Machinist of dead tree carcass here. The most expensive mistake ive ever made happened when i machined a kitchen counter top. Customer and boss stood next to me when my CNC moved to its parking position and i went to check the fit of the metal sink in the hole i just cut. Fell clean thru, always check for your tool radius correction folks or your holes will end up exactly one tool diameter bigger than programmed. Lesson learned.
I did that for about 3 months cutting granite counter tops on a cnc... junk job. Junk owners. Let's just say it this way . Immigration got called. When the first officer showed up. Over half the workforce ran out the back door. No bs... and the owner knew it.. he would sit at lunch and drink beer with them. Yet point fingers at us.... no.. I didn't call them. But I look back and that was funny asf.. cough us hack stone in houston.
Technically that part was priceless, the same exact piece cannot be recast. Anyways interesting knowing when a piece of wood is cut open you're the first human to ever see it.
Spoiler warning: They never show so much as a single frame of the part they machined. It's just a story combined with B-roll of different projects. If you wanted to see the machining of a $50m part I guess you shouldn't have clicked on a video about machining a $50m part, like some kind of fool.
Click bait is the oldest trick in the book and the youtube thumbnail is its stomping grounds lmao This part was probably classified and therefore completely illegal to film in the first place. 🤷♂️
@@Mriya6 Why not make the video just because you plebians don’t have clearance to see the part? It’s still an interesting insight into something that no one here has done in our professional careers.
*NOBODY STARTS BY MACHINING HUNDRED MILLION DOLLAR PARTS* I thought the career advice - LIFE advice you gave in this video was utterly BRILLIANT. I started my hobby by making a paperboy cap that didn't fit - 4 years later I make £5000 bespoke historical men's suits and I have a 4 year waiting list.
It's always so great to hear about businessess that worked out. As someone who tried a billion things and failed all of them, I can truly admire your sucess. Now, if I did the math right, the billionth first will work.
It was only a $50k piece of titanium about 20 years ago and the company before us had scrapped the part. We were only a small jobbing shop but did a lot of aerospace work and parts for reactors. We actually ran a test part on a block of aluminum to check our program. The software back then wasn't anywhere as good as today and we weren't taking any chances. The lead time was 3 months to get a new piece of material. I've worked on models and dies that were over $1M but a single part in the assembly was no where near $1M. I can't imagine the stress of machining a, $50M part. 😮
@dafaqis-is supply and demand. If the skill is niche and there is a lot of market demand for it, then skill market value goes up. If there are many people with said skill and are competing to take up the market demand, then skill market value goes down. As a programmer for a niche language, i have experienced the ups and downs of skill market value.
That’s because a “machinist” nowadays is on the bottom of the totem pole in the process of getting a machined part made these days. It’s the programmers and manufacturing engineers in the machine shop that make the good money. A machinist now days is basically a glorified machine babysitter. Now granted, that’s not the case in every machine shop or every machine shop inside a manufacturing facility, but it’s absolutely the majority of them. A machinist nowadays bolts a billet to a mount, closes the door, and hits the Run button and takes the part out when it’s done. And even that part of the job is quickly being replaced with automation.
@@Brodozer39 that isn't true at all, especially in job shop work. programs are rarely perfect off the computer. i have to change parameters in the code based on performance, verify that there is no risk of crashing in every setup before and during running, and about half the parts i make i have to make the fixturing myself. and i'm not even a machinist, just an operator.
The parts I make aren't expensive, but they are mission critical to saving lives everyday. I got to see parts that I made enter a human heart in a valve replacement procedure.
Remember making nitinol stents at laserage technologies way back in 1998. Lots of QA traveller paperwork per part. 0ut of 10 only 2 were actually good enough to be put in somewhere in an artery. The stainless ones had a much better rejection rate.
brandons9138, They weren't super expensive at your end, but you can rest assured that the medical supply company that sold them got thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars for your not so expensive parts. It is too bad that those who actually do the work don't make the big money from their sale.
