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[crawenwaru]

It just started snowing. It doesn't look like it's going to stick around, but that's all right; there will be more than enough soon.

In other news, things are going all right. I'm in second semester of Machine Tool, and the projects are getting more complicated. Not impossible yet, but it takes more strategy than it used to, and we're expected to

Comments

[laudate666]

Are you tooling (if that's the right word)to make actual things or just to get experience doing it at this point (i.e. are you making, say, car parts, or just working with what will essentially become scrap metal)? I know, car parts is probably an extra-bad example.

[crawenwaru]

Actually, making car parts is a pretty good example, but I'm not making car parts. I could answer yes to both parts of the question, but that would make me a jackass. :) What we're doing right now is making little things that are useful so that we get experience on the machines, so we're not walking into a shop totally cold to the workings of the machine itself. For instance, I'm making a set of parallels for a vice. The parallels hold the part higher in the vice so that one can do things like drill holes into it and make the edges smooth (milling). So we're getting experience, but we're making stuff we could use. There are only two projects that aren't useful, and I gave one to my dad for Father's day (he needed a paperweight). :)I've made a wood vice, a drill index, and a few other things that could be useful.

[laudate666]

All right now, that's just freagin' awesome. You're actually doing something useful in class. You just blew my mind, man.

[crawenwaru]

Yeah, it's totally the opposite of the University; this is all hands on work, and it's pretty intense at that. We work on old school machines in the morning, and get various instruction on computer based stuff in the afternoon. It's crazy, and keeping up with the workload is a full time job. :)

[aremisasling]

Yeah, when I worked for Balax Tool and Die back in High School we had to do checks for every ten parts that came out of the machine to accuracy levels of up to .0001 inch. Granted, I didn't adjust the machine, I just ran it and maintained it. There were even people whose job it was to check a fraction (or for some clients all) of the parts coming out to make sure no one at any point on the line f***ed up on their process. If my machines F***ed up I would have to call someone over and I would usually be reassigned until he/she figured out wtf was wrong with them. Fun, fun, fun. I'm guessing you'll eventually end up being one of those peoples or perhaps higher up. There were mysterious indivuals assigned to full-out program machines who I never saw. I don't believe they really existed. But I think they got paid a lot if they did really exist.

[crawenwaru]

Yeah, I'm hoping to be one of the higher-up peoples, otherwise if I don't finish the program, then I'll be one of the peons. If I'm really lucky (or skillful, I can't tell which) then I'll get to run the awsome VF-E machines. I don't know if anyone else remembers the big grey Haas machines that Orange County Choppers used to make their fancy wheels for the custom choppers? I"m learning how to run one of those right now, and if things go well, I'll hopefully have a job doing that. It seems pretty cool, and I'm catching on pretty quickly to what to type into the machine in order to run the program. Eventually I'll have to create a program to make something, which would be time consuming, but more interesting than working on the machines that I've worked on so far.

[seanorange]

Snow! Cats! Snowcats!

TANGENT!

~Sean

[crawenwaru]

And what a surprise the cats would have if they got outside!!! And I'm pretty sure they'd look at me and wonder why I had caused such awful cold wet stuff to happen. :)

[jadatadew]

mike!
hi

[crawenwaru]

Hola!!!!! How goes life? What's going on with you?

[zensojourner]

So we're going to see you on Orange County Choppers soon fighting with the rest of them? Cool.

[crawenwaru]

Ummm......no. But I will get to run the machines that they use to make the aluminum wheels. :)