Who else here is in engineering? Not the kind with hard hats and a clipboard, nor the sort where you have a van and go to peoples houses to do shit. No, I'm on about Precision Engineering, with milling machines, lathes, pillar drills and swarf in your shoes.
It may or may not be true, but I got the impression that England, as well as being a nation of seafarers and shopkeepers, were also a bit keen on Engineering, what with our history and all.
I have been in this trade since I left school so know a bit. I currently work at a company who are world renowned for their product in their particular field. Alas, Once you see how this product is made, you wouldn't waste your money.
I'm not saying what I do is a load of codswallop, far from it, I take pride in my work but I'm surrounded by an infrastructure and such a backward attitude, that I can only determine that if they were a subcon firm, they would' have gone to the wall years ago.
This is very frustrating for someone in my position. All our milling machines are Bridgeports, with the newest being a good decade old, and the oldest has to be late '80s, with the tool room in particular being in possession of an Interact Mk1, which I am led to believe was the 1st milling machine to be bought by one of the Directors. Still, why would you still have such a machine being used? From a technical aspect, its slow, not fit for purpose. It doesn't have a coolant pump for starters, so you're cutting metal dry. It can not hold programs in its memory either. Mind you, the bloke who uses it has only just starting learning to program but even on a manual mill, couldn't machine anything to 90 degrees if he tried.
Meanwhile, in the machine shop, our plant list has various issues. One machine can't hold a stable Z. One can't hold more than 7000 lines of program, period. Another leaks slideway oil in to the coolant. Another rapids at about 5 metres a minute, while another one stops mid program because it decides not to read an M99, despite it being a running and proven program. Another machine also likes to delete numbers from lines in a program and add numbers to other lines upon being sent out of the machine.
We use a program transfer system called Seiki Systems, and that isn't without it's problems either, as I'm sure others will attest to.
Upon all our requests to have these things sorted, The company is loyal to one maintenance guy. Yes, ONE. If said guy is on holiday, we wait till he comes back. WTAF? That's if he bothers to fix the problem at all. We get told there's nothing wrong with the machine or to live with it. What kind of attitude is that? Especially one of a multi million pound company with it's own product.
Above all that, they employ idiots and if the rumours are to be believed, they want to have only 1 or 2 skilled men, with the rest being idiots. A colleague and I work with a couple of these less skilled people and I'll tell you for free, they do not produce a quality finished item as most days we end up mopping up after them to get the jobs out the door. One day very soon, I'm just gonna leave their parts to one side and let them know they have to try harder or go through them again,
Payrise. We got a payrise, which I appreciate, because I bet not every other firm was giving out payrises, but I got the same size payrise as another bloke who scraps jobs frequently, the same size as another one who runs less machinery and spends all his time on his phone in the toilet, so one can understand my frustration.
The company loves a yes man, which I am not. They don't want to hear their idea is crap or that it will take longer than they want, they want 3 bags full Sir all the way.
Anyway, I can program in Heidenhain and Fanuc, I have experience using Fusion 360 and Featuremill for 3D milling, Nikken 4th Axis units and Fanuc horizontal mills. I am also a certified Mitutoyo CMM user, with experience in programming and running said CMMs using MiCat. I also have a little experience in using Mitsubishi EDMs. I'm based in the Portsmouth area, y'know, just in case anyone is interested....
Oh yeah, I can do a bit of manual turning too.
