How did you ………………… Job back ground

[martin perman 1Participant @martinperman1]

Gentlemen,

After reading a few threads recently I'm curious how you got into Model Engineering and what your job back grounds are/were to see if there is a connection.

I'm a time served machine tool fitter who now does service engineering work, over the years I have managed to work on/repair/install most types of machine tool, I have worked with industrial robots including programming and my current job is working with large industrial washing machines.

My interest in Model Engineering came from my Grandfather who was a self taught engineer working with coal fired boilers powering model ships and traction engines. I dont do model engineering as such but I do make/repair parts for my hobby which is the restoration of Petrol/Paraffin Stationary Engines and I run a classic car.

I would love to know your reasons.

Martin Perman

[martin perman 1Participant @martinperman1]

[Eric CoxParticipant @ericcox50497]

I'm a time served engineering technician, a term used by Renold Chains with whom I served my apprenticeship. I stayed with them for a couple of years as a development fitter building prototype machine tools. From there i moved to Marmite as a packaging fitter where I worked for the majority of my working life. I then worked for a small company in Walsall as a service engineer, installing and servicing label applicators. Being made redundent I started my own company doing exactly the same work untill I was diagnosed with MS.

Needing something to keep me occupied and having an interest in locomotives and traction engines the idea of model engineering came from SHMBO. As well as keeping me occupied it prevented me from being under her feet as she can wheel me into the shed and leave me there.

[MadMikeParticipant @madmike]

Martin I was an apprenticed toolmaker, about a thousand years ago I might add, then spent some time with a special purpose machine manufacturer, George Kingsbury, and then moved to a career of management positions in some major companies. I retired when I was 60 after concluding that work is truly the curse of the drinking classes. I am not into Model Engineering, as a model is for me anyway no sustitute for the real thing. I say this because my main passion is motorcycling and apart from riding I restore classic motorcycles, and for that reason I have my lathe etc, and soon a new milling machine.

I can fully understand why somebody with an interest in steam trains or similar mechanical "devices" would become interested in model engineering, and that is why I mostly lurk on here. I find the efforts of some in making truly wonderful modela absolutely fascinating.

It will be interesting to read other replies about peoples background and their reasons for becoming "Model Engineers". Hmmmmmmm Model Engineers?? Does that mean that everybody on here is only about 1/12 scale??? LOL.

[martin perman 1Participant @martinperman1]

Mike,

I remember George Kingsbury, Birmingham, I worked for Lucas CAV and we had machine tools rebuilt by them.

Martin Perman

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

Computer programming hobbyist who ran into CNC stuff one evening and it just snowballed from there, a huge fascinating technical subject which feeds both practical and theoretical interests

I had also stopped watching TV and was looking for something to fill the void which didn't involve me staring at a computer screen for the rest of my life

Fleabay and the net have revolutionised the hobby IMO, allowing people to easily get the kit and resources which would be almost unobtainable in previous decades

[StovepipeParticipant @stovepipe]

Thank you Martin for your misguided belief that this lot are "Gentlemen"

However, on a serious note, the fellas on this forum are a thoroughly decent crew who help we newbies directly or indirectly by their willingness to share their considerable knowledge and expertise. Thanks, fellas.

Started my working life in a small engineering shop, then moved to another one. Then moved into accountancy, spent the next 40 years "cooking the books", and when I retired I decided to move into muddle engineeing, myself being on a scale of 12" = 1ft. Current project is an MJeng Bagnall tank in 'O' gauge, electrically powered.

Dennis

[Anonymous]

Hmmmm, not sure if I'm allowed to answer the original question as I don't consider myself a model engineer. My background is professional engineering (read my profile for more details) and I am building some model engines. However, I also earn part of my living from the workshop, so I have a different perspective than some. My emphasis is on the engineering, rather than the modelling.

I don't belong to a model engineering club, but I do find this forum useful, as there are some very knowledgeable people here, and it is always helpful to throw ideas out and be able to ask questions.

