NP317 wrote: ↑Sat Sep 21, 2019 10:24 am
My lathe has 4G WiFi connection to my iPhone.
I'm so happy.
I'm an Old Guy
RN
My lathe has a bluetooth-connected TouchDRO system, displayed wirelessly on an Android tablet; not to mention w/ 1 micron glass scales.
I'm a happy guy and an old one too!
No, seriously joking aside. I really do have the TouchDRO system on my Android tablet. For all this complaining about cellular devices, I can store (and do!) PDF's of tap & drill tables, feed & speeds, threading charts, G-Wizard, various machining apps, electronic Machinery's Handbook, a slick scientific calculator etc. on an Android tablet the size of 7" x 9" sits in place of the big DRO boxes that used sit on a bracket on the lathe. I can pull up any one of those right on Android tab that's displaying my X & Z coordinates, just like you would with any app on a phone: minimize the DRO coordinate display, maximize the calculator, or some other app; do your work; then resize the DRO app again and off you go. Right there at the machine. No running over to the desk to look up something. Simple and efficient as it gets. The old oversize DRO boxes could not do anything except display coordinates and few simple related tasks, let alone be wireless. And it doesn't cost that much!
It's a tool to me and a damn slick one at that. Sure I can make phone calls from it. Sure someone can message me, but that's not what I choose to do with it. I suppress those aspects when I'm down in the workshop at the lathe. If I'm a slave I don't mind being a slave to the TouchDRO Android (if you can call it being a slave). But it's what you CHOOSE to do with the technology. The only one making a slave to a cellular device is YOU! Don't answer the damn phone if you don't want to! I do that all the time. Isn't that what you did before there were any Android or IOS devices? Well?
We live in an age now where relatively cheap 3D printing is widely available to the Model Engineer. We live in an age now where ball screws and glass scales have come way way down in price. In just the last 3 years I have implemented in my workshop: 3D printed patterns (via a wireless printer), lost-PLA bronze casting, put Centroid Acorn CNC on my milling machine (cost of about $5000). Such things couldn't be hoped for back half a dozen to a dozen years ago like the prices of today. Then too I have Fusion 360 3D CAD/CAM -- free to those that make less than 100,000 a year. Pretty sweet. I wouldn't trade what we have now for anything.
And I haven't even touched on the Maker movement that's spreading across the country. At the makerspace down the road from me they have several Bridgeports (one is CNC I occasionally used) five Jet 13" lathes, surface grinder, waterjet; the other floors have 3d printers, CNC sewing machines wood shop with table saws, planers, CNC router
And its all mostly young people using the facility (a quite a few young women too) !! - I'm in the minority, not too many middle aged, or old guys. You might want refigure when implying this young generation doesn't know anything or can't do anything other than Facebook and videogames.
We live in a phenomenal era, folks! The explosion of virtually free knowledge via Internet, Technology (like I've mentioned above) and the sharing of knowledge is tremendous. Sharing knowledge as in this forum or others like CNCZone or AlloyAvenue is basically what helped guide me through a lot of projects, plus shop and machine improvements. Wouldn't be even near the same amount 7-10 years ago.
And you might consider taking time to guide some of these "waayward" teenagaers or young people who dont seem to "know anything or can't do anything other than Facebook and videogames" and show them this world which I have described above with all the advantages. I do it often - evangelizing about Live Steam - wherever I go! (i've been cooped up in the VA Hospital for 2 weeks now and I even evagelize here, relentlessly. I have found a few young doctors that have been fascinated by my pictures of scale model Live Steam engines but have never heard about or seen one). I explain what it is i'm working on, how make things, what I do when i encounter difficulty. What worked, what didn't. If they think a certain aspect is cool I try to focus on that to draw them in to win another convert.
Plant seeds. Maybe a few will sprout and grow.
Give that some thought.
The thing is, my new boss is very strict 
(so it seems) as I've only been out fishing once this fall. Normally when I was working I'd take a few days off each week during the fall. Since I retired I've never been so busy in the home shop!
Much of the "new" time was spent on things around the house and land that were neglected while I worked or fished. I am just now getting back to fly fishing and of course working in the shop.
