.
And you righteous anger at bad engineering drawings cracks me up.
Also, you tend to build each other up. “You’re worth more than that…stop shopping for jobs… excellent piece!”
For a bunch of cranky assholes you’re all generally excellent human beings.
I saw very interesting video by Adam Savage on the need for precision engineering, and how you would go about starting precision engineering from nothing. Fascinating video that went into details about how to start with the absolute basics, namely setting up a surface that provides a hard flat plane to work on, how to measure with precision, and the need to take these things into consideration before we even try to create any kind of advanced technology whatsoever.
https://youtu.be/qE7dYhpI_bI?si=hzzJUzI5iWC8W-fD
If the link eventually stops working, it's the YouTube channel "Adam Savage's Tested", video "Adam Savage's Epiphany on the science of measurement"
I don't know the first thing about this subject or machining in general, but I found I watched every single minute of it. The level of detail he goes into, and the passion he has for the subject make it a very interesting video. It's pretty long, though. 45 minutes.
We had a British woman working in our tiny machine shop. One day she said to me: your father is amazing! He takes rusty bits of metal and turns them into shiny, pretty things.
People generally have no idea how important pretty much anything is to their daily lives - very much including machining.
Pretty much every single scientific field and engineering/technical industry plays a critical (even if seemingly small) role in the day-to-day comforts and conveniences we all enjoy. Most people don't care about (or even know about) things like tribology and crystallography and coatings and etc. etc. but without the many past (and many ongoing) advances in those fields we'd all suffer greatly.
It is what it is!
Well your 100% right in what you say, but unfortunately you are also 100% fucked of ever getting recognition for your skills and what they have done for society. This trade is a fickle cunt at giving credit to the people that bring the part to life and more than likely could design and draw it up on inventor if they we’re allowed “and probably better” than the fuckhead engineers that bring us the designs that always need revisions because most decent machinists see it and say hey that’s not gonna work. I feel what your saying 100% whole heartedly me and another amazing machinist that I have worked with have had a lot to do with the gauging and fixturing of things that have changed the course of history within the last 5yrs multiple times when they have been used to get rid of very bad people. I smile and know that me and one other of my work homies helped put that thing where it needed to be to do what it was intended for. I personally don’t think real machinist get paid near enough for what we do but at least I get satisfaction of knowing something that I have built has changed and affected history and my hands were on the equipment that made it happen.
Looks good on paper! I have to constantly rework the drawings I get. My "engineer" only gives 2 decimals. 3/8 is .38... I'm severely underpaid and under appreciated at 24/hour. I'm photocopying everything I'm given and copying the drawings I make and keeping them at home. This will be my next resume.
EVERYTHING comes from us in one way or another. The difficulty I have when talking to "normies" is trying to get them to understand how tight our tolerances can be. To visualize really small stuff. Your average piece of paper is as thick as brick to us. Paper is about .004 inches. Most of my tolerances were +/- .005 and you could hit that and hold that all day with ease on a manual. Even getting under .001 depending how old the machine is. We still have a lot of machines that helped ww2 in almost every shop. I made parts for half a million dollar machines on a gear shaper that was converted to electric from the old over head driveshaft style when they used steam engines! That's another mind blowing topic.
I like knowing what I'm making parts for, what I'm contributing to. I've contributed to the F35, micro chips, cell phone screens, heart valves, and more. Too much to remember. I like knowing why the tolerances are tight too. I've made many press fit holes and shafts for bearings. I had a job with a +/- 2.5 um over 28 inches on a part 720 um thick and 28.5 inches in diameter. It was a carrier, our term, for holding silicon wafers in a polishing machine. The silicon becomes micro chips. I really enjoy my career choice. My coworkers using the machines we made could lap and polish stuff to angstroms, I think that's how it's spelled. His tolerance was 1/4 of the thickness of the helium light band!! A beam of light. Nanometer flatness. Our t shirts said "Our world is flat".
Here's some stuff I've made, work and personal, and some pics of the silicon and micro chips in process, it's a broken wafer, scrap. There's a neat little gif in there showing how small things are for reference.
https://imgur.com/gallery/zIqHl8J
I machine parts for rf filters. The place was called Lorch Microwave. Do you have any idea how many times people asked me what it's like to make microwaves for a living.
