Apprentice Piece - Turning

Clive, with the greatest respect, is that a problem with that person, or is it the standards of the signalling company he works for, not having accreditation for certain job requirements and retraining or reassigning where necessary?

Regarding suitability for jobs; The DWP and Job Centre require people to apply for jobs which are not necessarily related to their qualifications or skill-set at the threat of losing their unemployment benefit if they don't comply. It's all to do with reducing unemployment figures for the gov'ts marketing and not necessarily with finding the right jobs for people.

After 14 years at HP I've been looking for suitable work now for the past 4 years (with about a year of illness in between) and I sometimes wonder about the companies I've been invited to attend for interviews. One firm offered a salary at interview, then later that day called me to say they would actually only be paying minimum living wage, as I had already told the Job Centre people I'd found a job I was under immense pressure because I declined the position.

Another asked me what my marital status was (an illegal interview question nowadays, which I knew about but answered anyway that I was unattached, I wasn't too fussed about his question), but the guy then proceeded to give me a lecture on how, being in a relationship or married could be detrimental to being available for work. All the time he was speaking I was thinking he must have just gone through a bad divorce or something, talk about unprofessional. At the same interview they complained that I was early and that I was over-qualified.

I'd better stop there If anyone wants to discuss unemployment further, please PM me or start a new thread. I know I'm just about sick of unemployment and the attitudes of people towards the unemployed as portrayed by the media. Not all unemployed people are benefit scroungers or useless!

My apologies to the OP for going off-topic. I do think that the training being offered by him and the other volunteers can be very beneficial for people wanting to learn.

No hard feelings, just sharing my thoughts.

Ed.

Edited By Ed Duffner on 16/10/2016 14:44:38

Nicked from another ME.

I am a self-taught model engineer, I didn't have a good teacher, but I was a good student!

Ade

My local academy/Technical college offers BTEC level 3 engineering consisting of the following:

Core Units:

• Health & Safety
• Mechanical Principles
• Mathematics for Technicians
• Mechanical Systems
• Engineering Drawing
• Fabrication Processes
• Electrical Technology
• Primary Forming or Engineering Secondary or Finishing Techniques Machining
• Computer Aided Design (CAD)

Seems like a reasonable grounding in skills needed for a home workshop or small jobbing shop. I do know they have lathes and milling machines.

Martin

So, has the OP come up with a suitable beginner's training project based perhaps in part on what came to light in this thread? Would be interested to know after all that discussion.

Good points well made Ed. Everyone I know who has ever been unemployed wanted to work and needed to work. They were all made thoroughly miserable by the experience. Many of us under-rate the role played by luck and opportunity in life. There but for the grace of God go I.

Dave

I spent my first year in employment in 1967 under the local engineering training group in a training workshop. Although I was employed as a draughtsman I had to learn by getting my hands dirty, enjoyed every (most) minutes of it. We had to do this for 10 months and 40 hours a week, plus travelling of an hour each way by train. I still have the riveted tool box with most of the pieces in, most entailed using different machines and hand finishing. I doubt you would get 30 sixteen year olds to do that these days, we had one lad drop out because he wanted to go into graphic design and got a job in that. How many of those worked in engineering all their lives, I have no idea, it would be interesting to find out. I have been lucky!!. Four redundancies, taken back once and finally contracting for the final 10 years. Contracting is were you see the lack of engineering skills both in other contractors and in the full time workforce. The amount of knowledge I have passed on over these last few years is ridiculous. Do others feel the same, as you get older you have to impart more to not only the young but also the not so young who didn't benefit by the apprentice schemes

A simple turning piece, as previous a centre punch or scriber, just make sure they know how to remove the chuck key and where the brake is.

I`d just like to share this apprentice tool kit made by my uncle age 17 in around 1960. It won first prize at Calder Hall Nuclear plant which at the time was UKAEA. My grandmother had these tools in a display cabinet until she died. I have them now.