@@AMERICANPATRIOT1945The parts we make are only part of a larger assembly. Our customer sources the rest of the parts and actually builds the assemblies. They have to get paid too. That's kinda how capitalism works. The guy who mines the iron that goes into steel doesn't get his cut of the cars sale price where the steel ultimately used.
I served on a Los Angeles class submarine. Watching this video was cool as hell. I’ve touched every valve on my old boat and touched every machined surface and was super impressed with its craftsmanship
Are you guys serious? Some clients sign a contract that their parts aren’t displayed to the public, they aren’t breaking that for some idiots on youtube
after watching this and reading the comments all I can add is that I am a retired trucker of 30 years,no accident,no tickets and retired with a perfect record.....and,I did stay at a Holiday Inn express one time.cool video,new subscriber here...Happy New Year and may God bless us all.from North Carolina USA
I’m only 17 but I’ve already cut a nerve racking part myself. I am apart of my high school robotics team and I am the main operator for the cnc router. For our design we wanted to build a 27” diameter turret made of polycarbonate. It tools a lot of prep work in order to get this done. We first cut test pieces out of pressboard in order to ensure everything would work together. But one problem we had was that the material would flex and an edge on the side of the part would be way out of spec. We managed to fix this by putting screw throughout drill holes we made beforehand to secure the part. Next we also tested out feeds and speeds for cutting polycarbonate on a scrap piece of it. We only had one sheet of polycarbonate big enough for the turret pieces so we made sure everything was right. It was nerve racking for the first part getting cut out. Once it finished I pulled it off and check every dimension and they were all perfect. After that I kept getting more and more confident with each piece, until I could almost just let it run without even watching it. In the end every piece fitted together perfectly and the robot we had made qualified us for the world championship.
I remember when I scrap my first part. Boss came up to me, ask me if it will happen again. I said no I saw my mistake and I fixed it. He then showed me the price of that part finished. I then told myself to check 18 times before I hit the button 😅.
I just started machining Titanium for the first time last week. It's been interesting on how different it is from 6061. I'm in my second year of CnC programing and machining at an aerospace company. Its been OJT experience the entire time. Got lucky that they wanted someone with zero experience in machining so they could train me with only good habits from the start. Great channel and get into.
I would suggest that that isn't luck but rather that they recognized something in you. You don't just hand someone with no experience a training spot plus the room and time to properly develop on the job-which is very expensive and uncertain and so constitutes a major financial and operational risk--unless your intuition and observations quite clearly tell you that this person has greatness in them waiting to be brought out. Don't sell yourself short is my message. You got yourself that spot, not something nebulous like luck, at least not primarily. It happened because you have an innate gift
Watching this video , even though I’m not a machinist or CNC tech, I feel pride and this sense of greatness I had back in the 80’s when as a kid I watched videos of this beautiful and amazing nation. I’m puertorican and growing up outside the main land made me always feel like a regular immigrant who didn’t born with a social security number. And till this day I have engraved in my mind the day the Berlin Wall went down. The speeches of the presidents and the classic videos of the big industries and those amazing Popular Mechanic magazines at the doctor office with the future of technology. I’m an airplane mechanic now. A combat veteran and proud to be part of the world of fixing and creating things. Watching the gentleman explaining the process of planning and how they feel working on such a work and the magnitude of the responsibility is just mesmerizing. Thank you to all that works in the different aspects of keeping not only US moving but the entire world. Wish you all the best
I worked for years machining parts for the aerospace and defense industries. Many huge jobs. It was always a challenge but very satisfying when outside inspectors would come in to verify it when it was finished. I retired three years ago.
I'm a welder and the company I work for has contracts for the carriers and Columbia contracts, always cool to see another company helping put this whole thing together.
