How many machinist do we have in fabo

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MOPARMAGA

MOPARMAGA

" The other hard member"
FABO Gold Member
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Location
Yakima Wa
Thanks to yellowrose telling me the machinist at the shop down the road was quitting, & yellowrose telling me I'd do well at it, ive started a new career 2 days in. I am learning on the job, so far I've done 2 balance jobs & some head stuff, disassembly, mag checking, surfacing. I can't wait till the morning to start again.
I don't know the point of the thread just know of a few members who are damn good machinists.
 
Pretty cool man. I did it for a number of years both still in school and for a little while out.
 
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RustyRatRod said:
Pretty cool man. I did it for a number of years goth still in school and for a little while out.
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Yeah, it's the direction I've been wanting to go for 5 years now & there's no school/ training around my area so it worked out perfectly.
 
Machinist over here. I dont do engines, wish i could.
I am not a fan of cnc, but cant beat them in production.
At the moment i seem to do alot more heat treating and one off repair stuff. Covid and auto crash did a big number on our shop.
 
Congrats @MOPARMAGA!!!

I grew up in a little town in Pennsylvania. There were huge machine shops everywhere! Frick Company, Grove Cranes, Landis Machine Company and Landis Tool Company.

I went to Vo-tech during high school. 12 grade I did co-op where instead of attending Vo-tech I went to work at Landis Tool Company. After graduating from high school they hired me full-time to run a turret lathe.

Ironic that the company made machines they sold to the auto industry such as crank grinders, cam grinders, and valve grinders. They even had a foundry so they made the entire machine.

After about 3 years Japan started selling their stuff in.the US and 300 of us were laid off. After that I joined the military and my machine shop career was over.

I'm glad you found a job doing something you like. Like they say, if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life!!
 
Four years of machine shop school while working full time in a machine shop. Worked for years making well heads, threading drill pipe, making bush hog gear boxes out of raw castings and all associated parts. Learned how to program CNC machines and made tons of money doing that!! Then went to work for the government making aircraft parts in the machine shop then graduated to Tool and Die shop. It was a blast and I made a lot of money. Was also machine shop supervisor in a few shops. The more you learn the more valuable you become. I'm retired now but still get job offers every time I go into a machine shop. Always try to take on the the more difficult jobs and your boss will love you and you will become irreplaceable. Machine shop machines can be very dangerous so keep your head in the game at all times, I've seen some pretty nasty accidents over the years. Protect your ears!!!!!
 
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Not officially, but I'm sort of learn on the job / self taught over the years. I currently have a vertical milling machine and three small lathes in my home shop. My Dad was a machinist and I used his scraping tools to teach myself how to re-scrape lathe and mill ways to rebuild the machines. It is amazing the flatness and precision that can be achieved by hand scraping. I'm slow as heck, but I love making chips. Hope to keep busy with little mechanical side hustles and maybe "volunteer" in a machine shop, after I retire from my full time gig. I've been around machinery and manufacturing my whole life and wish to continue it. If I can't get cut, shocked, burned, or crushed by what I'm doing, it doesn't seem worth doing.
 
66fyssh said:
Congrats @MOPARMAGA!!!

I grew up in a little town in Pennsylvania. There were huge machine shops everywhere! Frick Company, Grove Cranes, Landis Machine Company and Landis Tool Company.

I went to Vo-tech during high school. 12 grade I did co-op where instead of attending Vo-tech I went to work at Landis Tool Company. After graduating from high school they hired me full-time to run a turret lathe.

Ironic that the company made machines they sold to the auto industry such as crank grinders, cam grinders, and valve grinders. They even had a foundry so they made the entire machine.

After about 3 years Japan started selling their stuff in.the US and 300 of us were laid off. After that I joined the military and my machine shop career was over.

I'm glad you found a job doing something you like. Like they say, if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life!!
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Very cool
 
Id love to moonlight in a machine shop or maybe get into a slow shop of retirees when Im out the door myself. Took a few Community college courses on lathe and Vertical mill as well as a ton of drafting/CAD classes. Heck, I'm like a class away from a 'Manufacturing Process' minor but have not been back to school in 25 years.
 