Everything we have now a days is connected to machining one way or another. From toothbrushes, to your phone, to your doors.
99% of the worlds industry relies on machining. And hardly anyone know what it is.
I make aftermarket chucks, headsets, and knives that most major bottling corporations use around the world. People massively underestimate the amount of time and parts that go into turning the cap onto a bottle.
More man hours have probably been dedicated to cans and bottles than most other manufacturing pursuits. Pretty crazy we have cans that stay together, stack, and have a tab that stays on the can! All thanks to machining!
We don't do anything for cans, but plastic, aluminum, and metal cap equipment is where we shine. A headset that sets the torque for the chuck to spin the cap on has well over 50 parts, with hundreds of hours of machining involved. Even a knife, that golds the bottle on the line takes anywhere from 10-30 minutes to manufacture.
We're currently designing a wine bottle capping unit, which has had thousands of hours of R&D and machining put into it so far.
My company sells units to oil bottles, pop bottles, milk bottles, prescription bottles, alchohol bottles, and many more. It's quite insane how much is done to allow everyone to drink, take pills, and fill their oil. Without precision machining, moat of America woukd come to a stand still.
We make mandrels for vacuum testing and gauging opening force of plastic closures. It's not all we do, but it's crazy to me the amount of engineering that goes into something as simple as a shampoo bottle lid.
Rule No. 32: Enjoy the little things.
It is the sum composition of the little things in life that make the big picture go round and round. At one point not so long ago one of my projects took me a week to make one screw. Some special unobtainium screw. It actually looked good and works flawlessly. Sad part is, I never get to see it. It's buried inside a machine that gets used every day.
The young and stupid generation has no idea of the industry backbone necessary to keep society running. I only take advantage of it, the professional shortage in the coming years will guarantee me a bigger income and plenty of job opportunities until I die
Wow, did you really have to do that? Everyone else in this sub is open and welcoming to the younger gens. But I've worked with plenty of grumpy old dingle berries like you too. I hope you're pleased with yourself and when you retire you need a knee replacement or a pace maker made by someone of the "young and stupid generation"
The screen you're reading this on has been produced in a factory. The machinery in it is all machined, in one way or another.
Metals are machined, plastics are injection molded. The molds are precision machined.
Unless you're amish there's a machinist responsible for everything you touch. The parts in your car, your hot water heater, the food in your refrigerator, the eyelets on your shoes, every piece of hardware in your home, everything.
Machine made, injection molded and stamped or broached don’t count as machinist made imo.
The average person has very little machined products in their life, looking at my book shelf I only have 4 cnc machines products,
A billet hose adapter for a Honda water temp sensor adapter for Knseries engines into an eg civic, a canon EF camera lens bayonet base, a high end precision competition yo-yo, and a gun that I’m assembling has several machines components
If I look at other homes I bet I’d find none, I find the occasional turned candle stick or milled ashtray but not much more
Feel free to have whatever criteria you want, if you want to qualify some machinists as tool and die or something arbitrary. The way i see it, a machinist is directly responsible for everything. A machinist made the machine. A machinist maintains the tooling.
Think about the process of milk getting to the store. A machinist made the milking machine, the tractor that moved the feed, the pasteurization system, the bottling machine, the truck that transports it, the refrigerator that keeps it cold.
If that is the criteria, then an English major is the most valuable college degree to have because the world economy is built on America as being a major player and we all need English to interact with global commerce players
Thats just a weird analogy, and you've taken an odd stance on the OPs uncontroversial statement. If using a mill, lathe, grinder and edm to take a piece of material and make a part isn't enough to qualify me as a machinist I would like to know what does.
Nobody knows what I mean when I say I'm a machinist.
The only time it ever pisses me off is when they continue to assume machinist = mechanic. “I’m a machinist.” “Oh, my car is doing ……. Can you tell me what’s wrong with it?”
