Feet 'n Inches
Out of the rat-race at last
- Messages
- 544
- Location
- Devon, GB
Reading through the posts, and occasionally making a contribution, led me to reflect on how things have changed in the engineering field over the years.
Having demobbed from the Army nearly 50 years ago, I trained up as a welder via one of the government training schemes that were in operation in the 70s. A 7 month course that took me through every aspect of manual welding using stick, oxy-acetylene, MIG and TIG. Part of the package was also placement in a local firm. As the years progressed so my skills improved. I picked up fabrication skills and some machining skills. By today's standards, though, most of the equipment I used would be classified as archaic.
In many of the firms I worked in, cutting steel was done by fibre disc cut-off saws, oxy-acetylene or an angle grinder. The last firm I worked at had the luxuries of a power guillotine and a band-saw. No plasma or laser cutting, the equipment was probably too expensive for a lot of SMEs. Accuracy was determined by the naked eye in most cases and if it turned out OK, you could pass the job on with some pride.
Most of the welding was done with stick. High amperage, oil-cooled welders that were capable of handling a 4 gauge (6mm) rod in most places, and large-sized generators out on site (if you were unlucky, you ended up with a JLO, spending much of the time pulling the cord to start it). You based your choice of amps on rod size, steel thickness and welding position. Where MIG machines were available, a large portion of the time was spent was fixing jams, although when they worked, they were ideal for welding up chutes and other applications where long-length welds were required.
Reading posts today, I'm amazed at how evolution and the digital revolution has changed the face of the industry. Inverters, MIG and TIG sets that, even at a relatively cheap level, are still pretty sophisticated. CNC machines that take a lot of the onus of manual setting-up out of the hands of the operator. The plus side of this is that rates of production have probably increased. But is the minus side that operators have become de-skilled? Take typists as an example. Before computer keyboards, producing an accurate document and achieving a high word-per-minute count was considered as quite a skill . . . these days virtually anyone can tap out words quickly on a keyboard, producing the same as the skilled typist of old. I've been out of the trade for over 30 years, so I'd be interested to know whether skills have decreased in that the donkey work has been taken out of a lot of jobs or increased through the knowledge required to operate modern machinery.
Could I cope nowadays? Probably yes, the basics are still there and it would merely be a case of adjusting to the new-style equipment and techniques in use. But, the time to adjust could try the patience of some, I suspect. I can't help thinking, though, that some modern equipment takes away the challenges of 'doing things the hard way'.
Having demobbed from the Army nearly 50 years ago, I trained up as a welder via one of the government training schemes that were in operation in the 70s. A 7 month course that took me through every aspect of manual welding using stick, oxy-acetylene, MIG and TIG. Part of the package was also placement in a local firm. As the years progressed so my skills improved. I picked up fabrication skills and some machining skills. By today's standards, though, most of the equipment I used would be classified as archaic.
In many of the firms I worked in, cutting steel was done by fibre disc cut-off saws, oxy-acetylene or an angle grinder. The last firm I worked at had the luxuries of a power guillotine and a band-saw. No plasma or laser cutting, the equipment was probably too expensive for a lot of SMEs. Accuracy was determined by the naked eye in most cases and if it turned out OK, you could pass the job on with some pride.
Most of the welding was done with stick. High amperage, oil-cooled welders that were capable of handling a 4 gauge (6mm) rod in most places, and large-sized generators out on site (if you were unlucky, you ended up with a JLO, spending much of the time pulling the cord to start it). You based your choice of amps on rod size, steel thickness and welding position. Where MIG machines were available, a large portion of the time was spent was fixing jams, although when they worked, they were ideal for welding up chutes and other applications where long-length welds were required.
Reading posts today, I'm amazed at how evolution and the digital revolution has changed the face of the industry. Inverters, MIG and TIG sets that, even at a relatively cheap level, are still pretty sophisticated. CNC machines that take a lot of the onus of manual setting-up out of the hands of the operator. The plus side of this is that rates of production have probably increased. But is the minus side that operators have become de-skilled? Take typists as an example. Before computer keyboards, producing an accurate document and achieving a high word-per-minute count was considered as quite a skill . . . these days virtually anyone can tap out words quickly on a keyboard, producing the same as the skilled typist of old. I've been out of the trade for over 30 years, so I'd be interested to know whether skills have decreased in that the donkey work has been taken out of a lot of jobs or increased through the knowledge required to operate modern machinery.
Could I cope nowadays? Probably yes, the basics are still there and it would merely be a case of adjusting to the new-style equipment and techniques in use. But, the time to adjust could try the patience of some, I suspect. I can't help thinking, though, that some modern equipment takes away the challenges of 'doing things the hard way'.