Not a machinist, but I was a mechanic in a somewhat rural shop. I had to fix a radiator on a Dodge Viper that bottomed out and bent the nipple using a Jack, cone, and hammer. After that, I was trusted to lift up a 1936 Cord model 810 for a check over. Lifting rare antique luxury cars gives me anxiety. As a superintendent for a general contractor now, I’m currently tasked with remodeling a medical manufacturing facility while keeping dust and VOC’s contained. One metal shaving on the container of their product will trigger the rejection of millions of dollars in products. No pressure
Your mid-video comments about having a strong foundation of skills that you build upon through your lifetime is 100% spot on. None of us were born an expert at any task. One only gets there with repetitive, hard work…..failure analysis…..and a search for improvement. Very nice work!
During Covid my company was installing a new 650 million dollar machine that I became responsible for the automation checkout and commissioning as the foreign install team was ordered to go home (all foreigners) took 6 months. I previously only ever did service and upgrades and had never done a whole machine such as that. Shouldn't have taken that long however the company our customer hired to complete all the wire pull drawings royally screwed up and 85%+ of the IO was wrong.. That was fun!!!
650 million dollar machine? What kind of standalone "machine" costs that much. Doesn't the term grow into a "facility" or "factory" or whatever after one point?
Measure twice, cut once. Theres a pucker-factor for sure doing the high priced parts. I always have somebody double check my game plan or set-up before its run. Sometimes another set of eyes can pick out mistakes or give better approaches to doing things. Teamwork.
My most expensive project was machining 6 gatevalve body’s out of 500mm diameter forged zirconium 705. Total worth of 1 million euro. It scared the shit of out me. Not only because of the money but the chips are extremely flammable. But I got it done.
@@TITANSofCNChere's some open source information for you from the future look into the magnetic lenz effect. Once you understand this imagine a toroidal array of Center spinning enclosed electromagnets and picture underneath of that a Shaker bed to get particles airborne with the constantly collapsing magnetic fields inducing Eddy currents you can isolate Metals at the center of the toroid and different metals if same particle size will go to different levels... this can be used to revolutionize metals recycling. I think your company has the ability to produce it... all I can do is just give you the information before it is my duty to increase the mining and recycling efficiencies of this planet to increase the total volumetric output of which. HMU if ur gonna do it and have any questions.
Never even came close to making a mistake of those types of magnitudes We were a fairly small shop doing mostly small parts ( still very intricate and accurate) Some were very large quantities and almost everything we did was a repeating part. Probably two hundred or so parts that were repeats. However I can still imagine that feeling. I will share this story though. A good customer had us tool up two CNC lathes to machine a new brass casting . Running 2 shifts we banged them out while a rotary transfer machine was being built. After over 5,000 parts being machined to spec we got a call to stop production immediately. All those parts were just sitting there until they started to assemble them into the final assembly. Turns out they made a huge engineering mistake and couldn’t assemble the unit. We were paid in full but all were scrapped. I’m sure someone there got that sinking feeling. With all the machines and highly skilled people you now have I have no doubt you could take on ANYTHING! Quite impressive to say the least. I do have to wonder though just what would have resulted if you did do a big boo boo .
They weren't million dollar parts but me and my team built many different types of protective equipment for our troops. We always had the mind set that of this wasn't right someone's life is at stake.
I don’t do metal CNC work, but I do do wood CNC work, and I’m overall fascinated with CNC’s in general and love your guys channel and work. It’s always been a huge inspiration to me, and I’m constantly pushing the boundaries of what me and my machines can do in my wood shop!
I needed to see this video. I usually make small alum parts, so a scraped part is a few bucks. I recently did 50 pieces of delrin at a material cost of $40/each. Messed up like 7 of them… you feel it for sure
most expensive job we have had so far was around $17k. These parts were small levers that engage with a spring in a plane engine. We made 200 of them out of 7075 aluminum. Ther were lots of learning moments and even a limit switch replacement, but they came out how the were supposed to. We are currently in the process of getting your SVM 4100 and hope to begin taking on government contracts. I am also starting your cert program in my high school manufacturing class. Thank you for showing me what my dream job looks like.