While we have a few machinist on here- Guys I`m looking for the keyword for small pointed pins used in the trade. think transfer punch but only about 3/4' long, and hardened. I need some for a project. 3/16"x3/4"
 
MOPARMAGA said:
Thanks to yellowrose telling me the machinist at the shop down the road was quitting, & yellowrose telling me I'd do well at it, ive started a new career 2 days in. I am learning on the job, so far I've done 2 balance jobs & some head stuff, disassembly, mag checking, surfacing. I can't wait till the morning to start again.
I don't know the point of the thread just know of a few members who are damn good machinists.
Click to expand...


OUTSTANDING!!! I knew you’d be very good at it. Plus, like I told you...you are a thinker. You think things through. That’s number one doing what you are doing. One change changes several things.

Just awesome!!
 
mopar head said:
While we have a few machinist on here- Guys I`m looking for the keyword for small pointed pins used in the trade. think transfer punch but only about 3/4' long, and hardened. I need some for a project. 3/16"x3/4"
Click to expand...
The only short transfer punches I can think of are these, but they are for threaded holes:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00N411MCC/?tag=fabo03-20

If it's a simple shorty transfer punch that you need just buy a cheapy set of regular transfer punches from HF and cut them down to whatever length you need??
 
Treblig said:
Four years of machine shop school while working full time in a machine shop. Worked for years making well heads, threading drill pipe, making bush hog gear boxes out of raw castings and all associated parts. Learned how to program CNC machines and made tons of money doing that!! Then went to work for the government making aircraft parts in the machine shop then graduated to Tool and Die shop. It was a blast and I made a lot of money. Was also machine shop supervisor in a few shops. The more you learn the more valuable you become. I'm retired now but still get job offers every time I go into a machine shop. Always try to take on the the more difficult jobs and your boss will love you and you will become irreplaceable. Machines shop machines can be very dangerous so keep your head in the game at all times, I've seen some pretty nasty accidents over the years. Protect your ears!!!!!
Click to expand...


When you are doing tool and die stuff you are working some very close tolerances. Pretty cool stuff. I wish I’d have learned more CNC. For production and repeatability there is nothing like it.

Also, if you are doing manual stuff learning how to fixture stuff so you can actually machine it is a huge deal. If you can figure out how to hold the piece and hold it as rigid as possible, you can use higher speeds and feeds (with the proper and rigid tooling) and put out some very nice work at profit making times.

Preaching to the choir, but you know exactly what I’m saying. You’ve done it.
 
MOPARMAGA said:
Thanks to yellowrose telling me the machinist at the shop down the road was quitting, & yellowrose telling me I'd do well at it, ive started a new career 2 days in. I am learning on the job, so far I've done 2 balance jobs & some head stuff, disassembly, mag checking, surfacing. I can't wait till the morning to start again.
I don't know the point of the thread just know of a few members who are damn good machinists.
Click to expand...
One more thing............the one trick to being a good machinist, besides being very accurate in your work, is to think many, many steps ahead. If the thing you're making requires 20 machining processes think way ahead so that you don't paint yourself into a corner. There's nothing more annoying than to spend 2 days cutting on something only to get to the last step and find that you got something out of sequence........then you have to start all over!!!:mad::mad::BangHead::BangHead:

And if that isn't bad enough.............you'll have to make the second one is less time because you missed your deadline. So you have to make the second one in half the time and still make it correctly!! So think ahead and be smart!
 
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Treblig said:
The only short transfer punches I can think of are these, but they are for threaded holes:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00N411MCC/?tag=fabo03-20

If it's a simple shorty transfer punch that you need just buy a cheapy set of regular transfer punches from HF and cut them down to whatever length you need??
Click to expand...
I thought of that, that would work if I could buy a dozen or so of just 3/16 replacement punches which I doubt. I thought maybe these were used for fixturing or something.