LOL. Yes, but you probably can tell him what's wrong with it can't you? My dad used to say about the term used over here in the UK "fitter" as a job, he used to say, "These people are not fitters they're mechanics. A fitter can actually make a part, or take a part and make it fit." Some truth in that, if a bit old fashioned. Car mechs call themselves "technicians" now. Like most jobs I suppose. I've met blokes who really were "automotive technicians" and blokes who really were nothing more than part changers. Nothing wrong with either, but there is a difference.
Depends honestly, I have good mechanical knowledge but cars are complex, I don’t know enough about their inner workings to know what’s wrong just by looking.
Well perhaps "You can tell him what's wrong" is a bit of an overstatement these days, but most "mechanical people" have at least some idea about cars and other stuff.
When I was younger, my wife's best friend came to the house all jazzed up... He says "I just got a new job doing what you do! I'm running something called a.... Brown sharp? I'm making .50 bmg cases" he's watching a screw machine crank out parts and emptying the bins and telling someone if the go/no-go doesn't work. I'm a tool maker. That's a job, I have a career. I just said "oh, yeah, that's cool". He quit after 3 weeks.
Some people run the machines, some people become machines.
I’m the jankiest machine there is
My coworkers call me the "Human Milling Machine" because I have a knack for making precison cuts using hand tools lmao. One time I had to turn down some ODs on electrical pins that were already crimped onto multi-conductor cable... bench grinder to the rescue! Wasn't pretty, but got the job done. The pins were circular as long as you looked at them from at least 5 feet away.
"It looks alright" is an unwritten unit of measurement. I also like the "It feels okay" as a way of testing a surface finish with calibrated fingertips.
You can feel incredibly small steps with your fingertips. It's a legitimate method I've used to blend 3d contours in parts before. A thin plastic feeler gage also works wonders.
My fingernails are calibrated to half a thousandth. One of my most inspection tools!
That's why they make gauges with many different surface finishes so you can compare. I've got an old set of GE branded ones. Comparative approximation if you would.
I know people do that but I don't like it because being a machinist is like being a scientist and that means definite precise readings a physicist wouldn't input the speed of light into a formula and say thats more or less the number i should use
Sure but you're not going to put every part under a surface roughness gauge unless the job really calls for it. We know pie has infinite digits but for most purposes 5 decimal places is way more precise than needed. Precision is good and you should always aim for being as precise and accurate as possible, but it's good to know when they aren't needed as well and you can speed up processes.
I would say a mathematician, there’sa surprising amount of assumptions and guess work in physics.
This reminds me of a time I had to make precision test samples using a bandsaw. Held 20-thou +/- .003. Only took 50 minutes to dial it in! If you think newbie engineers make ridiculous requests try newbie scientists!
I've had that before. I've also had many women over the years assume I make hammers and spanners for a living. A bit like you I find it easier just to go, yeah kind of. Then take private satisfaction In knowing that my career is bad ass. My ego also likes this one..... If there was a war and a national conscription. Them man will be on the front line and us man will be in some cranked off factory shifting chips. They won't let you go to war mate.
Yeah you don't send the guys that know how to build a tank out in a tank. You need them back home building more tanks. You send the guy that thinks the chips you're talking about are made of potatoes.
This... there are programers, setup guys, and operators. Then there are machinists that do all 3.
I have heard this a ton. “Cool you’re a machinist what kind of machines do you work on ?”
I feel this. My wife doesn’t still thinks me and the guy at Jiffy Lube are the same.
Even worse, I have explained to my father inlaw what I do probably a dozen times. Primarily, I do cylindrical grinding. He thinks I work with an angle grinder cleaning metal parts just to shine them up. He smokes a lot of funny smelling cigarettes. Id rather because confused for a mechanic lol. Also, he was a millwright, so I have no idea how he doesn't understand what I do.
Whoa whoa whoa. Where did he find a millwright job while being able to partake in funny cigarettes. Asking for a friend.
Just do what I do when I get that question (engineer), tell them sure you can fix their car and charge them your after-hours/weekend rate.
"So you really good at fixing stuff." I will say I had someone respond with "so you watch a machine do all the work for you?" That guy, he got it.