Regards,

Andrew

Edited By Andrew Johnston on 07/07/2012 12:39:42

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

Started early with Meccano, then at High School tool what was then called engineering theory and practice, lathe , milling machine and shaper, and aluminium casting. Left school and joined the RNZAF as an engine fitter, ill health meant I did not stay long. Got an apprenticeship as an aircraft engineer, servicing Cessna aircraft, mainly in the aerial topdressing business. Later made redundant, and trained as a nurse. On retiring I took up wood turning, and became allergic to the dust, at that time I bought a mill drill. I later bought a larger size Taiwanese engineers lathe, and started making parts for vintage machinery such as Lanz Bulldog tractors, and war time Willys Jeeps. I then started building hot air engines, they are small motors reather than models, I,v only built 17 to date, with two or three on the drawing board. When this crook leg of mine improoves a bit I'll get back to the workshop, went out yesterday and ran the mill and lathe for 10 min, first run in about 3 weeks. Ian S C

[Martin CottrellParticipant @martincottrell21329]

Hi Martin,

I'm a self-taught model engineer and my love affair with model engineering started in 1977 with a chance encounter with ME magazine whilst looking for my then favourite mag, Practical Car Mechanics, on the shelves in WH Smiths. Until that time I didn't even know that model engineering existed as a hobby. From that first encounter, I've been hooked ever since and as time, money and family comittments allowed have built up a reasonably well equiped workshop.

I've never been afraid to learn by practical experimentation. This has lead to a few cock-ups over the years which have kept the scrap box heavy but I like to think that each piece of 'scrap' I generate is really just a smaller component waiting to be cut free! My achievements to date have included various Hemingway tools including a Warden tool & cutter grinder and the GHT universal pillar tool, a horizontal mill engine and accompanying vertical boiler and a couple of Stuart engines. My current project is a Junior petrol stationary engine and I am about to embark on a 3" scale Marshall traction engine when the castings eventually arrive.

As for jobs, in 1977 I was 19 and employed in agricultural contracting, I then moved into the motor trade. About 15 years ago I decided to have a change and trained as a Drainage Surveyor which I am still doing now.

Regards, Martin.

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

My Grandfather ran a radio/tv rentals and shop business ahich he passed on to my Dad. Both were incredibly practical – 'Grampy' made 'improvements to sonar' in the Navy and taught radar to RAF officers and became a Radio Ham. Dad was more practical but can fix anything and at 78 is still truning out battleships at 1:48 scale (work out how big Warspite and Coventry are at that scale!)

I grew up on lego, meccano, blasa aeroplanes and airfix kits – especially the latter. At school sciences were my strongest suite, and I long expected to become an engineer – I wanted to go to Farborough and work out why planes had crashed. But I had a brilliant biology teacher in sixth form and now I work in nature conservation.

But ever since reading 'make a dead centre lathe' in RC&ME or one of its kin as a teenager, I've always wanted to join modelling's 'senior service'.

Neil

[Another JohnSParticipant @anotherjohns]

Posted by martin perman on 07/07/2012 09:34:20:

After reading a few threads recently I'm curious how you got into Model Engineering and what your job back grounds are/were to see if there is a connection.

Martin;

Well, if you scratch around you'll find my name in original "Internet" documents, on 3D graphics ISO standards, and if we are lucky, part of the new web-standard HTML5. Some free software I wrote has been downloaded about a million times, as far as we can see. (Universities, NASA, CERN, that kind of place)

I got into model engineering because of a friend of my fathers' who had a track in his back yard when I was a young teenager.

Not quite the same background, which is why I love this hobby!

Another JohnS.

