Fantastic British engineering

Well, yes, but you don't get to work on the top-end stuff without doing the basics as well!

You can't just be the engine driver without having done your stint as fireman, cleaner and everything else as well. To be effective at the command end you have to know every job from the bottom up. So I doubt that the market segregation you're suggesting can actually be achieved.

For every person you've got assembling space probes in a lab, you gotta have several building aircraft, instruments and machine tools, and tens or hundreds assembling vacuum cleaners or the like in factories. That's the only way you can develop and retain the full range of capability in the workforce.

Sure, there are examples of successful small high-tech companies - my son is with one - but the story in Britain has been one of endless, slow shrinkage throughout my adult life, and I fear that without serious political and cultural support, that'll just go on until there's nothing left.

To some extent, I blame the empty-headed celeb culture we seem to have, but that didn't come from nowhere.

Edited By Mick B1 on 23/04/2020 09:07:44

caused by lack of skilled workers and lack of investment in equipment, I suppose the 2 go together.

Many employers don't want to pay to train skilled people, they would rather employ a skilled person someone else has paid to train. Attempts to raise the training bar through a "Training levy" don't seem to be delivering the desired results - "Modern apprenticeships" are nothing like the type I did in the late '70s & my older collegues thought that was "dumbed down" compared to their 7 year training. My current Polish collegues have had a far more thorough training that most UK schemes can provide. We won't improve until we rethink general education to provide 16-18 year olds who are basically numerate & literate to a standard high enough to be able to be readily trained to suit the needs of industry & commerce.

Some of the garishly gold painted machines looked rather old even then - the general condition of the castings of the Ingersol horizontal milling machine milling the bed formation suggested to me that it was "War Finish" - the film was made early '60s by the look of the vehicles ?

The general process shown in the film was much like Boxford & Broadbent in the early '80s. No real change, no attempts to re-design to keep costs competitive. Neither make manual machines any more.

Nigel B.

In the good old days, Britain was dominated by hard to miss collieries, slag-heaps, railway sidings, and smoke-stack industries.

And labour intensive factory floors like this:

11 men in this photo, all operating machines you might find in a home workshop apart from Father Christmas, bottom right. Anyone know what he's doing or what his machine is?

Although smoke-stack industries and yesteryear machine shops both employed hoards of people, their output was low and not very profitable. As a way of making a living, these methods become ever more precarious as time passes. From a financial point of view it's better to dump such methods as soon as they become uncompetitive. This happens as soon as someone else comes up with a better process (more modern equipment), cheaper labour, or raw-materials.

Actually, although the forum perceive British industry to be wasting away, it's only true in relative terms. Despite closure of high visibility industries like textiles, shipbuilding, steel, mining, heavy chemicals, railways, and heavy engineering, tt's as profitable today as it ever was. It's changed, adapted and moved, not failed. CNC and robotics have had a devastating impact on manufacturing jobs, and the new world is far less obvious, quite likely operating from an anonymous shed in a business park:

Changing methods have altered what's needed from the work-force. In the UK (and West generally), the need today is for designers rather than practical men. Designers will typically have professional qualifications and a good understanding of materials and modern methods. They understand Computer Aided Engineering, FEM analysis, Fluid analysis, Dynamics, Event Modelling, simulations, modelling, electronics, power, and are aware of current trends such as Generative Design. They are trained to collaborate with other specialists, have access to information galore and, of course, they can do the maths. These chaps don't need shop-floor experience, it's more important they can do value-engineering - 'an engineer is a man who does for a pound what any fool can do for a guinea'

Given automation, it's become possible to manufacture almost anywhere in the world. Traditional skills don't matter much, new skills do. Cost determines where work is done, not past triumphs.

In short British engineering has shifted from doing to thinking. There's more money in designing and owning the rights to a smart phone than actually making them, and there's no risk you might end up owning an obsolete smart phone factory!

There is of course a down side. Overall we all may be richer, but it's socially bad to deny people a living. The old ways may have ended up becoming inefficient, but they provided lots of job satisfaction. No-one is immune. At the moment the sun shines on China, but manufacturing there is subject to the same forces. Chinese success depends hugely on cheap air freight and especially on cheap containerised shipping. This is likely to end as soon as oil starts to run out. They're also vulnerable to a drop in demand, much as unemployment in Glasgow rose to over 80% just after WW1 because of low demand for heavy engineering. Who knows what Coranavirus will do to world trade?

Dave

These chaps don't need shop-floor experience,

I would suggest that, in reality, they do.

