Relax sport. Figured you like communicating by talking down to others, so I wanted you to feel at home.
I started making chips the year you were born. I was machining landing gear boxes for DC-10's when you were still in diapers. 2000lb aluminum forgings. I've never hit the green button on a NC/CNC/DNC machine. All the various machines I ran were all manuals, and few if any had DRO's. You read dials, venier scales, and optics.
Ever run a jig bore? We were the guys who saved parts from the scrap bin by moving a hole 0.0005", or held the true position of .0002" on compound angle feature locations. We never got a second chance at anything. You hit the mark, or you lost your job.
Back then, all of us considered guys like you button pushers since you always got extra stock to play with, and you left the hard stuff for us.
I learned exactly the same way you did, on manual machines, just 20 years later. The guy that trained my while I was going through my apprenticeship was an old school toolmaker from Pittsburgh that made nuclear reactor parts. As you can imagine he was very anal, and it sucked sometimes, but in the long run it made me a better machinist, and gave me the foundation for everything machining related I know today.
If you were still in machining, you'd be in the same shoes I am, setup, programming, and running a cnc machine.
Are you saying it takes more skill to make a 2000 lb part, vs a 2 lb part? Because that's sure how you make it sound.