[Mike PooleParticipant @mikepoole82104]

Loved metalwork and engineering drawing at school, my tutor group met in the library for registration, Model Engineer was the most interesting magazine on the reading tables. Served my apprenticeship with British Leyland as a maintenance electrician, worked in the tool room as an electrician, a very interesting place to work as it was like a history of numerical control (before it became CNC). Th oldest NC machine was a Wadkin coordinate drilling machine used for jig boring type tasks, this had an EMI NC control with valves and toroidal transformers.It had glass inductosyns for position feedback. A Cramic with a Ferranti NC control, spirodisc encoders producing moire fringes and magnetic tape for data input. lurking in the end of one bay was a large Cinncinatti Hydrotel mill, this is where the operator takes a ride with the spindle to see what is happening, room for a maintenance man too, the control was Cinncinatti Acramatic One, transistors by now but lots of mercury wetted reed relays and toroids, absolute resolver feedback by gearing three together in an assembly as big as a bucket, eight hole punched tape for data input, much better than mag tape as you could read the tape by eye, a bit laborious though. Another interesting machine was an R&D experiment, a spark erosion machine big enough to make a die for a car panel. In 2 months I will have 40 years working at the same plant now making the MINI under the ownership of BMW . The old tool room has just been demolished to build a large extension to the body shop for the next MINI, somehow 1000 robots are not as interesting as some of the old machine control systems when you could fault find to component level. I have just built my workshop extension as the end of the garage and a tool buying addiction filled the available space. The addiction is better now as I can visit eBay and tool shops and not buy anything, although a Japanese wood chisel made me buy it recently and I am not really into wood! The yen to buy a Myford was with me from about 17 but motorbikes and beer never left me enough money to buy one, after raising a family an understanding wife agreed I did need a Myford and I now have very nice ML7R and after being given some free money for industrial deafness a Warco VMC joined it hence the need for the extension. I just need to retire now instead of working 7 days a week for the Quandt family

[martin perman 1Participant @martinperman1]

Michael,

Am I right in thinking you work at the Cowley plant then, I spent many an hour repairing and servicing the ABB robots before it all got shipped back to Longbridge when BMW took over Cowley to build the MINI. I also enjoyed metalwork and Tech Drawing at school.

Martin Perman

[Mike PooleParticipant @mikepoole82104]

Martin

Yes I work at Cowley as a control engineer in body in white, the population of ABB robots is once again going to increase as they are the robot specified for the new Mini after 12 years of Kuka. I bumped into Dave Uttridge and his brother at the Sandown show about 18 months ago. I was on a course at MK ABB with Dave and he left us to watch a video of some robots which finished while he was having a smoke and ran on to some video of his traction engine steaming up and down his drive, most entertaining.

Mike

ps. I cannot put a face to your name but I am sure you would know Dave Cusden and Peter Tolputt, both have now retired and I am thinking more and more about it.

Edited By Michael Poole on 07/07/2012 21:06:31

Edited By Michael Poole on 07/07/2012 21:07:39

[John CoatesParticipant @johncoates48577]

Absolutely no job related connection for me. As a lad in the 70's I made Airfix and Tamya model kits as my dad was in the RAF during the war (groundcrew, lied about his age and joined before the war at 14) and I loved aircraft. Lego and Meccano were also part of my toy box. I made planes, ships, land vehicles, historical figures until 15 when I discovered fantasy role playing which I took up as my new hobby. At school I did best at the arts (english, history) but ended up leaving the lower sixth when my parents split up. A succession of uninspiring jobs followed but it funded my new habit of motorcycling from 23 and that's what got me into model engineering at 45. Although I prefer to think of it as home engineering as I'll never make a model. All my engineering is tool making or adaptations for my motorbikes.

[Sam StonesParticipant @samstones42903]

I find it rather curious that when the topic of `Member Profile’ came up some considerable time ago, many members appeared to prefer `hiding their lights under bushels’.

Yet here we are with a very neat set of comments from members whose modesty (dare I say), attracts the comment `This member does not have a public profile’.

Mmmmm!

Regards to all,

Sam

[Russell EberhardtParticipant @russelleberhardt48058]

Brief resume:

Started making Airfix models and progressed to control line flying models in the late 50s early 60s. Hated metalwork at school but read Model Engineer cover to cover in the local library!

While at university in the mid 60s I bought an Austin Seven and had to learn how to fix it. Graduated and became a Chartered Engineer (Electronics and computers).