I`ve bought machinists boxes etc, from estate auctions, and a large pile of machined pins used for fixturing I assume. A few of these were mixed in with these pins, maybe they were self made by the owner, one off application, and no real name/ keyword for them?
 
One thing I really enjoy is seeing these machines, it's like going back in time. My boss is going to bring in 1 of his old employees to get us caught up & also train me on the boring bar, honing & crankshaft polisher...i'll have to ask him how to do offset grinding.
 
MOPARMAGA said:
One thing I really enjoy is seeing these machines, it's like going back in time. My boss is going to bring in 1 of his old employees to get us caught up & also train me on the boring bar, honing & crankshaft polisher...i'll have to ask him how to do offset grinding.
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Shapers are really cool!!!
 
Some guys didn’t post that they are machinists. RAMM is. PRH is. Skrews is but I haven’t seen him post in a while. IQ52 is. I’m missing some. All those guys are loaded with good information.
 
40 year machinist here....Cut my teeth when I apprenticed as a Tool and Die Maker back in the Eighties in So. Cal ( I ran Surface Grinders, Radial Arm Drills, Shapers and a Bridgeport Mill there), and did that for two years but was already into Hot Rodding and MOPARS.

After T & D, I went to work for a now defunct but significant at the time local manufacturer of Racing Products ("Summers Bros" of Goldenrod Fame) Axles, Spools, Gear Drives, Main Caps, etc and worked there for close to 8 years, ran a cylindrical grinder there doing axle journals and my 1st NC "Numeric Control" (pre-dated CNC) a Leblonde Lathe and later my 1st CNC Lathe, a Hitachi...Pretty cool place for a young man as we supplied axles to Glidden. WJ, Rickey Smith and Reher Morrison all of whom were visitors to the shop.

Later worked for a few different job shops, again running primarily a variety of CNC Lathes and always doing my own G-Code programming...

I then became a Mold Maker building Rubber Molds (Transfer and Compression) where I got my 1st taste of a Mazak CNC Lathe and started programming in Mazatrol which is just a conversational type of programming that gets converted to G-Code in the background..Absolutely Love the Mazaks and prefer them over straight G-Code machines.

I did the Rubber Molds for Ten Years and then moved to Texas and worked in the Oil Patch doing Prototype work for almost 20 years again running a Huge Mazak Powermaster CNC Lathe and some other smaller Mazak CNC Lathes in the unit as well as some Weiler Lathes.

Unfortunately, the Oil Patch job I had hoped to retire from closed their doors in August of last year and now I'm an Older Guy (Very Experienced) but Older and Discrimination is the Real Deal out there.

I started anew again in November of last year and I'm now repairing Plastic Injection Molds for a small local company.. I've got to do it all there from Band Sawing the raw material to running the Engine Lathe, A lot of Surface Grinding on Pins, Plates and Sleeves and Running Bridgeport Mills.......The big change here and a huge learning curve for me is they have 8 CNC Mills and 1 CNC Lathe (all Haas) and all of the programs are created from "Mastercam" software. So I actually have to create a Wireframe model, sometimes 3D and sometimes extruded into a Solid depending on the parts geometry and complexity and then you actually chain to parts of the geometry and it generates a program which you then upload to the machines control.

Pretty elaborate stuff and had to talk myself off the ledge more than once when I 1st started using Mastercam as there are just so many different toolpaths and complexities associated with that it can be very overwhelming when 1st using it but I'm definitely getting better and though I'm at the tail end of my career in all reality if you can become proficient with Mastercam, you can write your own ticket and get a job anywhere getting top wages.
 
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MOPARMAGA said:
What is a shaper ?
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Shaper is really a bit of a relic in the industry but the way it operates is that your workpiece is retained statically (via clamps or in a Vise typically) and you have a fixed blade cutter that has a contoured shape that moves in a straight toolpath To and Fro across the workpiece removing material each time the cutting edge makes contact. They can be set to travel a preset distance advancing in either Depth, Width, Length or all the above.
 