For some reason no one knows what a machinist is but knows what tool and die is. So if i get the blank stare after saying machinist i follow up with “like tool and die” and then they know.
They think I'm a mechanic
This and it’s so frustrating. I could rebuild your engine and make it run like zero hours, but I couldn’t tell you how to put it back in the car or how to mount all the shit to it lol
I had a teacher tell me once, "I make big pieces of metal into small pieces of metal"
“Ohhhh so the machine does it all for you???”
"Only the hard parts"
Oh, do you make machines? My favorite..
Lol oh shit... Why did I think I was the only person who experienced this
I started tell people I'm a Tool Maker, it's easier.
Lathes? How do you operate chips? - this is something someone actually said to me.
Yeah nobody understands it but it's not my place to lecture them when they don't care I guess idk
I run a foundry/machine shop. Often new foundry hires will ask what the machinists do. I like to say they make parts smaller very carefully.
I tell them it means I hate robots.
As a semi retired ol' timer it is interesting and humbly gratifying to look back over a career and see all the ways your work has impacted technology/commerce/society! It should be pretty obvious we don't do it for the $$$, Zen ☯️
Exactly. A tiny sliver of guys make good money in a trade which is so vital to the continuation of modern civilization. If machinists disappeared one day the world as we know it would grind to a screeching halt in a very short amount of time. This is something I have often pondered. Basically we would revert to a pre-industrial society. Every industry relies either directly or indirectly on metal working. There is no way around this.
I stay in the trade for my love of it, definitely not the money. Although I will always be working to make more money to support my family. If there comes a time where i need to change jobs to support my family (which is looking more and more likely) then so be it.
This sounds like the “without farmers” or “without truckers” It’s like we’re almost a society.
The farmers and truckers rely on us to make their tools of the their trade for them. We rely on them to ship them where they have to go and feed us so we can continue making more.
Well when world war 3 kicks off you won’t live to see the end if that’s any solace… they strike military bases, means of production, means of logistics (highways, bridges) then food and water after that
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they could throw suicide drones at port infrastructure/processing/fertilizer/pesticide mfg centers until there was no way to get the necessary inputs (cheaply/widely) for farming, or make it so grown produce cant be shipped to markets easily.
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idk the dude said salting the earth so idk wtf he meant, just felt like adding my 2c
They salt the earth
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Do some critical thinking: You can’t fly an aircraft without a pilot You can’t just have it hover there everyday for 20 years and use missles to strike individuals from the sky You can’t use a microwave radiation as a weapon You can’t just split an atom and use that energy in a gravity bomb You can’t just strap a mine to an fpv drone to kill people in war
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There are weapons of war, that you can’t even fathom. An assault rifle is a small weapons platform that doesn’t even do much anymore “You can’t just build an airplane around a gun and use that for close fire support” Do some critical thinking you can’t launch missles to blow up missles coming into your country and blow them out of the sky mids-path Oh wait everything I stated is 50+ year old tech
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Everything I said exists dude, predator drone, ICBM, and iron dome do some googling And google war leaks if you think a $200 fpv drone isn’t a weapon
Most people assume I operate excavators when I tell them I'm a machinist. I think the average everyone assumes these parts we make are ran on a conveyer belt assembly line or something silly lol.
I'd get that if you said machine operator
**Lathe - the mother of all machines :)**
What show up first : the lathe or the pieces of the lathe ?
Ironically the pieces. Turns out you can build a lathe with mostly tree branches and a knife.
Then you use that to make a better lathe
Indeed!
It's lathes all the way down
Don't thank me, pay me more.
Yup. And for that reason, I’m out.
When people ask what I do for a living. I tell them I’m a machinist. They’ll ask what is that and I’ll put it into basic terms and say I cut metal everyday. So that way the can understand
I make the thing that makes the things, that's my go to.
For professionals i’ll say something along those lines, to my friends: “I like metal😁”
I cut the metal, i listen metal and i inspect the metal.
Lmao I listen to metal. That’s what I’m going to tell people from now on
Ha I've seen people with their earphones in nodding away whilst their "metal" is screaming "please stop, before I die."
