'average model engineer'

Wait dammit ?

I'm still waiting for the one I submitted in June 1934 to be published.

It has nothing to do with money, more to do with having an enquiring mind

Most of the kids in this category head towards computer programming instead of engineering nowadays

You can get the kit in moments as a free download

Programming is like electronic lego and has almost limitless potential for a fertile mind

.

That Pareto bloke gets in everywhere !!

Keep up the good work, Neil

MichaelG.

I knew this was going to sprout legs, we like a bit of contention on here we do!

One of the sayings I like: "It doesn't matter how broken it is, give me enough money and I can fix anything!"
This saying holds a good deal of truth, I merely point at the new World Trade Centre as an example.

However, that particular example would never have happened if there was no determination. I have a friend who had a shop that used to sell the Stuart Models range of castings. He tells the story of a customer who bought two models from him in the years he sold them. When the chap came in for his second kit they got talking and the chap explained that two or three years prior he had bought a model and now it was finished he wanted to buy another. My friend asked what machinery he had, as to suitable suggestions and it turned out the chap had an electric drill. My friend saw the original model and he remarked just how well it turned out with only the use of hand tools.

I have been to the same shop, bought a model aero engine, fitted it to a plane I built and flew it.

Because I didn't build the engine does that mean I am not a model engineer?

I think, because of the speed of growth of technology and especially communications we all have a bit of a distorted view of things. I for one am appalled at the total lack of skills taught in schools, I am not alone and the majority on here share my view. BUT, does that mean that somebody coming into the hobby, with absolutely no practical experience, who buys a pre-finished kit, is an outcast? A leper as far as the real engineers are concerned? ("real" being a relative term) I look upon that person as an opportunity, we can teach him something here.

Certainly, some people buy their way into things, I have done it myself, but is that wrong? As Jason so rightly points out, people have family commitments, work commitments, bills to pay. As many people on here know, I have been self employed for more years than I care to remember and without a very strict set of rules I can quite easily spend all day on one of my own projects and at the end of the week find myself with unhappy customers who haven't got their jobs back and one very ticked off household manageress who can't go to Tesco! So sometimes I buy stuff in rather than spend my time making it. That doesn't mean I cannot, I just choose not to.

But I am not typical of the demographic we are discussing here, what Cyril is bemoaning (I think, the post is a bit disjointed if you don't mind me saying so), what Cyril is saying is that people who have bought, for example, a pre-finished kit, put it together and then claim to have built it themselves, haven't. Well actually they did, to the best of their ability. It is up to you Cyril and you and you and you, to take these people and help and guide them on to greater things. Not better, because they did their very best with the first attempt.

One glaring spinoff to this whole lack of knowledge phenomenon has not yet been mentioned. And that is the ignorant consumer or end user. I use specifically the word ignorant in it's derogatory sense. Last Sunday morning I received a telephone call at nine am. I am always up but Sundays are my day, for me. I would not expect anyone but family and friends to call on a Sunday. This To**er called me at nine in the morning and the conversation started off badly: "I am not happy" - Oh, why? "Well, you have put oil on all the screwheads (He meant bolts) and you are clearly hiding something, did you scratch them or something?" Now, I am not really the fastest with any sort of retort but this had me totally flabbergasted - I told him exactly what to do, finished up with that Russian word ending with OFF! Why wouldn't you put oil on mechanical fixings before you shipped a new job out?

I don't mind anyone calling me up for advice or a reason or explanation as to what I have done and why, but to draw a conclusion like that, the man is ignorant, with a bad attitude. It is the ignorance of things I like to change. The attitude I can do noting about.

graham.
(being philosophical on a Sunday

Instead of Model Engineering perhaps can we rename the magazine something along the lines of ‘Splash the Cash, incorporating the defunct model engineering

And you can't blame the ME hobby for our consumer driven society

When we were nippers buying anything except (expensive) food was a considered purchase

Now both parents work full time, the child is a mere hatchling farmed out to a childminding factory and people are bombarded with "buy our crap" adverts 24/7

And it's what people want nowadays

Most people are happy to dedicate their entire lives to doing nothing except making money and spending it on stuff they don't need and keeping up with the Jones's next door

When they finally retire... a few finally ask themselves...