Aquired a 1920s car for restauration in 1971 and bought an old Edgar lathe to help with that. Later having aquired more old cars I upgraded to an Atlas lathe.

On taking early retirement I sold the cars to boost the retirement fund but couldn't bear to part with the lathe so took up model engineering to keep my hand in. Also playing with clockmaking (my grandfather, Great grandfather, and G.G. grandfather were all clockmakers) and am converting a small mill for cnc.

Russell.

[Tony JeffreeParticipant @tonyjeffree56510]

Martin –

My professional background is in IT – I am a Chartered Engineer, but the route to that was via software engineering, not any of the more traditional engineering disciplines. So career-wise the early years were in software development for process control (controlling chemical plant, water purification plant, etc), then I moved into data communications and local area networks, and for most of the last 30 years I have been heavily involved in ISO and IEEE standards development for local area networking standards. If you use Ethernet and/or WiFi to access the internet, the equipment that makes it possible makes use of specifications that I had a hand in developing.

My interest in things mechanical has been pretty much life-long though – I was fascinated by clock mechanisms as a schoolboy and "repaired" various clocks with varying degrees of success, having only basic hand tools available at the time. It is only in the last 20 years or so that I have been able to establish a "proper" metal workshop, starting with a Peatol lathe which I used to make my first (and so far, only!) clock from sheet brass and bar stock. That experience caused me to get interested in CNC; having built a dividing head for my Peatol (which was also my first foray into writing for MEW), I discovered the delights of cutting "thin" gear teeth because your mind wanders after the first 2 or 3 cuts and you lose track of how many turns of the handle you have done. This made me think that there must be an easier way, and seeing an early CNC mill on display at the Peatol stand in Donnington one year, I realised what that easier way was. I bought the mill, developed a stepper-driven dividing head for it (also written up for MEW), and used the combination to cut the wheels for the clock. The mill also came in very useful for cutting out the clock plates and engraving the chapter ring.

Since then I have done various bits of CNC-related stuff, designed and built the Divisionmaster automatic division system, etc. etc., but haven't quite got back to the original plan, which was to build clocks. However, I am working on it!

Regards,

Tony

Edited By Tony Jeffree on 08/07/2012 12:27:32

[Clive HartlandParticipant @clivehartland94829]

I enjoyed my time at Chatham Technical College and used all the machines they had, at the age of 14 I left school and joined the Army apprentice College at Arborfield and spent three years learning to be an Instrument Technician. The emphasis was on Optical and mechanical equipment like Binoculars and Dial sights and the mounts on the guns and tanks. Progressed through the various stages of Technician and had some great postings like Hong Kong and Kenya where I worked on the E10 and E11 Marconi Transmitters and the R211 Receivers. A little bit of hunting and fishing and sight seeing along the way. Due to a change in the regulations I hit a ceiling as any one who joined before 1968 would get no further promotion so I sailed on to get the pension and spent the last 5 years at larkhill, at the School of Artillery. Nine months before my discharge after 22 years, I applied for a job with what is now LEICA, they held the job open for me for nine months. The firm was only about 5 miles from where I lived so commuting was easy. With them I became R & D and special projects manager ( Military oriented) whilst also running the day to day service section. We had Shaublin machine tools, Milling machine and lathes. Also an engraving machine and we had a good tool inventory mostly supplied by Brutsch Reugger or LEICA.The work was much varied from Theodolites to Map making machinery and we went through the Digital change selling lots of gear to Ordnance Survey.

During this time the holding Company Wild Heerbrug aquired Wild Leitz and with it LEICA, including the Leica camera division. Though run as a seperate company as they were a loss maker!

With this aquisition the company name was changed to LEICA and the company then merged all the divisions, Microscopy, Metrology and the service Department and the Hydrology division all under one roof in a new building in Milton Keynes.

I resisted the move but they offered a 25% pay increase so accepted the offer to move and they paid all the move costs. I had a few months before lost my first wife to cancer.