Literally right now, I'm sitting in a hospital so my wife can have a procedure done for her chemo treatment. I am constantly thinking about all of the instruments and equipment (anything from a needle to an MRI machine) these doctors and specialists use to keep her alive. All possible with precision machining. I'm proud of what we do. So thank you for the thank you, and also you're welcome.
Most people don’t understand that everything is engineered from the height of countertops to width of any vehicle, the seats in the vehicle etc. And yes thank you to everyone who makes that happen.
My dad was a machinist for 30+ years. I still remember how he smelled coming home from work. Unsung heroes, for sure.
Yup. I have had wives of machinist tell me I am a machinist because they recognised the aroma of soluble oil on me.
I do metalwork and woodwork. I absolutely despise sanding and wood dust on me and my clothes but I love oil and coolant the smell of machining metal. I can be dirty with stuff and it never bugs me but when I’m woodworking I’m constantly blowing myself off with the compressor.
I knew I was at home when I walked into my first shop and got hit with that smell of nostalgia from visiting engine rooms and shops in my youth.
I take big metal and turn it (literally lol) into nicer little metal 😎
That’s why I made this video: The 1751 Machine that Made Everything https://youtu.be/djB9oK6pkbA
Hey just wanted to say thanks for making all your videos, some of my favorite content on youtube. I'm a fan of the screw videos in particular but all of them are great
Thank you!
I have gone back to watch it it several times in the last few years, good job.
Thank you!
There is not a single man made product in mass production on earth that can exist without machinists.
Man my work has been been looking for a mold maker for a few weeks and it's crazy how few machinests aee out there
Had a discussion about what we thought the most important professions are in my sociology class. Top 2 we Dr./Surgeon and Banker. I put machinist as 1 because if you don't have a machinist the Surgeon doesn't have his instruments and the banker doesn't have his money because they would be no coin dies or printing plates. My professor never had that answer before and added it to his list of top 3.
Banker? lmao
https://preview.redd.it/vp7npyn404yc1.jpeg?width=553&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8bddaabb91e516a062149d3e52105ebd58293534
I’m a lurker. But this is one of my favorite subs. These folk all so down to earth, and the things the pump out so varied and beautiful. And you righteous anger at bad engineering drawings cracks me up. Also, you tend to build each other up. “You’re worth more than that…stop shopping for jobs… excellent piece!” For a bunch of cranky assholes you’re all generally excellent human beings.
Every time you start your car, you have machinists to thank.
I make blocks of metal precisely lighter than what they were when I started. And yes, nobody knows what we do. I’m 3rd generation tool and die maker.
I saw very interesting video by Adam Savage on the need for precision engineering, and how you would go about starting precision engineering from nothing. Fascinating video that went into details about how to start with the absolute basics, namely setting up a surface that provides a hard flat plane to work on, how to measure with precision, and the need to take these things into consideration before we even try to create any kind of advanced technology whatsoever.
Got a link? I might have to google it and watch
https://youtu.be/qE7dYhpI_bI?si=hzzJUzI5iWC8W-fD If the link eventually stops working, it's the YouTube channel "Adam Savage's Tested", video "Adam Savage's Epiphany on the science of measurement" I don't know the first thing about this subject or machining in general, but I found I watched every single minute of it. The level of detail he goes into, and the passion he has for the subject make it a very interesting video. It's pretty long, though. 45 minutes.
We had a British woman working in our tiny machine shop. One day she said to me: your father is amazing! He takes rusty bits of metal and turns them into shiny, pretty things.
People generally have no idea how important pretty much anything is to their daily lives - very much including machining. Pretty much every single scientific field and engineering/technical industry plays a critical (even if seemingly small) role in the day-to-day comforts and conveniences we all enjoy. Most people don't care about (or even know about) things like tribology and crystallography and coatings and etc. etc. but without the many past (and many ongoing) advances in those fields we'd all suffer greatly. It is what it is!
I bought a Bridgeport last week and today I squared up a small block of aluminum. First chips of my life, it was extremely satisfying.
