Neanderpundit

Buy some Grips!! Piss off the tards at paypal!!

My longtime friends at Altamont are now selling online and accepting Paypal. Go give them some loving. Very nice stuff they have there.

I’m such a fan of ‘Dirty jobs” is that, in some ways, that’s MY job. yes, I’ve done some dirty jobs, but what I do changes quite a bit.

See, the type of work I do, I get to see a lot of different types of manufacturing. In my career I’ve done a lot of diverse things, I’ve packaged donuts, I’ve polished revolver cylinders, I’ve assembled barbecue grills. I’ve packaged toilet paper, Martha Stewart Sheets, made cylinder heads for locomotives, sanded rifle stocks, polished pistol grips, polished pistol slides, written code for countless products from bathroom and kitchen faucets to fuel injector components for heavy diesels.

The work that I do takes me to all of these industries- not for a day, like Mike Rowe, but for weeks at a time. I get to have a very good feel for the manufacture of just about everything, and the chances are, when you open your eyes in the morning, you look at drywall manufactured in a plant where I installed equipment, maybe covered by wallpaper made by another of my customers, get out of your martha stewart sheets and wobble off to the bathroom where you sit on a Kohler toilet prototyped on a machine I installed, wipe your ass with Charmin one of my robots packaged, slip on a pair of Dexter shoes one of my robots helped manufacture, and go outside and get in your car which is chock full of parts made by machines and robots I programmed. You might go to work where you might sit at a desk my machines made, use an elevator driven and controlled by parts my customers make; the building itself is probably made with steel produced at another of my customers.

if you go to dinner after work, you might well eat off plates my robots pulled out of kilns and glazed and refired. Your meal was cooked on a stove or in an oven made at another of my customers, and the plates will be washed, no doubt, in a Kitchenaid dishwasher. I won’t take credit for the Kitchenaid, but the brotherinlaw works there, it’s not any different from any other jobs like that I’ve done.

If, after dinner, you go to the range, you might shoot a revolver or pistol; if you have one made after 97 you might be shooting something I programmed, polished, or heat treated. If you have a long one piece steel cleaning rod you use for your rifles, it probably came from one of my customers. If you go to the refrigerator at night to get a milk or juice or beer, you may well be opening the door on a fridge one of my robots is sealing, and if you sit down to watch a Zenith tube TV made before 96, my robots made that tube. Got a modern US made guitar? probably polished by robots I programmed.

None of the jobs I’ve done are horribly complex, but it required that I fully understand the manufacturing process before I could even begin. So I understand the manufacturing processes of so many different things it’s not funny, and the amount of information jammed in my head rises exponentially.

I’m in a manufacturing facility now that has a LOT of machinery, and all of it is familiar to me- electrochemical machining, conventional machining, polishing, deburring, even a process where silly putty embedded with abrasives is fed under extremely high pressure through fuel passages to remove tooling marks.

Visitors ooh and aah.

It’s all old hat to me. In fact, the machines in this plant are ancient. I’m going to be here for months off and on helping improve their processes and helping them move forward. But the upshot is, I understand a lot about what goes on here and in hundreds of manufacturing facilities all over, because I have been there, and not just for a visit but for long enough to develop a good understanding of the manufacturing process. Ask me how something is made. Chances are I know because I’ve seen it done- from the inner workings of fine wheelguns to the engines in huge locomotives and stationary power systems. From pliers to motorcycle engines, from motorcycle chains to dental tools, from the machines that make dental implants to the chairs in dentists offices. I’ve been there; I’ve done that. And I’ll be doing it next week.

Mike Rowe does a job for a day. I respect what he does because I see he never shies away from anything, but he’s never allowed to develop a complete understanding of many of the things he does. I do, and I consider myself lucky to have the opportunity.

What it means for me is that I never have the opportunity to sit on my laurels. Each new job is a new adventure, a new machine/control/process I must learn, and understand it quickly, and understand it better than most of the people in the plant where I am working- I HAVE to understand it better, otherwise I cannot improve it. And that’s what tiggers do best.

I’m not trying to blow my own horn. People ask me what it is I do- technically, I’m a robotics/CNC engineer. That makes it sound pretty simplistic, this explanation is here to give those who are interested a better look inside my industry. Mr B and Midwest Chick got a whiff of it when I invited them to the IMTS- Mr B has attended before, but even he was amazed at the steady increase of technology. To her credit, Midwest Chick actually understood a lot of what she was seeing for the very first time. What they saw was a lot of different stuff, but I’m one of the very few guys in the industry that make it all work together. The whole of IMTS was full of people who can do thier one thing very well, but there may be a few dozen folks on earth that can bring all those diverse pieces of equipment together and make them play nice.

Having a little ADD helps.

So does having a very flexible brain, you have to be able to learn new stuff quickly.