"...what did we do with our lives??"

Edited By Ady1 on 17/08/2014 12:12:50

Last year l headed up. A booth at the local maker faire. Here's a writeup of it: http://cnc-for-model-engineers.blogspot.ca/2013/09/ottawa-maker-faire-2013.html

Had a cnc'd unimat lathe moving it's axes around for two days.

Rough observation: anyone younger than 40 asked "OK you are running linuxcnc but what is that machine its moving?"

People older knew it was a lathe but wondered how it was moving by itself!

My conclusion: CNC and Cad and anything that ties computers to our hobby is integral to the future of the hobby.

JohnS

Edited By John Alexander Stewart on 17/08/2014 13:45:52

Andrew, I, too, miss your postings. Feel free to start again.

I had put my blog "**LINK**" into hiatus status for the summer as I thought It as too far out there for the Model Engineering community as a whole, but I got some private emails indicating that it was missed - people were using it as a direction to work towards.

JohnS.

As many know I'm not into choo choo's or scale models, I usually work at 13" to the foot but one observation I have made and in part it supports what Cyril says, but only at one point in time.

Cyril bemoans the cheque book engineering approach and in some ways in a different galaxy he would have been right. Roll up at a track day with something built up from a kit and you would have been laughed at.

Fast forward to today and clubs who know they have to accept this scenario or die even run Polly Model track days to cater to the very large influx of Polly kits about today.

But why do they exist ?

It's because time is short due to modern living pressures that our intrepid engineer know that if he doesn't buy into the hobby he won't get a chance. And on a sub level Andy Clark at Polly can only hit these targets by embracing the latest technology with CNC lathes mills and Swiss sliding head lathes.

OK enough said, don't forget to put the cheque in the post Andy.

I'm sure much the same were said when Drummond offered an electric motor to replace the old treadle machines.

"You can't get the feel of the cut with an electric motor" and "Why pay good money for motor when sweat is free?"

I dont think model engineering was ever a cheap hobby. A new Drummond or Myford lathe in the first half of the 20th century cost a small fortune -- beyond the means of most working men.

And a milling machine just was not even thinkable -- hence the prevalence of vertical slides for lathes. Yet today, we can look at a little Sieg X2 mill for about $800 here in Oz -- the cost of registering and insuring two motorbikes for a year, or getting the valves on your Ducati adjusted, or buying half a dozen pairs of jeans.

Seems like in some ways the hobby is cheaper than it once was. I know I have tools and gear that my old man would never have dreamed of splurging on -- stuff like a new dial indicator, six inch micrometer set and telescopic gauges, which was dear as poison 40 years ago but very affordable today.

Mind you, I am still looking at that mill -- but continuing to use my hacksaw and file in the mean time.

I think some people may have misunderstood the OP but anyway. Have you looked at model boating recently - the first quetion anyone asks is "which kit". Model Airplanes are much the same and few would design their own wings in the way they used to. The magazines reflect this and perhaps the ME stable will follow. The first copies of ME I bought in the '70s are still relevant and entertaining now, as are most current issues will be in 40 years. But who reads a 4 year old copy of an computer magazine let alone a 40 year old one?

I see a different problem in the future. With manual machines you have to be pretty thick not to work out how to operate and maintain them, with some advice off here if you are too lazy to think. But in 20 years, even now, the electronics of an ex industrial machine are vastly more complicated, and fragile making them unrepairable even by most professional electronics engineers.

I'm not even sure the OP understood what he wrote, I certainly didn't!

Ian P

Just skipped through this whole thread and see there have been more than 30 replies without any further input from Cyril. (maybe for some reason he has not seen the thread that he started)

I'm not sure what he was really trying to say (although lots of us have made some sort of interpretation), however I have often seen really long threads (not just here, but on on lots of different forums and subjects) discussions that go on for days (offering solutions, answers and help) and the original poster never appears.