I re-married and we stayed in Milton Keynes until I was offered early retirement due to a further re-organisation of the company, I was then 62. That was in 1999.

I had worked for them for 22 years.

We moved back to the Medway towns and I started work with a small local instrument repair firm that took work from LEICA, exactly the work I was doing when I left as they no longer had anyone to do it! By then of course they had moved forward to electronic theodolites and improved Infra red distance measurement systems.

I have now got to the point of working only three mornings a week and the rest of my time is my own.

My hobby is as a philanthropic bee keeper and of course as a model engineer. I make everything I need, hives, wooden accessories and metal parts and have a good relationship with a local bee supply shop and get work from them making up hives etc.

The background to my hobby was making model airplanes, control line and free flight. I had a selection of engines to use. McCoys, Dooling and other sundry engines along the way.

Now I am set up in the garage with a Myford ML10, with lots of attachments and an Aciera bench drill and lots of tools and cutters. Sawbench and planer, I really need more space, but who doesnt.

Clive

[Peter G. ShawParticipant @peterg-shaw75338]

First saw a lathe , Portass, at school during mid 1950's. Didn't do any metal turning, but did do some wood turning on it. Also did some soft soldering, brazing and screwcutting with a die. I think that was about all, after all, it was a small provincial grammar school with the emphasis on academia.

Professionally, I'm an apprentice trained telecomms techician who specialized in telephone exchanges. Later, I managed to rise to the dizzy heights of 1st line manager at which time I was told that BT now considered me to be an engineer! Along the way I managed to teach myself some basic electronic design from two books by T K Hemingway, and a little bit about computing to such an extent that it is obvious these days that I know much more than Mr Average who uses a computer, but yet I know there are great gaping holes in my knowledge.

I got into model engineering when my elder son & I were trying to set up a 00 gauge model railway, and one particular locomotive, Mainline Class 45 diesel, would always fall of the track if it as much as glimpsed some irregularity. We decided that new, wider wheels were required, and that was that, the bug struck.

Ok, I don't know a great deal about engineering, which is why I've taken the best part of 18, maybe 20 years to get sufficient expertise to now be able to attempt things without making too many utter cockups.

Equipment wise, I have a Warco 220 (105mm x 500mm), a Warco MiniMill, a NuTool CH10 drilling machine and a Clarke 5" D/E grinder. Plus a right load of miscellaneous tools.

I should point out that with the benefit of that most exact science, hindsight, and looking back over the last 60 or so years, it is apparent that my interests have always been technical & practical even if I didn't know what I was doing! For example, I remember as a teenager, hooking up my cycle dynamo to an 8v AC bell transformer, giving the cycle wheel a push and watching the dynamo then drive the wheel round. Playing with bulbs & batteries, indeed I remember at school when I was 12 demonstrating at Parents evening a dirty great electro-magnet holding up a 4lb weight: I wanted to use a 7lb weight but the Physics master correctly said "No". The real irony of that one, is that 4 years later I joined the GPO as an apprentice to find that telephone exchanges relied on elctro-magnets for their operation!

Regards,

Peter G. Shaw

[Ramon WilsonParticipant @ramonwilson3]

Having posted on here so often I feel I can do nothing but join in, public profile or not – and not, I confess, being the operative word!

My modelling interest began at quite an early age – Meccano (no3 I think) at 4th xmas just before 5th birhday and my life has been influenced by it ever since – modelling not Meccano! However, I was most happy with Meccano until I saw my first stick and tissue model aircraft at age 11 when I was hooked well and truly. Seemingly nothing else mattered until, seeing them powered with 'engines' a few months later, I think my fate was definitely sealed