I forgot if it was copper beryllium or beryllium copper (or one of them "doped" using the other) but the workpieces weighing ~3 kg cost us 750k each and had some of the tightest tolerances i've ever seen. There was not a single surface in the finishes product that wasn't ground or EDM'd
@@angrydragonslayer of course it could be the other way around beryllium copper has a matt gold look to it and is pretty nasty stuff. Beryllium in general will kill you insanly fast with the dust
@@srck4035 that sounds more accurate to what we were doing Argon atmo cleanroom with basically astronaut suits to keep it clean. Had just set up some stuff inside and got offered to do this job as an extension.
@@angrydragonslayer brother you were probably making neuron deflectors from beryllium. Probably for atomic weapons. Or nuclear power. What ever feels better for you
A couple of years ago I was signed to finish a bunch of exhaust manifolds to Koenigsegg. The manifolds where 3D printed in titanium. That material didn`t want to be cut. It didn`t make it easier when I was told what the price was for each printed part. The end resault where great and the customer satisfyed.
My most struggeling part, was a ion trap casing assembly für a prototype in 1985. CNC with paperstripe. No display, no haimer 3d measuring device.. made of a special steel. Work 3 months on it. The assembly was 3 kg total.. with 12 parts.19 cncd screws, runs in the first try better than expected. Made by blood sweat and tears 🙂 this parts sold later worldwide a few thousands maschines.
I am not in the field, but this clip is great, the way you talked about building yourself up, learn, sharing and if you stuff know what you did to go forward, inspirational, never expected it.
We all love this chanel, truly at highest level,I'm a second generation machinist, started on cam auto screw machines, and we are proud of our quality, on CNC with in our capabilities, love this channel
TITANs just take out all the grey matter, No one likes feeling stupider than the next person & what Titans & his team have created is phenomenal , just bring it ON
My Dad was a Tool and Die maker. He used to say that he had 6 inches but he didn't use it as a rule.... He was a joker but he was the best at what he did. My Dad helped create s "sputtering tool" that could lay uniform layers on surface for Computer Chip manufacturing. Great video. Happy New Year!!
Snapped a $400 tool in a $1200 block of material for a gearbox assembly. I thought I was going to throw up. Machine didn't have enough memory to load the whole roughing program, so I broke it into 2 layers and stepped down the Z offset. Didn't change the retract height to compensate. Full rapid into the part. Sad day. Lesson learned. Don't cut corners.
I was drafted out of machinist school to work for Cooper Bessemer in London Ontario Canada making ships engines and pipeline compressors for both centrifical and horizontally opposed piston types. A rough casting for a 48 inch jet engined was well into the millions. 40 long tonne castings were just another day at my 12 foot table Vertical boring mill by Berthiez.I will never forget those wonderful days. DRO was just starting. We all worked on good old dial machines and tape machines. Had to do math all day long. Rolls Royce jet engines powered some compressors. 18 yrs old and in 7th heaven, LOL.
The section about being successful at machining pretty much applies to everything. I'm glad it was mentioned. So many people think they are going to be a god at something because they watched a couple YT videos. IMO, part of the fun is the learning.
Great advise for all. 2 questions. 1- Did you need to purchase any capitol equipment to machine the 50M part? 2- How do you keep that high level team together for a long time.? The large corporations always seem to offer a better employment package than job shops. Most local shops don’t have a very good retention history.
Most expensive was $250k titanium castings that become the main trucks for Airbus A380 landing gear ... They finished around $1.2 million a piece... Was happy to not have to be doing the actual machining at that point
Most expensive part I worked on was an outer shell of a next gen torpedo. We were tasked to produce three of these prototype parts. Around 15,000 dollars a peice. Most nerv wrecking part were running the program for the first time. It turned out fine in the end.
Back in the days of film, I worked in photo labs. Inevitably, mistakes were made and peoples’ film would be ruined. This is the worst because their photos are gone forever and often can’t ever be replaced. It was horrible having to explain ourselves to those customers.