If they had such experience, it would cut down on the number of "unmakable" part drawings that come in for quotation - great CAD work, but with features that cannot be machined & un-workable tolerances. Not to mention the parts that prove not to be assembleable if they do get made - another "old adage" that went back to drawing office days was "any fool can tighten a bolt with a pencil" - still holds true with CAD.

Nigel B.

Hi all, with regard to the relentless march of modern technology its really a case of smoke 'em if you've got 'em or be trampled underfoot I'm afraid, I am not being unkind nor am I speaking in home workshop terms, but in the Big Wide World Out There terms. My go to disparaging remark to folk who can't cut it ( literally ) is "my granny could do better than that", at the age of 17 during WW1, she worked in a factory making aero engines as a turner, I'm willing to bet if they could have had the tech that is available now they would have snatched your hand off! Fast forward 50 years, whilst in my apprenticeship as a skilled turner I was given a brand new Herbert No 7C, flame hardened bed, what was basically an electrically operated DSG gearbox enabling access to all speeds while spindle running, copying attachment, brass turners guard to stop one getting a faceful of swarf, whoa! what a ripper, fast forward another 40 years & I purchased that very machine at the dawn of the 21st century for the princely sum of £640, while we awaited the finishing of the construction of a 3,500 square foot industrial unit to fulfil my then employers dream of filling it to the ceiling with CNC machines for sub contract machining, which soon came to pass, in the meantime I demonstrated the Herbs capability at demolishing metal, I should add that by this time I had been a CNC machinist or Programmer/ Setter/ Operator for some 35 years, during this extended period of time I had seen the demise of the british car & motorcycle industries because they were campaigning machine tools they had purchased before WW2 whilst competing with Japanese companies who turned over their inventory every 3 years. When I had the great joy of attending the Mazak factory in Worcester to take the training course for their Mazak Fusion twin head lathe I reckoned I was pretty close to the leading edge of modern technology, you know, internal & external CCTV cameras, iris recognition to keep sticky fingers off the control panel etc etc & all the coffee you could drink! So in industry its a case of fit in or ……. you know the rest.

However in the home workshop setting the availability of suitable machines, lathes, mills, drilling machines is fast drying up, I myself pigged out while the going was good, therefore my Acorntools 7" shaper was single phase from new, as is the Meddings floor standing drilling machine, Warco lathe/ mill & somewhat rare Pools Special lathe, the only one with countershaft drive as standard, (see Lathes.co.uk) complete with original motor still whizzing along, very nearly older than me & I'm older than dirt! so there is still suitable gear out there, although a tad difficult to acquire in the current deeply unpleasant circumstances.

Cheers & Keep Safe Bob H

Ahh, the "Good" old days when you could always tell where a British car/ Motorbike had parked by the oil stain on the floor. Basic problem with industry?, we demanded more pay for doing less. The Lotus eaters or the Eloi from H.G.Wells. Worked in precision/heavy/electronic industries over more than fifty years and thoroughly enjoyed my time despite not the highest pay but came to realise the evils of Unions and the fact that Joe public wanted the most for the least cost or effort.

Late Brother in law had a farm on Jersey and talking about Holidays, his comment was "Try telling a cabbage in the fields it's Christmas."

"Would have paid £500 more for a good lathe" In my apprenticeship (underpaid slaves, NOT todays mob) a Myford was totally out of reach and took a redundancy (Factory closure) payment to afford, years later, my Maximat being sold off.

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be.

Regards Ian.

I have a friend who started as an apprentice at an engineering company in the UK. For the last 14 years he has been MD. They sell a particular product all over the world & he goes to exhibitions regularly. He sells to companies ranging from the Belgian navy & shipping lines etc as well as leisure sector. The product he sells has to be carefully designed (his skill) & properly manufactured.

When I asked him why he has his designs made mainly in China, he said the high quality machining was available & at economic price. The quality was exceptional. I asked why he could not get in the UK. He said that for larger items there were no facilities. He did buy smaller parts in the UK but he said that he only did it to show a lip service to the UK.

Generally UK subcontractors were such a pain to deal with, quality & delivery times were unreliable & he had more trouble getting stuff in the UK that he really found it so much easier going to the large number of firms in China.

Aside from that subject I suspect that there is another reason that the govt would be happy to allow manufacturing to go overseas. We have a strong green lobby in this country. There is a strong lobby to reduce our carbon emissions due to global warming etc( I should not say so here, but it is a scam, but that is not the subject of the thread)

By exporting our manufacturing capability overseas we also export our carbon emissions. It is a false preconception to say that we are reducing our emissions when we are having stuff made by a country that is building dozens of coal fired power stations every year to produce our goods for us.

