What Type of Machining Experience and Interest Do We Have On This Site?

What Types of Machining Interest and Experience Do We Have on This Site? (Select as many as apply.)

  • Hobby use for general fabrication & repair

    Votes: 288 84.5%
  • Business Shop owner

    Votes: 37 10.9%
  • Professional Machinist

    Votes: 59 17.3%
  • Tool ownership ie Lathe & mill

    Votes: 262 76.8%
  • Level of experience: Experienced

    Votes: 86 25.2%
  • Level of experience: Newbie

    Votes: 104 30.5%
  • Level of experience: Moderate

    Votes: 138 40.5%
  • CNC experience

    Votes: 64 18.8%
  • Formal education from a tech school

    Votes: 86 25.2%
  • Formal training in Machining

    Votes: 74 21.7%
  • Other: Specify Below

    Votes: 47 13.8%

  • Total voters
    341

HMF

Site Founder
Administrator
Joined
Sep 22, 2010
Messages
7,223
Would a general member profile ID help for new members and lurkers? I mean a thread based on general member polling for what type of interest and level of experience is on-line.

ie:
Hobby use for general fabrication & repair
Business Shop owner
Professional Machinist
Level of experience
Level of formal training
Level of formal education from a tech school
CNC experience
Tool ownership ie Lathe & mill
 
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my father and grandfather were machinists, and i grew up with a lathe in the basement.
my father taught me how to use the lathe, and to silver solder metal, among other things including a love of guns.
the USAF taught me the rest.

I'm now starting career #3 as a gunsmith, and building up my own shop now with
grizzly g0602 lathe
HF 44991 mill/drill with DRO
a couple of 6" bench grinders
4*36 belt sander
4*6 HF bandsaw
bead blast cabinet, a paint booth, and numerous small tools I've had in storage from the father.
 
I am a retired electronic engineer, but I have always been a closet mechanical guy. I started machining as a hobby when I used to restore american made small gas engines. My first lathe was a Unimat which I have a number of accessories for. I did lot's of machining on that little lathe until I picked up an Atlas 618 from a retired machinist whom only used if for building a scale model steam locomotive engine. Over the years I machined all sorts of small parts for various things, and then began getting interested in old clock repair. Since retirement a little over a year ago I have taken up repairing old clocks full time for customers. I would rather make replacement parts rather than buy them in order to hone my skills in case I get a clock for which there are no readilly available parts.

I know it is not the greatest thing, but I will confess that I have a very good robust drill press with less than 0.001" runout measured with a rod in the chuck. I have an x-y table on the press and use it for lite milling of small parts mainly in brass and aluminum.

In the future I would like to get a proper small mill, probably a Sherline. My shop is quite small so I don't have space for larger equipment.

So I guess that is my story.

David
 
No experience other than working as a swarf rat in a machine shop 30 years ago. That was my job to clean swarf up around the machines and throw it in a dumpster. I hadn't heard the term for that job until recently. I also got to thread hold down bolts, cut thousands of keys and even filled the oil reservoir on a boring mill after forgetting to put the plug back in. I should have been fired for that, but wasn't.

Roy
 
No formal training but was taught by my father (Tool & Die Maker) and Uncles (one a Metallurgist and the other a general Machinist) from the time I was old enough to reach the controls on the machines. Worked 4 years as a dealer auto-mechanic (among other jobs including carpentry and construction) through college and have an additional 8 years of college education in various technical/math fields.

Self taught in welding (mostly TIG and stick) and got some help from a friend whose a certified welder.

Love being a shop dweller and making things after taking the monkey suit off when the day job is done. Been doing that for as long as I can remember. Hope to retire from the corporate world one day and continue doing shop stuff.
 
Same as Ray. I was taught by my father. He owned a machine shop that I worked in while going to school. After he died I ran it for a couple of years while training by
brother to take it over. I spent the next 20 years as an engineer designing the machines that build the things that you use every day from Hot Pockets to F-35 fighters.

My father worked in the space program and even got an award from NASA for helping put the first man on the moon.
My grandfather used to work for Pratt & Whitney making wood propellers during WWI, and was a machinist also.
 