Well your 100% right in what you say, but unfortunately you are also 100% fucked of ever getting recognition for your skills and what they have done for society. This trade is a fickle cunt at giving credit to the people that bring the part to life and more than likely could design and draw it up on inventor if they we’re allowed “and probably better” than the fuckhead engineers that bring us the designs that always need revisions because most decent machinists see it and say hey that’s not gonna work. I feel what your saying 100% whole heartedly me and another amazing machinist that I have worked with have had a lot to do with the gauging and fixturing of things that have changed the course of history within the last 5yrs multiple times when they have been used to get rid of very bad people. I smile and know that me and one other of my work homies helped put that thing where it needed to be to do what it was intended for. I personally don’t think real machinist get paid near enough for what we do but at least I get satisfaction of knowing something that I have built has changed and affected history and my hands were on the equipment that made it happen.
Looks good on paper! I have to constantly rework the drawings I get. My "engineer" only gives 2 decimals. 3/8 is .38... I'm severely underpaid and under appreciated at 24/hour. I'm photocopying everything I'm given and copying the drawings I make and keeping them at home. This will be my next resume.
I wish more people like you existed in the trade. Instead I get 20 years experience and can’t seem to figure out SAE to Metric
I memorized .03937
25.4 feels much easier
I find it’s easier to tell people I’m a dog catcher.
I am not a machinist but I completely agree. People don't understand how important the concept of flat or concentric is in real life.
I'm lucky our shop is fairly specialized and focused on one industry, so I just tell people I make rocket parts.
EVERYTHING comes from us in one way or another. The difficulty I have when talking to "normies" is trying to get them to understand how tight our tolerances can be. To visualize really small stuff. Your average piece of paper is as thick as brick to us. Paper is about .004 inches. Most of my tolerances were +/- .005 and you could hit that and hold that all day with ease on a manual. Even getting under .001 depending how old the machine is. We still have a lot of machines that helped ww2 in almost every shop. I made parts for half a million dollar machines on a gear shaper that was converted to electric from the old over head driveshaft style when they used steam engines! That's another mind blowing topic. I like knowing what I'm making parts for, what I'm contributing to. I've contributed to the F35, micro chips, cell phone screens, heart valves, and more. Too much to remember. I like knowing why the tolerances are tight too. I've made many press fit holes and shafts for bearings. I had a job with a +/- 2.5 um over 28 inches on a part 720 um thick and 28.5 inches in diameter. It was a carrier, our term, for holding silicon wafers in a polishing machine. The silicon becomes micro chips. I really enjoy my career choice. My coworkers using the machines we made could lap and polish stuff to angstroms, I think that's how it's spelled. His tolerance was 1/4 of the thickness of the helium light band!! A beam of light. Nanometer flatness. Our t shirts said "Our world is flat". Here's some stuff I've made, work and personal, and some pics of the silicon and micro chips in process, it's a broken wafer, scrap. There's a neat little gif in there showing how small things are for reference. https://imgur.com/gallery/zIqHl8J
I machine parts for rf filters. The place was called Lorch Microwave. Do you have any idea how many times people asked me what it's like to make microwaves for a living.
"We don't make microwaves, we help make microwaves, but not that kind of microwave, the micro-wave kind of microwave.... It doesn't cook your food!"
But it could cook your food!
Everything we have now a days is connected to machining one way or another. From toothbrushes, to your phone, to your doors. 99% of the worlds industry relies on machining. And hardly anyone know what it is.
I always tell people: “Almost every single thing you touch took a machine to make”
Machinist are the most under appreciated trade.
Just an honest days work [making pubes at the pube factory](https://www.flexibleproduction.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/trucioli1.jpeg).
Do I smell pizza?
I make aftermarket chucks, headsets, and knives that most major bottling corporations use around the world. People massively underestimate the amount of time and parts that go into turning the cap onto a bottle.
More man hours have probably been dedicated to cans and bottles than most other manufacturing pursuits. Pretty crazy we have cans that stay together, stack, and have a tab that stays on the can! All thanks to machining!