If you are in a first world country then I wouldn't bother as most manufacturing companies are moving production to countries like Slovakia and Mexico right now, a good wage there is £8,000 a year.
The most expensive parts I've machined were steel tubes with copper-nickel explosion bonded to the outside. These were anodes for the navy. Once those bonded pieces of stock got to us they were worth over $10k and they were one of a kind. Getting more stock because you scrapped one was not an option. Those were rather hard to scrap so it was relatively stress free but still I was triple checking everything.
As a retired machinist/toolmaker/programmer I can say that, after 50 years in the biz, by far the worst material I have ever worked with was Monel. It is super tough and "sticky" as well, lol.
Most expensive part ive dealt with was about 80k maybe not millions but the stress of that alone had me paranoid. Dealing with Inconel 718 and Monel was a part that took them 6 months to create for me to not being able to say no a job. I quoted it and risked it for the learning part not even money involved. Alot learned did it without error. Big win
Sort of off topic but I use to work on rail in WA Australia , Talking about $$ if you make a mistake like one of my co workers did , . Our compamy was working for one of the big 2 iron ore produces building a second rail line for them , This necessitated driving track machines on the main line , as in the only line to the port , So one of the track machine operators rushed to get his machine off the track before a ore train was due to use the track , and he accidentally ran his machine though the switch ( Switches are those things allowing a train to go down one line or the other) . The result was the machine broke the switch and took 24 hours to repair . The compensation request was reported to be $100,000,000 , which seems about right . Ive heard of another company seriously considering pushing a $200,000 truck off the track and down a hill (middle of nowhere with an IT loader , because it broke down and was going to hold up a fright train serious business . I was even on a 4 day shutdown with probably 500 guys and 300 pieces of equipment which had been flat beded in from 1600KM (1000 miles ) and due to incompetence got if lucky 1 % of the job done , great fun but ! . The pure waste in railways is astounding , o a train carrying a load of harleys derails , insurance company pays up , alright boys time to dig a hole .
Wow this is just unbelivabel i don't even want to know how nev wrecking it was to make this part or component but it must have been a great feeling to see the finished part
Engine machinist here, I started working on the industry right out of school about a year and a half ago, my most nerve racking experience was doing a full valve job and port on a $8,000 set of big block heads, making sure everything was the same and even was my biggest concern
I love the mindset shared here. I feel like I got mentored by a team of professionals who want me to succeed. Thank you! Sincerely, A Mechatronics Engineering Tech Student
I work at an extrusion die shop and the most expensive thing I’ve worked on is a 9” die that was chrome plated and I had to grind it, because of the plating process not everything is perfectly flat but I had to grind the chrome to .001-.002 and if I messed it up they would have to strip it and re-plate it which would delay the part and would be quite expensive. The part was worth about $25,000 so nothing too crazy but it’s the most stressful/expensive part I worked on
Built the first two U212 sub for the Italian navy (worked as PM for the company that built the machine used to build the keel)... and I complete understand your fear, (we worked on Amanox, a stainless steel that it is also magnetical dampening or, to be more accurate, sound dead to magnetic wave making the sub way harder to be found by magnetical anomalies detector) all taht said, the only thing I can add is well done Sir. very well done
Dont want to give to much details, but i started my career about 3 years ago now im running production for a 6million production job. Production sucks but everything im learning along the way is awesome. Love my job and the company i work for i learn something new everyday and i cant wait to see what i do in the future.
Awsome advice. I cut 3/5 Infrared crystal and EPI layers on million dollar detectors. We use single crystal diamonds to cut Cd,Zn,InSb GaZnSa. Titanium to 0.00006" +/- 0.000020" Diamonds or CBN tools are perfect to cut , Rockwell hardened steel. Diamonds cut, Aluminum and exotic plastics well. Stress and attention to detail will be your best teacher. Healthy fear gets the job done. American industry rules!