I also learned my trade from my Dad who was a Journeyman Machinist for Cat in Peoria IL before WW2 and was recruited to come to MN during the war to run a lathe at Northern Pump a huge plant up here the Navy took control of and they made 12" guns and bomb sites. When he arrived they didn't need lathe operators, but they needed Maintenance Men, so he Apprenticed under a German Immigrent who taught him to hand scrape.

He also thought of a device to help in testing parallelism of ways and after the war he patented it. It was and is called the King-Way Alignment Gauge. When I was a 10 or 12 he would bring home Myford OD Grinder tables or Boyer Shultz table to scrape at night in our basement and my brother Tom and I would watch and "help". Any of you Dad's know what I mean, but he was patient and we began to learn, during my summer vacations we would work with him rebuilding machines. I remember working at medical device plants scraping Myfords in my teens and Onans when I was in my late teens. This was before the Biax Power Scraper was invented and we would scrape by hand or use a Anderson Power Scraper (shown in the Connelly book) (My Dad knew Connely as he was a Vo-Tech teacher in St. Paul).

Over the years we would share shops with Millwrights so I worked with them and continued to rebuild and Apprentice under my Dad. In the spring of 1971 I was 20 and we had a huge fight and I drove up to Alaska with 2 friends (another story and adventure) while I was up there I got a letter from my Mom and she said that my Dad had got a big contract and if I could get home I could go with to Iran. I borrowed plane fare from a friend and flew home. Had to apply for a passport and make up with my Dad. So in July of 1971 my Dad and Millright named Don and I flew to Iran where we worked for 3 months installing a machines in a machining plant for BMY of York PA who had built Sherman tanks during WW2 and after the war had sold /given several hundred to Iran. The plant was to rebuild and modernize these tanks. It was an amazing experience and I had my 21st birthday in Masjid-i-Solimon Iran (MIS for short). When I returned home I went alone around the world and my Dad came back through Europe. Don Stayed and his family eventually moved there.

After that I was working full time as a Machine Rebuilder at the used machinery company who had sold all the machine tools to BMY and had also liquidated a Boeing plant where most of these machine originated from. I spent several years working as a contractor at Midwestern Machinery in Mpls with my Dad and after he passed. The owner became like an uncle. Working there I got a heck of an education as one week I was scraping a Moore Jig Bore and the next a 600 ton punch press, or a G&L or Lucas Boring bar. I scraped and repaired just about any or all types of machines over the next 20 + years. We bought our first BIAX Scraper in 1972 and continued to make King-Ways. (You will occasionally see one with Sherr-Timico on the box, My Dad sold them a license to make them too as well as Do-All, both MN companies).

We got an order from GM in Indianapolis in 1982 I think and they wanted someone to come and demo it, I flew down and did it. While in the plant I saw about 50 guys scraping by hand and off the cuff said "how come your not using Biax Power Scrapers?" They had no clue what they were....so I went back and for the next 2 years taught their men in that plant as well as in 2 other plant in Indy how to scrape with Biax. I came back and got my guys jobs working for Kurt Mfg (the vise company as I was a friend of Bill Kuban the son of the owner who my Dad knew), liquidated the shop machinery and started out on my own with my Dad's straight-edges and my Biax's teaching rebuilding and scraping. Since the 1980's I have taught well over 20,000 men and women all over the world how to rebuild / build / scrape ways. I have taught several hundred students and for dozens of new machine builders here in the states, Europe and mostly in Taiwan.

I now work from my home in Cottage Grove MN and rebuild machines for old friends here in MN and continue to teach. Plus I have become addicted to the shop forums and was aching for a board like this one as the others were so unfriendly. I still write on the other boards because some of the people on there need to know the correct way, many of those guys on the other ones, figure they are experts after scraping 1 machine or some are all talk.