Schooling was 'A' stream Sec. Mod. but despite protestations from those that mattered decided to leave and begin work as an apprentice welder on the local shipyard. At 171/2 decided to join the Army, relinquished said fume laden apprenticeship and spent the next five years in the Parachute Regiment where, along with such a grounding in life, I experienced diving with the RE and was 'hooked' for the second time. Set out to transfer to RE but got a job in civvy street with Underwater Welders of Cardiff. Came up into the North Sea on the rigs in 67 and stayed diving until 81 when, newly married I decided to come ashore to re-train as a milling machinist. During my time on one rig – I saw the electrician building a 'traction engine like' amalgamation of bits and pieces which he eventually got running on air. Under his stewardship I made my first oscillator using a brass end cap used for terminating large cables as a cylinder. There was no lathe, just a drill press and it was soft soldered so could only run on air but it did work. However it 'didn't fly' so at the time didn't make much of an impact. Diving played no part in my engineering development but proved a very interesting carreer taking me all over the world. It began in a few feet of water in the muddy River Avonmouth, and ended running a saturation system on the rig Norjarl off the Shetlands.

Model aircraft have always played a big part but around 1970 our club had a great guy join who was a keen model boater – his logic was simple no model boat club in the area, join the MAC. Arthur and I hit it off and he soon had me building an OS40 powered Aerokits PT boat. That lead to taking the Model Boats magazine and that lead to the Feb, Mar, and April 1972 editions that covered the steam launch 'Wide a Wake' which unbelievably had a real 'Steam engine' I was 'hooked' for the third and but not quite final time of my life and it is from that first Feb issue that my workshop and interest in Model Engineering began.

My interest in ME became such that model aircraft took a back seat for some time and and certainly influenced my thinking when as said I finally came ashore to re-train. I was fortunate enough to obtain work in a jobbing shop where the work was varied and interesting, my first day a baptism of fire but that's for another time perhaps. I then worked for another jobbing shop where I was made foreman and stayed there for four years before taking a job as a 'toolmaker' working on progression press tools. (I place toolmaker in inverted commas because that's the job I had but 'toolmaker' I aint!)

This developed into running a newly equipped machine shop in support of the toolroom and the small press tools we used to supply to the customers and lasted for a happy fourteen years before a new MD arrived one September and by the following January the machine shop was closed and redundancy faced for the first time. (By the middle of the year all the production had moved to Slovakia)

I then worked for the company that had bought our newly installed Haas machining centre which just over a year old had been sold for a fraction of its cost. I spent the next two years there doing one off jobs, writing G-code for all, no CAM, before finally deciding to retire early and enjoy my workshop. Unfortunately I was not prepared for the machinations of the previous two/three years to catch up and seemingly, without any real warning I found myself with an absolute total loss of interest in all matters machining. That lasted for about five years and was on the point of actually disposing of my workshop, such was the lack of its use, when my friend John coaxed me into building that Nova engine – well, you know the rest

Despite training as a milling machist I have always preferred turning and quickly found that was where my time would be utilised. Certainly however the skills learnt in a jobbing shop environment coupled with the high tolerance precision grinding work in the factory has without doubt enhanced my enjoyment of machining particularly recently – Flying seems dormant,  I haven't flown a model since 2006 and have no desire too but do often wonder whether that 'achilles heel' will weaken and the 'bug' will strike again

Oh, and that final time of getting hooked? Well that would be meeting my wife Sue – who shows seemingly endless interest in my endeavours and has always supported me in all my modelling interests wherever they have taken me – you could say, I suppose, a truly great 'co-pilot'.

Regards – Ramon

 

 

[Ramon WilsonParticipant @ramonwilson3]

My word it doesn't look half as big as that in the box

[john kennedy 1Participant @johnkennedy1]

Time served Die and Tool maker. 25 years as a Police Officer. Now a school caretaker.

Always happy with the smell of oil and suds.

[Tony Pratt 1Participant @tonypratt1]

I started back in the seventies as a Toolroom apprentice and worked my way through to Toolroom chargehand, embracing the metric revolution and CNC machining on the way! I can say making 'stuff' is the best job possible bar none. Through various redundancies I now find myself in an office punching the keyboard all day but as my wife says "at least you have a job". I like to read most of the posts and hopefully pass some of my knowledge on to people who ask for help.

Tony

Edited By Tony Pratt 1 on 09/07/2012 13:24:46

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