Re: D&SNG Machinist and Mechanic positions available

John Bush Wrote:

The weakest link in
> this entire industry is finding and mentoring the
> next generation of men and women who want to build
> a career maintaining, repairing, and restoring
> these historic artifacts. The equipment can stay
> around a long time but what is in danger of being
> lost is the "work culture" (how the work was done)
> and skill sets that fit the equipment.
>
> John Bush

I agree. I work in a machining facility, and I see as of recent that our corporate leadership is trying to do away with the old machines that literally made billions of dollars for the birthing of our old name company. Now that we have merged with many other companies to form a large conglomerate Company, the old machines are taking the highway, just recently they sold our Bullard 56" vertical Lathe, she was the meat and potatoes of our company for many years. One of the old timers here said that," if they ever get rid of this beauty you can start to pack yer bags". She wasn't the only one to go. We have a friction welder that was designed and built in the 1950''s that will take two types of metals and pressure weld them together using high speeds and feeding to unite theses metals together, never to be broke apart at their intersection. The problems we have had with this machine is that our maintenance group lost the only person who knew how to fix and operate it properly. Being laid off doesn't help. We had a Hob machine that was another meat and potatoes machine that was set aside and went out the doors Last month, many of our spare parts for our company came off this machine, parts valued at tens of thousands of dollars. But we only used it lately once a month. The purchase of a new EDM machine is replacing it, but we haven't seen it come in yet. We are quickly becoming a state of the art machining Company with NC machines that will mill, drill and do lathe work. With Mazacks and Trevisans each one of these machines replacing two manual lathes and a vertical drill. Even our Matsurau's have become out of date. Sad is the loss of all these machines that were once our big happy family. :-(

Still a Student,

Dave