If You Had Tons Of Time To Study...

intjonmiller

intjonmiller

Registered
Registered
Joined
Apr 21, 2015
Messages
894
What have you always wished you had time to just study, relating to machining, fabricating, and general metalworking, but never got around to? Or what did you take the time to study out and you've looked back on it ever since, grateful that you did so?

I am very good at my day job. As a result I have a lot of down time, waiting for more work. I'm working on a promotion, but the guys directly above me quite like the work I do, and don't want me to go anywhere else. They specifically recruited me for this position at this location. I expressed that I didn't think they could keep up with me, but they didn't see that as a problem. They added more tasks to my workload and I'm still bored at least 30% of the time on a busy day. They don't mind me studying on the clock in order to keep me here to get the work out of me as needed.

And the main guy I depend on to feed me work is on his honeymoon. I have LOTS of time right now...

I've done many of the Workshop Practice Series books, and I have many more to go. I have a list of books, mostly already downloaded in e-book form, so long I will never get through all of it. But I'm having trouble deciding what to study (specific text or general subject) next. And you people aren't posting enough content here on this site to keep me busy, so I need some suggestions! ;)

It's somewhat torturous to have this much time during the day and almost none at home where I actually have the equipment to practice, but at least I can make some mental progress.

Thanks!
 
That's been on my Google Drive for over 2 years. :) Yeah, now that I actually have machines to work with it's probably time to read that one.
 
That's funny. My birthday is 2-27. When I was a kid my sister and I had a running joke about 227 ALWAYS being significant. If we see 227 then it means we need to pay attention. That sort of thing.

I met a gorgeous redhead in highschool who was not only also born on 2-27, but within an hour of me. Sadly she did not feel the same way.

Anyway, you have my attention. :)
 
I know the feeling about having downtime. When I was in engineering, the last 15 months I was there, I had most of my my workload split between the other 4 guys in my group. That left me with one primary task, supporting all offsite work for our department. It got the point that I was done with my daily tasks within the first 15-20 minutes of the day most weeks. I read books, haunted my other office and shop area and wandered around the building for the rest of the day. I ended up back in production after 15 months of that, even though I tried to get management to let me cross train into some areas that we were very weak on people. Funny thing is when my old engineering job opened back up, I was told that I wasn't qualified to do it! The guy they hired into the position took nearly 20 months to get competent in handling about 10% of what I originally did, and I don't think they ever got him to the level that he could handle all the tasks without messing something up.
 
Tom Lipton's "Metalworking; Doing it Better" can be viewed free on Google Books. I highly recommend it.

When I have downtime at work, and I mean absolute downtime, I read forums on Tapatalk.
 
francist said:
Or this one, only 227 pages which you should be able to knock off before coffee time.... . In the event you want to measure something.

http://www.hobby-machinist.com/threads/national-physical-labratory-white-paper.34729/

-frank
Click to expand...
Preface:

The authors hope that after reading this Good Practice Guide you will be able to make better measurements of the size or shape of an object. The content is written at a simpler technical level than many of the standard textbooks on ‘Dimensional Metrology’ so that it can quickly introduce key ideas to a wide audience. We are not trying to replace a whole raft of good textbooks, operator’s manuals, specifications and standards, rather present an overview of good practice and techniques.
Click to expand...
So 227 pages of overview. Got it. :)
 
Incidentally, it's very tempting to use the downtime to go browse at one of the local scrapyards. No decent metal suppliers up here (just structural steel), but 3 scrapyards within 12 or 15 minutes...
 
Andre said:
Tom Lipton's "Metalworking; Doing it Better" can be viewed free on Google Books. I highly recommend it.
Click to expand...
Does Tom know? Being such a recent publication I wouldn't expect it to be. I found the other version (Metalworking: Sink or Swim). Thanks for the tip!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top