Women in the hobby?

[MsChrissi]

Arduinos rock! Every boy and girl should be introduced to them in school around the 5th grade and should be a regular part of education, reading, writing, maths and coding. I took up the Arduino when I was 60 and taught myself C++. It has done so many useful projects for us; capacitive fuel level meters, environmental controls, RV clock with inside & outside temps plus barometric pressure, the control and interlock on the elevator on our RV, master warning system for our plane. The brain is a muscle and it will turn to mush if you do not exercise it, the Arduino is an excellent gymnasium for the brain.

[Bill Shields]

I guess that you never met Grace Hopper

Just how old do you think I am???

considering that she was around when I was in engineering school and you have been 'involved with computers since 1970'.....she was active military until the mid 1980's then (i believe) worked for DEC for at least a decade after that...so.....how old are(n't) you?

[SteveHGraham]

Arduinos rock! Every boy and girl should be introduced to them in school around the 5th grade and should be a regular part of education, reading, writing, maths and coding.

It's amazing how we expect kids to pick up tech stuff on their own, especially when you consider the usless PC garbage we think is important enough to drum into their heads in school.

[Bill Shields]

everyone wants to write computer games....

maybe we should figure out how to get them to consider a CNC machine a 'real world' game!

[SteveHGraham]

A guy named Titan Gilroy created an online CNC academy, and he's trying to get people to teach kids CNC before manual machining. He keeps complaining about our unwillingness to support manufacturing through education.

He says the typical line is that kids have to do manual machining for two years before they start CNC. He starts people with CAD instead and takes them directly to CNC. His rationale is that they're not going to get anywhere in industry working manual machines, and I suppose he's right. Even in the Thirties, manufacturers were relying on highly automated machinery that looked nothing like manual lathes and mills.

[Steggy]

I guess that you never met Grace Hopper

Just how old do you think I am???

considering that she was around when I was in engineering school and you have been 'involved with computers since 1970'.....she was active military until the mid 1980's then (i believe) worked for DEC for at least a decade after that...so.....how old are(n't) you?

Grace Hopper was born in 1906, making her 39 years my senior. She was nearly 80 when she officially retired from the Navy in 1986. Most people that age at that time were either sitting on the front porch waiting for the inevitable to happen, or the inevitable for them had already happened. Hopper wasn't at all in that group. So the likelihood of me ever meeting someone like her in those days was close to zero.

Hopper's main contribution to computing was in the development of COBOL, as well as the larger concept of high-level languages being English-like in syntax. While COBOL was the result of a committee effort and can't be credited to any one individual, it was a direct descendant of Hopper's FLOW-MATIC language, whose compiler she and her subordinates designed and wrote from scratch while at Remington Rand in the 1950s. Naturally, she would have had to know the assembly language of the target UNIVAC system to write a compiler.

[Steggy]

His rationale is that they're not going to get anywhere in industry working manual machines, and I suppose he's right. Even in the Thirties, manufacturers were relying on highly automated machinery that looked nothing like manual lathes and mills.

True enough for manufacturing, but less so for tool room work. The benefits of automation are not all that useful when producing a one-off piece, which is a very common activity in the design and fabrication of tooling. Hence the toolmaker has to be skilled in the art of using manual machines to make very precise parts.

Someone who is trained to work only in the CNC environment is an operator, not a machinist. He or she is at nowhere near the skill level of one who has been formally trained on manual machine tools and can directly translate what is on an engineering drawing to a tangible part of the correct shape and dimensions.

[Steggy]

Arduinos rock

Too high-level for this old dinosaur.

[Builder01]

[/quote]
Someone who is trained to work only in the CNC environment is an operator, not a machinist. He or she is at nowhere near the skill level of one who has been formally trained on manual machine tools and can directly translate what is on an engineering drawing to a tangible part of the correct shape and dimensions.
[/quote]

YES!!

[SteveHGraham]

Titan Gilroy is trying to get people hired and support domestic manufacturing. That is his primary focus. Obviously, if you make someone wait years before training them on the equipment they will most likely end up using, you do them a huge disservice. Someone has to pay their bills while they wait to learn productive skills. I understand his mindset. There is no point in teaching people to thread one screw at a time when they want to design or make parts on a commercial basis.

It's destructive to denigrate the skills of the people who are doing the most productive work. I don't know about your house, but mine (and my vehicles) are packed with machined items that could not be made profitably on simple manual machines. Now that I think about it, manual machines are made on automated machines. You can't make a lathe or a mill using manual lathes and mills. I mean a real lathe or mill, before someone mentions some little joke machine an eccentric made in his basement.

[Bill Shields]

the world needs a good combination of both.

I know some REALLY GOOD toolmakers who have done nothing in their careers but run Wire and Sinker EDM machines create tooling impossible to make by hand.

but then I am in the business of supporting these people, so I see many more every month than others might see in a lifetime.

[Rick]

Here is a sign in our shop
Don't care if its manual or CNC its still just a tool for a skilled person to use.