MOPARMAGA said:
Thanks to yellowrose telling me the machinist at the shop down the road was quitting, & yellowrose telling me I'd do well at it, ive started a new career 2 days in. I am learning on the job, so far I've done 2 balance jobs & some head stuff, disassembly, mag checking, surfacing. I can't wait till the morning to start again.
I don't know the point of the thread just know of a few members who are damn good machinists.
Click to expand...

Lots of different types of machinists but in reality they do share traits specific to an industry but still important such as Surface Finish, Dimensional Sizing, Location and Tolerancing as well as Roundness. I almost went to work for Keith Black doing Motor work back in the day but he didn't pay that well so that was that.
 
Hemioutlaw said:
40 year machinist here....Cut my teeth when I apprenticed as a Tool and Die Maker back in the Eighties in So. Cal ( I ran Surface Grinders, Radial Arm Drills, Shapers and a Bridgeport Mill there), and did that for two years but was already into Hot Rodding and MOPARS.

After T & D, I went to work for a now defunct but significant at the time local manufacturer of Racing Products ("Summers Bros" of Goldenrod Fame) Axles, Spools, Gear Drives, Main Caps, etc and worked there for close to 8 years, ran a cylindrical grinder there doing axle journals and my 1st NC "Numeric Control" (pre-dated CNC) a Leblonde Lathe and later my 1st CNC Lathe, a Hitachi...Pretty cool place for a young man as we supplied axles to Glidden. WJ, Rickey Smith and Reher Morrison all of whom were visitors to the shop.

Later worked for a few different job shops, again running primarily a variety of CNC Lathes and always doing my own G-Code programming...

I then became a Mold Maker building Rubber Molds (Transfer and Compression) where I got my 1st taste of a Mazak CNC Lathe and started programming in Mazatrol which is just a conversational type of programming that gets converted to G-Code in the background..Absolutely Love the Mazaks and prefer them over straight G-Code machines.

I did the Rubber Molds for Ten Years and then moved to Texas and worked in the Oil Patch doing Prototype work for almost 20 years again running a Huge Mazak Powermaster CNC Lathe and some other smaller Mazak CNC Lathes in the unit as well as some Weiler Lathes.

Unfortunately, the Oil Patch job I had hoped to retire from closed their doors in August of last year and now I'm an Older Guy (Very Experienced) but Older and Discrimination is the Real Deal out there.

I started anew again in November of last year and I'm now repairing Plastic Injection Molds for a small local company.. I've got to do it all there from Band Sawing the raw material to running the Engine Lathe, A lot of Surface Grinding on Pins, Plates and Sleeves and Running Bridgeport Mills.......The big change here and a huge learning curve for me is they have 8 CNC Mills and 1 CNC Lathe (all Haas) and all of the programs are created from "Mastercam" software. So I actually have to create a Wireframe model, sometimes 3D and sometimes extruded into a Solid depending on the parts geometry and complexity and then you actually chain to parts of the geometry and it generates a program which you then upload to the machines control.

Pretty elaborate stuff and had to talk myself off the ledge more than once when I 1st started using Mastercam as there are just so many different toolpaths and complexities associated with that it can be very overwhelming when 1st using it but I'm definitely getting better and though I'm at the tail end of my career in all reality if you can become proficient with Mastercam, you can write your own ticket and get a job anywhere getting top wages.
Click to expand...


I ran Summers Brothers 40 spline spool and axles in my Dana 60. The nicest stuff I had seen. Switched to that after my Strange 35 spline stuff twisted 4 splines.

Also used several of their gear drives on SBC’s. Great, great stuff. I was sad to see it go.
 
I'm a machinist. ...36 years.
Not automotive, aerospace.
Tolerances of 20 millionths .00002"
Been a great career. ....hight school dropout at 10th grade found myself mopping floors in a machine shop. ....
I don't mop the floors anymore.

Jeff
 
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