I'm so glad you said it's a healthy fear to worry about screwing up expensive parts, I worked a Studer grinder as my first CNC job on 3rd shift with only one months training and I was worried about crashing all the time and holding .0001" squareness and parallelism only had one crash and one scrapped part but I couldn't take the stress of being undertrained without support because they didn't have anyone else on third with experience on the machine. Now I run a '68 Bridgeport with the cheaper fixed speed J head and somehow make more.
Ive worked on and machined dimensions on Mold components worth anywhere from $200,000-$1M as an apprentice! I did crash at times but you gotta learn some way😂
I was a full time machinist for 15 yrs, then with lack of work moved and now building and doing on haul fit up and machining. And maybe I will get to touch the part you made soon.
I accidentally impaled a giant Giddings & Lewis horizontal boring mill because I moved the W axis toward the machine with a long part hanging off of it instead of the Y axis. It didn't break anything there was just a giant hole in one of the panels from then on
One of the profound implications of working on that top tier of tens of millions of dollars parts is that those parts and assemblies go into equipment that noticeably impacts the world. You become part of a very small community who have a large impact on how our planet runs and what shapes its future.
Ive literally started my apprenticeship in machining, i spend most my time at work on the manual lathe and i love it, i usually only make washers, spacers and bushes but i always try get them as close to perfect as i can and even if theyre just getting welded straight to a trailer i make sure they come out looking real nice, ive used a few machines but id say the lathe is probably my favourite and literally last week i just got my measuring tools sorted (digitsl calipers being my favourite) and im having a great time working on the cheaper parts but getting them basically perfect, even if i have to make 70 i make them as close to as identical, i hope that this attitude pays off like you guys said 💯
I'm still early on in my journey. Right now I'm merely a Class C operator but I'm always trying to practice outside my job on a rented machine to hone my skills to hopefully become a full Class A machinist, Instead of merely an operator. Most expensive assembly I've worked on is about 3-4k finished at work.
I'm a 15 year old machinist and my most expensive part was probably a $10 assembly of parts for a Scotch Yoke steam engine by Elmer's engines. It took me about 2 weeks on my Unimat SL1000 and I learned a lot even though I've been machining for about a year.
any time i have high cost or high importance parts i remind myself that i have made parts with those features or tolerances before and that helps to make it not as stressful making the part its the you know you can do this mentality
Good to hear we have men in the nation that are motivated to learn. If you find others that are even remotely interested in this industry please please drag them into it. "We The People" have our work cut out for in terms of the weapons manufacturing efforts we are about to take on. We have done it once. We can do it again. Cheers Gentlemen.
Now, I'm semi-seasoned in lathe machining but I also know that there's a ton I don't know about machining as I keep learning new things from different shops I work in. The most expensive piece I worked on was a large twin plastic extruder barrel coming in at near 250k USD. I was very proud of the work I did in that shop. I've moved on to another shop but they do it all, not just extruder barrels and I'm having to learn so much all over again since you don't know what job you're going to get or what material it's going to be made from. I'm finding it a bit daunting but also exciting and a challenge. We'll see if I hold up. There's days I feel comfortable and confident and there's days I feel lost and unsure.
Got me beat on cost. Most critical and costly project I ever worked on was called a Transit Rail Simulator built for Visteon at a cost of 250k in the mid 90's. It was exactly what it sounds like. A flatbed train car simulator capable of replicating the forces on automobiles when the train would couple and decouple additional train cars. Dimensions were 26f by 8f made from 4x8 sheets of 1/2in aluminum and fit together into a honeycomb structure with full sheets on top. When finished it required a 77000 pound actuator for the tests. It was a welding nightmare. No matter were you were in the shop, you got flash burn due to the reflections (incoming sarcasm) Thank God aluminum doesn't warp because it required 2 linear bearings running the full length. Mind you this was a small shop and Visteon's first choice for a builder was Boeing. They told them they were out of there minds, and they were right. We had to come up with some ridiculous fixes like when we needed to flip it for welding we had no overhead crane so we came up with Pig on a Stake plan. Found the center of gravity, lifted it from either end and we could rotate it with a single hand. We even used Liquid Nitrogen to fit some pins. After the pins were pressed in their rings, we took the rest of the day throwing liquid nitrogen at one another. As far as I know it's the only one in the world.
