Passion
One of the things sharp observers notice about me is the way I approach the things I do.
There are a few things- like filling out expense reports- that drive me nuts. but the rest of what i do, I do with passion.
I’ve been in the robotics field for fifteen years. I have a personal relationship wiht all the people where I have installed robots, and all the robots I have set up or programmed or designed, I stay in touch with- so to speak.
When I installa system, each robot has a unique IP that I can contact via the internet anywhere in the world, and I often log on to the robot so that I can see how it’s been utilized, what changes can be made to improve operation, etc.
A couple months ago I logged on to a robot I’d installed some years ago. I saw that they had some inefficient routines. In a hotel room late at night, I downloaded the code, made a few changes, in about qa week they had a noticeable increase ion quality and cycle time.
They actually called me. ‘Something happened to the tobot” they said. ‘The parts are better and we get about 15% more a day”.
“So what’s the problem”?
“We want to make sure something didn’t break”
“No, I did that.”( I’ve done this before. They keep a password active for me so I can get in) ” I changed a couple routines last night”
“Oh. Thanks!”
Passion for what you do is what separates the placeholders from the performers. Passion for your job can exist at the McDonald’s burger-flipper level. Do you have passion for what you do?

I sure hope you get credit for such passionate diligence (in cash, bonus, gold bars, whatever) in addition to the satisfaction of doing the right thing.
I just got home from teaching a robotic laser welding cell to run a new product. That’s my weekend.
It drives me nuts to see an inneficient move in a routine. Management gets upset when I stop the line to fix something like that, but they don’t correlate that to the increased efficiencies they are seeing in the line.
I sometimes imagine myself as a robotics choreographer.
Ed, it’s all about the smooth, isn’t it? I like it when there’s zero wasted motion.
I used to, Og. The company I work for was recently purchased by a global corporation, & everything has gone to shiite. I’m hunting–I can’t mark time half the day & play corporate-style games the other half. I LIKE to work; I like to keep busy.
Kudos on your professionalism.
I’m trying to get them to teach me to touch off the robot cell we have at work (I’d love to learn the full programming, but that’s not ging to happen at this job)
Actually I could learn HOW from the manual (I used to setup/make tools for/program a 15 axis CNC spring coiler: this is child’s play compared to that) it’s just that I’m not ALLOWED to… yet…
Watching how it runs after the guy they “trained” (cough) to do it makes me kind of ill…
I hate my business; but I LOVE my work.
I couldn’t imagine having to work at a job I wasn’t passionate about for any length of time.
I mean, I’ve done it, but I’ve always moved on as soon as possible. The prospect of not doing so… no thanks.
Grau, let me know any time, I can teach you robot programming in an afternoon. Plus, I can hook you up with folks who will be happy to help you advance in that direction.
Mmmmm, now I am itching to get my Layout working again and run it on my laptop…
Og, you are like the bloke that supplied one of our sysyems… “Here… I fiddled with the source code… should run faster…” and I feel like we have the software on a new PC!
He also never asks us for tweaks we suggest/ask for… says it will make the next sale easier. He only charged us for a major rewrite when we wanted virtually a new package. And my boss wonders why I do not want to try other companies similar products.
If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right. It does not matter if you’re programming a robot or writing a paper.