We were given a blueprint of a piece to mill for our first assignment. Mine was pretty close; I got 3.77 (more than within a .2 tolerance, or even .03 tolerance) on the long diameter, and .25 exactly on the small diameter near the arrow part (yipee). I'm taking the class to understand materials, but I really do enjoy machining a lot so far. I even helped to figure out a function on the H@@s CAM today even though I know not that much about it, simply because of the pr0gramming and l!ghting board experience. So a lot seems intuitive.
My teacher looked at me and said "see, you're a genius!" I said uhh..no..I've just been starting to learn some pr0gramming, and a lot of it (the way the cd is set up) is similar LOL.
The more I think about, I feel like it's a huge disservice when design schools don't teach kids how to do this stuff; read blueprints, some machining in the syllabus. I get it; it's too much and takes too much time and it's not as 'fun' as the "do whatever you want" mentality and they want to churn out students and make money.
There are some parts that are frustrating, for example; I saw a guy today start milling and then his position points moved so that he basically could never get them accurately to where they were when he first started and he had to start all over, knowing this. Who wants to do/put up with that? LOL.
But...There is SUCH a demand for people who are good at this stuff, so even if a kid decides they don't like designing (or in between designing gigs starting off), they can be working and paying off student loan debt or whatever (savings, house, whatever, starting their own company, etc). It's like schools have become too much about the student (and sorry, most students DON"T KNOW what they want to do at 18 or have that focus) and 'do whatever' than about balancing that with the reality of the world.
There was a chapter at the beginning of this textbook where they were saying the high end stuff (like what we're learning; I"m in intro at the moment, though) is highly sought after because it just cannot be outsourced; they tried years ago and planes were crashing, the metals weren't pure for things like the medical industry where they needed things exactly to spec. Now companies like B0eing will only have certain companies make their stuff; it has to be at a certain standard. So it teaches you to have a good eye and to appreciate precision. Even in design that's what separates good from bad design.
You can't understand everything with clay (although I think learning wood is great, too). But, you have to do the math to figure out how everything maps out, and measure carefully. No bluffing or guessing. I think that that is missing a LOT in the whole design syllabus of many schools; laying everything out. Everything is encouraged to be so 'free' and carefree and last minute. It's one of the great things I like about the engineering department. Everything thus far has to be absolutely planned out, even though there is a lot of design being done. It means that therefore there is a BASE STANDARD to which everyone is held accountable. It's not "everything is subjective". To be a good design it has to be functional, too.
I really like the precision of it. And..I got a 95 on my first quiz (yipee). Anyways, I'm just learning, and it's been fun thus far. Today, since I was the first to finish, I got to help a bunch of people in class, and by the end a bunch of people finished theirs, too. It's like a neat little community and a tightly knit group of us, most of whom want to go into engineering or even owning manufacturing companies.