I have never Met Nelson or Tony and some of the other Moderators, but they feel like family to me. Uncle Nelson, Little Brother Tony and cousin Ray.....lol...and all my "kids" who I teach. I had a man in Turkey tell me once after I taught him to scrape at "Spinner" a German new machine builder who opened a plant in Istanbul...This student, with tears in his eyes told me through an interpreter "I taught him like his Father did" Made me cry too...so I now call my students "my kids". :))
 
My interests and experience are at opposite extremes. I'm a hobbiest, school of hard knocks guy. Self taught carpenter, hot rodder, off road rock crawler, welder, machinist. I typically learn by reading and then doing. I contribute where I can but typically don't participate unless I think my post is providing value. Most of what I do is repair something or make/modify something in support of my hobbies and lifestyle.

I like to read about how 'the other half of the world lives' i can even learn something from posts about using portable boring bars boring out bushings on big earth movers or repairing and machining something the size of a refrigerator. Even reading about micro welding and machining can be interesting. Still don't have a clue how someone can use micro mills down to .001" without breaking them.:headscratch:

So I see lots of value in diverse posts and sites. There is information on this site that I don't find elsewhere. Thats why I'm here and hopefully can contribute to help others.
 
First Automotive Systems Technician, then Engineer in Mechanics and Electrics, paid my way through College learning and manufacturing plastic Injection molds on CNC equipment, ran very few conventional machines. Always had admiration for Airplanes, son of a Pilot I guess. Worked for 6 years after college procuring and designing molds and dies for GE. Then started my own machinning business in 2004, Working for CAT and many other companies, now have developed some experience in 5 axes machinning of impellers for Datum Compressors. Learning everyday. Among my Machines, DMG DMU 100 5 axes machine equiped with Renishaw probe, 18Krpm spindle, Tooling laser probe and so many features. Also a 6 axes double spindle Turning center with live tooling, equiped with Renishaw tooling setter. Also a Doosan 30X16X22" High speed Vertical Machining center. Also a Hardinge superprecision HLV lathe equipped to run as a milling machine. Also a very old Shop smith 5 in one machine, which converts to lathe, saw, bench drill, sander...I just love this old machine. have some experience with Universal Grinding Machines. I can program CNC proficiently up to 5 axes on Heidenhain and Fanuc. Yeap, all this in Monterrey, Mexico.

I love this site, because I learn a lot, Since I entered, I have made a nice Vise, a Fly cutter and a Jewelery Ring. I`m now working on aluminum Anodyzing and will continue to share and learn in here.

If anyone needs a cnc program, or I can be of help don`t hesitate to ask. I want to share, I have cnc programs for sitting round inserts and apkt inserts so you can make your own cutters.

Regards.
 
I'm entirely self taught, using the internet and many books I've purchased to learn. I originally bought a Sherline lathe 7 years ago to make parts for a model I was building (Saturn V rocket replica) and after experimenting with it for a while, discovered that it wasn't really large enough to do the job. So I did the best I could. In 2007, I relocated the family to Alabama and the lathe stayed in storage until the middle of last year due to various life issues. I began to experiment and learn again and a Sherline mill joined the family (apparently I had forgotten that the Sherline was a tad small for my BIG aspirations).

Las fall, I visited the home of a club member (military truck collectors) and he had a SB 9, along with a mess of other equipment packed into his garage. We talked about what he was able to do with it, which included making replica machine gun cooling shrouds for a Sherman tank he was fixing up for the city as a display. I was inspired! I began haunting Craigslist and when I found a lathe for sale, I researched the type and model.

In October, a former tech school advertised some South Bend lathes for sale, including a 13" x 40. I called my buddy up and asked him "how would you like an all expense paid trip to Atlanta?".

I wound up with that lathe and a Bridgeport mill. The ride back from Atlanta to Birmingham was a nervous one, with both of those heavy pieces of iron in my trailer.

Since then I've got the lathe online and have been learning how to work a real lathe, as the Sherline was not really operated the same way. But it's been a blast. I've made tools for truck restoration and cleaned up v-grove pulleys among other stuff.

I am doing more a more complex stuff on the lathe, when life stuff doesn't get in the way. Here lately it seems I mainly just go to the shop and admire it and don't even get to turn it on. I have searched for machinist courses along the lines of "continuing education" but down here in the South they aren't very common.

But I have it and it's MINE! :lmao:
 
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