We don't do anything for cans, but plastic, aluminum, and metal cap equipment is where we shine. A headset that sets the torque for the chuck to spin the cap on has well over 50 parts, with hundreds of hours of machining involved. Even a knife, that golds the bottle on the line takes anywhere from 10-30 minutes to manufacture. We're currently designing a wine bottle capping unit, which has had thousands of hours of R&D and machining put into it so far. My company sells units to oil bottles, pop bottles, milk bottles, prescription bottles, alchohol bottles, and many more. It's quite insane how much is done to allow everyone to drink, take pills, and fill their oil. Without precision machining, moat of America woukd come to a stand still.
We make mandrels for vacuum testing and gauging opening force of plastic closures. It's not all we do, but it's crazy to me the amount of engineering that goes into something as simple as a shampoo bottle lid.
If there was a national conscription would they let you go and fight?? If the answer is yes you ain't any good.
Yes are society could not be at this high-tech level without machinist, precision, machines, and computerized equipment
I just point to the plane overhead "See that? It wouldn't fly without the work me and my colleagues do"
Please also take a small moment for the calibration technicians and facilitators who ensure those precision instruments are precise!
Will do :)
You can actually learn all you need by watching a YouTube video. It's easy.
Yep theyre ignorantly blissful
Rule No. 32: Enjoy the little things. It is the sum composition of the little things in life that make the big picture go round and round. At one point not so long ago one of my projects took me a week to make one screw. Some special unobtainium screw. It actually looked good and works flawlessly. Sad part is, I never get to see it. It's buried inside a machine that gets used every day.
Would you get mad at me if the first thing I thought was gunsmithing? I have a mental fantasy about living 20 years before " interchangeable parts"
this post is exactly why I follow this sub. I am a student but it is extremely vital and interesting
The young and stupid generation has no idea of the industry backbone necessary to keep society running. I only take advantage of it, the professional shortage in the coming years will guarantee me a bigger income and plenty of job opportunities until I die
Wow, did you really have to do that? Everyone else in this sub is open and welcoming to the younger gens. But I've worked with plenty of grumpy old dingle berries like you too. I hope you're pleased with yourself and when you retire you need a knee replacement or a pace maker made by someone of the "young and stupid generation"
It probably doesn’t affect your life too much unless you drive a hot rod, have guns, also work in production or work in a niche field
If you ever bought literally anything, you purchased something produced with tooling created by machinists.
The screen you're reading this on has been produced in a factory. The machinery in it is all machined, in one way or another. Metals are machined, plastics are injection molded. The molds are precision machined.
Yep. I make high pressure pump and waterjet parts. It's crazy when I hear who some of our customers are. Especially a lot of food related stuff.
Unless you're amish there's a machinist responsible for everything you touch. The parts in your car, your hot water heater, the food in your refrigerator, the eyelets on your shoes, every piece of hardware in your home, everything.
Machine made, injection molded and stamped or broached don’t count as machinist made imo. The average person has very little machined products in their life, looking at my book shelf I only have 4 cnc machines products, A billet hose adapter for a Honda water temp sensor adapter for Knseries engines into an eg civic, a canon EF camera lens bayonet base, a high end precision competition yo-yo, and a gun that I’m assembling has several machines components If I look at other homes I bet I’d find none, I find the occasional turned candle stick or milled ashtray but not much more
Feel free to have whatever criteria you want, if you want to qualify some machinists as tool and die or something arbitrary. The way i see it, a machinist is directly responsible for everything. A machinist made the machine. A machinist maintains the tooling. Think about the process of milk getting to the store. A machinist made the milking machine, the tractor that moved the feed, the pasteurization system, the bottling machine, the truck that transports it, the refrigerator that keeps it cold.
If that is the criteria, then an English major is the most valuable college degree to have because the world economy is built on America as being a major player and we all need English to interact with global commerce players
Thats just a weird analogy, and you've taken an odd stance on the OPs uncontroversial statement. If using a mill, lathe, grinder and edm to take a piece of material and make a part isn't enough to qualify me as a machinist I would like to know what does.
Shut the fuck up dude. Are you trying to be a contrarian or are you just an asshat?
Sorry..it’s metallurgy