Maybe we all have too much spare time?

Ian P

Not sure about that but we all certainly have an opinion!

graham.

Much prefer to do things by hand, if it takes 3 hours to do something so be it, I am not in a hurry and not after making money. Also having to make do with what you have got teaches you skills which in my view are disappearing. I once worked for a company where we often had to do things on site,( we serviced 1950's/60's industrial diesels) it's amazing what you can do with a magnetic drill, a flat ended drill bit, few bits of steel, mole grips, nuts and a bit of studding hey presto a basic milling machine/lathe!

Just my opinion.

Mark P.

Suffice to say the original 'Flight of the Phoenix' was one of my favourite films as a boy!

Neil

I wonder if it's landed yet ?

They reckon that 90% of all Harley Davidsons built are still on the road, the other 10% made it home.

I have an opinion too, it is worth what you are paying for it...

AS far as cheque book engineering goes, it is not new. LBSC used to build locomotives to order, and there were others too, even back before the Great War. Some guys want to build locos, some just want to run them.

There is no particular virtue in doing things the hard way when there is an easier way available to you, although I guess there does come a point where you can't fairly say you built it yourself. But after all the whole point of engineering has been to make things easier. I could admire Tubal Cains "Handmaiden" as a tour de force, but could never make myself do things by hand like that if I had the machines available. On the other hand, where I don't have the right machine I can if necessary do the job by had...or if I had the money, would equally happily farm the job out to someone who did.

John

Ian

I have always enjoyed reading ME, my point is that the magazine seems to have moved away from the 'average model engineer' if there is such a person towards that of glossy money making rag and the shelves of newsagents are full of them.

Most of my time is spent with my family and friends none of which are in anyway interested with my hobby apart from curiosity, my other hobby is computers and has been since the 1980's but I have no wish to amalgamate the two.

Time and time again we hear that youngsters are not being encouraged into 'model engineering and that our youth lack many of the hands on skills that were taught in schools of the last century, skills that have lasted a life time.

Only last night I was browsing through copies of ME from the 1950/60s and what a difference in content, there is so much more to model engineering than CAD, laser cut frames or CNC controlled lathes and mills.

Each to their own though.

Edited By Cyril Bonnett on 18/08/2014 13:22:46

I have two grandsons. The elder showed a lot of promise in his early teens: indeed, his mother at one parents evening was met with "I understand Jamie's Grandad has a lathe". Unfortunately, he has ended up working for the family agricultural contracting business, but still knows what a lathe is and what it can do for him.

The younger grandson, never showed much interest in my equipment, and not too much in school engineering until he came to his project in Year 11 (old 5th form) when he used my lathe to make some parts for the project. He went to a local factory on Work Experience and decided that he wanted to go into engineering of some sort. He has managed to obtain a mechanical engineering apprenticeship at the same factory. Just recently, he was talking about bench work, and having to make a 50mm x 6mm x 6mm key (to enable a rod to turn something else) by hacksawing and filing.

There is still hope for some of our youngsters.

Regards,

Peter G. Shaw

I'm am relatively new to the hobby and it seems to me this is not a particularly cheap hobby full stop. I like many have a mortgage and bills to be paid. The fact that somebody has more to spend on their hobby than me is of no consequence. Good luck to them.

I have to budget my hobby very carefully. What many would require as the basics to even make a start in the hobby, are in my mind hugely expensive and quite lavish purchases in the greater scheme of things.

A lathe, drill, grinder, then theres all the measuring tools, cutting tools, chucks, collets etc etc.... None of it cheap.

If someone has the means and the desire to purchase equipment beyond your grasp or not in keeping with your idea of what passes for model engineering, please don't be too critical. Even on my limited budget others think me quite mad and see my purchases as unnecessary.

Aside that, for the moment I'm strictly in the manual machine camp, but who knows as my involvement with model engineering increases I too may look to modern time saving methods of production.

John