But lower emissions look good to the gullible. The left are quite happy to be out of work & live on the dole, paid for by others, provided they do not watch their kids coughing their guts up in the streets due to exhaust gasses

It is a difficult balancing act

S.O.D looks to me as though Father Christmas is operating a shaper.

Thought it might be a planer since the action looks to be horizontal and DoC adjustment vertical?

The elves seem to have a variety of tasks and machines...

Edited By Mick B1 on 23/04/2020 14:02:50

Nah, shaper, with a planer the job moves, with a shaper it stands still (hopefully). If I had room I'd definately buy a shaper, but I haven't.

[This posting has been removed]

Yes, indeed you're right for what looks like the majority of planers, but there seems to be some flexibility of terms:-

Planer? Shaper?

This one says it's a planer - the tool moves to do the cutting stroke and it looks as if the table-mounted work feeds sideways at the end of the stroke.

But the shaper I've seen most recently cuts vertically down towards a 4-axis (includes rotary) table - I was watching railway axle bearing shells being rough 'bored' on it, IIRC preparatory to white-metal lining. That's why I thought Father Christmas' machine wasn't one o' them.

Similar but different Making Armstong Guns Lots of singed men, often close enough to light their fags from the molten iron.

I always wondered about how the wiring of barrels was done, now I know.

Hello,
Apparently it's a shaper. In **THIS** enlarged image, it is possible to see the groove where the shaper feedrate governing mechanism runs.
Also, in horizontal alignment of Father Christma's hand, to the right side, the T-groove of the fixing table appears to be visible.
Finally, to the right of Father Christmas's knee, what appears to be the manual feed handle of the table and the connection that transmits the rotary movement for the automatic advance of the table is visible.
Just an opinion

Dias Costa

Edited By dcosta on 23/04/2020 16:35:11

I worked for an oversea's firm with it's RnD in the UK.....

the finished machine ran out at just over £4.5mill......

Our part was about a Mill......

All designed by Persons not knowing one end of a spanner from the other........yes, bias'd view.....

I spotted a major design fault, on telling the powers that B of the prob..... was told that it was calculated by a computor code by somebody with more letters after his name than the Alphabet......and not a low life like me.....

Neadless to say machine No 2 destroyed itself......

I was called to the office as the person in charge/responsible for the build......

Turned out I was correct in my thinking......

My very first eMail ever was to send (now known as a Round Robin) to all concerned...that I was not happy with the design....

that got my head of the block......

Outcome of the headache......a major refit of the machines and the £4.5mill......well, that was swept under the carpet as apperently the whole project was funded by the EU.......

so thats all right then...!!!!!!!!!!

there will ALWAYS be them in suits and us with dirty hands.....

could go on but very few in the design office will ever earn my RESPECT.....rant over.....hahaha

now 70 and enjoying my retirement thanks......

clogs:

I think your email sounds more like a circular than a round robin. Strictly, the latter was used by low lifes and trouble makers to prevent the identification of the originator, the signatures being affixed around a circle.

But the shaper I've seen most recently cuts vertically down towards a 4-axis (includes rotary) table

That format is usually called a "slotter" in the UK. Used to cut keyways & splines in bores among other uses - the Ordnance factory in Nottingham had a CNC converted one for cutting the slot for the breech block in the breech rings for tank and naval guns.

but there seems to be some flexibility of terms

Usually in the UK if the tool moves over a stationary part the machine is s shaper, if the part moves under a stationary tool the machine is a planer. Capable machines all and, while not the fastest, they can do some operations better than the more "modern" machines that have supplanted them.

Nigel B.

Nigel, Duncan, Baz,

Well, it looks like it's something I've not had properly sorted in my head for nearly 50 years! I have to admit that I've had very little contact with either planers or shapers - they simply weren't present in the ten or so machine shops I worked in in the 70s and early 80s, and even then people - even those who rated them - talked of them mainly in the past tense.

I've used the basic technique in lathes for cutting keyways and even for squaring round holes to fit valve shanks and suchlike - sometimes with the tool in the toolpost and sometimes with it in the chuck and the work in the vertical slide - but you finish the job knackered, and with blisters on your carriage wheel hand!

I think someone may have said the vertically-working machine I described was a slotter at the time, but not elaborated on why.

Thanks for clearing that lot up.

Surprised that nobody has so far mentioned the total lack of PPE in the picture.

It did Baz but didn't post, also Santa's beard and all those unguarded machine drives.