UTMC

There is some minor geeking out in another thread about the lab in which I work.
Here is a web page with all the crap I get to play with:

http://ims.engr.ucdavis.edu/facilities.html

Oh yeah?! Well my kids let me play with their Playdoh Fun Factory!

Micro-milling, coil cooled, zero-backlash, contour controlled hokus pokus bullshit. Bet you can't extrude star shapes and noodly things!

Not until I make an extrusion press... which I can.

Okay, you can make your extrusion thingy, but ONLY if you post videos of what it can do to/with a dead hooker.

Alright, fancypants. Whip me up a set of these:



...And I might be impressed!



[size=small]and then send them to sixty north main steet hatfield pa[/size]

The ultra-precision 5-axis machining center Mori Seiki NN 1000 DCG was developed at Mori Seiki DTL for specialty mold production. This machining center utilizes diamond milling or scribing tools and can accurately machine features in the micron range with a surface finish at nanoscale. NN1000 incorporates air bearing guide-way technology and direct drive motors on every axis to provide frictionless zero-backlash motion, with low heat generation. Symmetric DCG construction enables feeds up to 4500mm/min and minimizes thermal deformation.

No thanks, I've already got one.

problemaddict wrote:Alright, fancypants. Whip me up a set of these:



...And I might be impressed!



[size=small]and then send them to sixty north main steet hatfield pa[/size]

INDEED!

You had me at "5-axis Nano-Machining Center"

Nice! Verry nice!!
However, while those are some fine tools, what do you actually make with them?

Surely there must be some impressive project you are permitted to show photographs of!

I would probably be more impressed if I didn't have to spend my days in a 100,000 square foot building full of CNC machines.

Yeah, what do you guys make with all that shit, anyway?

Well, I make dollhouses...I mean models...


...but I only have a laser cutter

Sisyphus wrote:Yeah, what do you guys make with all that shit, anyway?

You ready for this one?

With all of those machines, we make impellers that serve no function, models of the Eiffel Tower, and little tiny models of F1 racecars.

I'm not shitting you.
The point of the place isn't actually to make stuff, it's to improve the software and methods by which stuff is made.

SSCAM, what is it that you do?

WeAintFoundShit wrote: With all of those machines, we make impellers that serve no function, models of the Eiffel Tower, and little tiny models of F1 racecars.

I'm not shitting you.
The point of the place isn't actually to make stuff, it's to improve the software and methods by which stuff is made.

So..... you could probably make those nice trees in the pic above?

Or other sexy m/c parts?


Hmmmm?

I'm working on it.

So you're saying I could have a half-inch high scale model of the Eiffel tower? How cool would that be?

How much?

WeAintFoundShit wrote:SSCAM, what is it that you do?

Short answer: I'm an unemployed commercial deep sea diver.

Answer you're probably looking for: Right now, I run a 5,000 watt Trumpf laser. I also design/build tooling for and handle all of the programming for our 7 axis robotic welders (I'm factory trained on Fanuc robotic controls). I have in the past run band saws, manual lathes, manual mills, CNC machining centers and I'm a CWB certified welder in hard wire mig, flux core and metal core. I'm a little rusty, but I do know my way around G-code. The shop that I work in makes all kinds of shit for the elevator, heavy truck and mining equipment industries. We have more CNC's than I can count and all varieties from small Bridgeport CNC mills to huge machining centers and vertical lathes. We don't have any of the nano machines, electron polishers or electron scanning microscopes. I do think that is some pretty cool shit but not very practical for our applications.

I hope that you are planning a career in the engineering side of this stuff... Grunt labor in a machine shop usually means standing in a production cell pushing the cycle start button on the same setup all day (ymmv). I know very few machinists who really enjoy what they do.

Yeah, a lot of what I do as the lab's underling is stock preparation. Basically I've got to work my way OUT of being a machinist, which will happen as I gain more familiarity with the ins and outs of the programming side.
Still, I DO like machining stuff. Not just hitting cycle start over and over again, but designing and creating parts (I *am* planning on going into the engineering side of things).

My grandfather, however, was a machinist who loved what he did. Mostly, however, because he was a mechanical engineer by trade, though not by education. He had the perfect balance of hands on building, as well as being in charge of a lot of design. He was a *very* smart dude.

Underwater welding, though... That sounds dangerous/awesome/miserable/totally cool, all wrapped up in a waterproof taco.

I knew a guy that worked for Titan Marine, salvage diver. That's some hardcore shit, right there. Guy could do anything.

Being a machinist always sounded interesting to me, but I guess the monotony of pushing buttons all day would wear ya down.

I'm not good enough with the maths to be an engineer of any sort

Sisyphus wrote:I knew a guy that worked for Titan Marine, salvage diver. That's some hardcore shit, right there. Guy could do anything.

I have a buddy from dive school who just started as a red hat with Titan. He sent me a picture of a sunrise over the Gulf of Mexico. It really helped motivate me to look harder for dive work. Salvage is my preferred discipline.

I guess I should point out that there is a major difference between a machinist and a machine operator. Any monkey can be trained to push a button. I would like to hear what Smokey thinks about it. Isn't he a journeyman machinist?

I consider myself very fortunate to have gotten some machine tool experience at both ends of the fun spectrum, starting at the fun pie-in-the-sky 'research' shop and ending at the night-shift button-pusher shop.

These high tech manufacturing machines are technology made out of technology for the purpose of making technology: even in their computerized sterility they glow white- hot with human innovation. And what is this cutting edge for cutting? Solving problems or putting people out of work? Achieving unheard-of things or incrementally enhancing shareholder revenue? The technology doesn't care, it's just technology.


I'm fascinated by the rise in rapid prototyping and instant manufacturing technologies, and their promise to put the capability of Making Things into the hands of people with no ability whatsoever to Make Things. I'm also quite wary, of course, of the pitfalls of putting everybody who knows how to Make Things out of work and out to pasture.

In the future, when I have something to say, I'm just going to have Pattio say it for me.

guitargeek wrote:In the future, when I have something to say, I'm just going to have Pattio say it for me.

Yeah.

piccini9 wrote:

guitargeek wrote:In the future, when I have something to say, I'm just going to have Pattio say it for me.

Yeah.

+1

Zim wrote:

piccini9 wrote:

guitargeek wrote:In the future, when I have something to say, I'm just going to have Pattio say it for me.

Yeah.

+1

popcorn

Pattio - The Official Spokesman for the Uma Thurman Movie Club

Pattio wrote:I'm fascinated by the rise in rapid prototyping and instant manufacturing technologies, and their promise to put the capability of Making Things into the hands of people with no ability whatsoever to Make Things.

Just like Facebook.

"Look! I machined a portrait of my cat eating it's own poop again! Isn't it the cutest thing you have ever seen?!?!?!?"

We just got a rapid prototyper of the 3D printing variety.
It'll print you up a fully functional mechanism. Technology is amazing.

WeAintFoundShit wrote:We just got a rapid prototyper of the 3D printing variety.
It'll print you up a fully functional mechanism. Technology is amazing.

Pics or it didn't happen