I never met my uncle as he died several months after this aged 17 in a tragic rugby accident. When i was a child i was always fascinated by the tools and used to sneak into the cabinet to play with them.

Edited By mark smith 20 on 17/11/2016 14:52:06

Truly impressive kit mark, it's a shame you or we didn't get to meet him. He would've been a boon to this community.

Michael W

Very nice tool-kit Mark. Excuse my ignorance, but what are the four daleks in the middle?

Ta,

Dave

Four daleks in the middle?>> They look like milling machine jacks .. Used for levelling and steadying metal stock when cutting, particularly useful if metal stock overhangs machine vise

The daleks are called toolmakers jacks or engineers ditto. The top bit is held in a thread so the height can be adjusted, and they are used to support odd-shaped workpieces when machining (etc).

Very useful if you work on castings (etc) which can start off with no flat surface in sight.

Cheers, Tim

PS another candidate for the Glossary.

Edited By Tim Stevens on 17/11/2016 17:40:33

Miniature Jacks! What a good idea. Thanks Tim and Antony.

Cheers,

Dave

Mark,

Your photograph brings back memories, in the late 70's my brother and I both got apprenticeships, me first followed by my brother the next year, we made a very similar selection of tools including a pair of v blocks and clamps, ground parallel bar which I still use today for checking my lathe.

We were taught the use of hand tools for the first three months before we were allowed to touch a machine let alone use one, with the exception of a pillar drill.

Our apprenticeships were for four years and each year had a maximum of ten of us, millwrights, machine tool fitters and technical apprentices. We spent one day and evening at technical college for five years.

Martin P

HI ,i think the question has been answered by a few concerning the daleks, which is what we used to call them as kids.

I served a sheet metal apprenticeship at the same place , then BNFL Sellafield, i think there was around 150 of us taken on at the time and this was every year under about 6-7 different trades. Then later in the 1990`s they stopped the whole thing i believe but are recently taking on significant numbers of youngsters under the Gen II programme. It was a great time we even had a gym instructor who was ex navy who used to put us though hell once a week.

Funnily enough the first thing I thought was Daleks! I did figure out what they were. How terribly sad, he was clearly more than usually talented.

Neil

In the late 50s, early 60s, every grade of Apprentice, at Rolls Royce, Oil Engine Division, from Craft through to Graduate, spent a year in the Training School. As the year progressed, the higher grades moved on to projects where machining was a means to the end. But everyone had an insight into Turning, Milling, Grinding, Fitting and Inspection. Some of us, myself included, had never seen a lathe before, let alone used one!

For the folk, apparently, envisaged by the OP, the first 20 or 30 minutes are going to be spent on H & S, and showing how to stop and start the machine, then its other controls. Only then should they be allowed to run the machine, whilst closely supervised. (1:1) Very likely, the first thing that they will learn is that the cut will reduce the diameter by twice that amount! Then , again, under supervision the student could start making the plumb bob. Starting with planning the sequence of operations, leading to plain turning, drilling, taper turning. Boring will be too slow to cover in a session lasting only two hours. Even completing a small two part piece like the plumb bob will be very tight on time.

Cannot see that there will be time available for thread cutting, by any means. So, if the two parts of a Plumb Bob are made, securing the two parts has to be by "sticking", two part epoxy/anaerobics etc.

At the end, the student ought to have a very basic understanding of what a lathe can do, but little else, other than (hopefully) a respect for power driven equipment.

These students will not have the experience and skills of many of the readers of this forum, so their work rate will be SLOW. And the safer for that, for them.

Howard

"Reducing the dia by twice that amount", and that depends on where you get your lathe, on mine you move the depth of cut say .020", and the tool moves .010" and takes off .020" on diameter, got well and truly caught out when I used a mates Myford 7, moved .020, and took off .040", lucky me, I still had .005" to go.

Ian S C

Direct reading dials are one project i want to do on my southbend .