When I decided to start knife making 1 steel flat bar looked cheap ~20USD for a 100cm x 5cm x 0.8cm slab Coat rises when I have to cut out the blade profile and make an accurate blank then there's the abrasives cost and drill bits that some gets burned up Worse problem is my cheap belt grinder table that I used to use for making edges 90° to another face, is broken the good part is that I made a few knife blanks before that happened, but if I mess up these blanks my knife making days will surely end Also the stainless steels are expensive for my budget range for this hobby So I prefer not to buy them So now with what I have left and what I learnt for the steel I wasted I've learnt to design and work in a way that reduces the amount of mistakes I can make and to design and spend more time contemplating the process and design for the knife I've decided to make
Monel: just to put this in perspective I machined 10 bars of this that was 3/8 inch diameter and 1 inch long bar. This customer was charged $190 bucks for this. I ran 20 pieces of 1/2 diameter and 4 inches of bar was charged $2,000 and some change. That material is not cheap. Something that can fit in one hand just put it that way. Crazy to see this much.
It’s only 50 million because they say so, the military says hammers cost 200$, there is no way the material comes close to that price, you guys do fantastic work and should get paid well for doing it.
It's not the material it's the certifications behind the production of the part that cost money. Not every shop has certs that align with the need and there isn't enough of those shops to go around!
i am only a product designer, and tbh, nearly never was told what the parts i detailed and did the drafts and drawings for, did cost in the end. BUT - over the last 18 years, i remember a few of the biggest fails that happened, because i was given tasks way over my qualification, experience and without proper supervision. oh, not to forget... underpayed. that job ends in four weeks and i am on the lookout for a new one.
I have made parts for the military. A poly-carbonate window for a camera. 27 pages of specs. Made in 1 hour. Massive air-conditioned workshops to make composite parts for submarines. 12,000 pages of specs.
Just got a job machining wood parts for cabinets a month ago after leaving a paint making shop (my first full time job) with no prior school or experience and I'm loving the technical side of CNC and I love operating it. I've caught on pretty quick with the blueprint reading and operating the machine and eventually want to get into metal when I get some years on my belt. Was curious if some of y'all have any advice for me since I'm basically an apprentice and still learning. the main question I have is I'm referred to as the CNC operator while the CNC programmer actually makes the script for the CNC to follow. So will I eventually need to learn how to program to make this a thriving career? Are Operators more sought after than programmers or do you typically do both on the metal side?
I was machining a very expensive bronze casting at cla-val - Griswald Industries I was only a lathe operator back but I turned castings that were off round so the parts were always close to crashing because they were shaped like cast valve bodies. It was like turning a fire hydrant body... I worked 2nd shift so the day shift guy said he went through the program and updated the tool and offset numbers. He told me that it was ready to run and it was until the last tool. it had a 6 or 7-inch diameter thread and it was probably less than 8 threads per inch so it was a real deep thread and we were supposed to debur the thread after the Higbee cuts with the single-point threading tool but instead of the threader it called up the groover to cut the threads and it wiped them all out. they had to melt it back down and re-pour it and it cost over 20,000 dollars.
I routinely turn and mill 5 digit one off printed parts for a large vendor. Running test features and holes in scrap along with single block and dry run is straight up SOP. No room for error.
Barry, love your guys positive attitude and constructive ways of figuring out a solution to an expensive question and part. Wish I could be that positive, I tend to look at the worse case scenerio and when things go good I'm feeling great about it. The first time I ever used a lathe in high school to make something was a interesting experience for me cause I am a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to making things. Ya nothing expensive but when you are first learning something new, that can be very nerve wracking as well. Like they say, measure twice cut once. In this case measure several more times to confirm. lol
1.3 million dollar drives shaft for power plant turbine, it was shaped like a very large spool with approx 4ft flanges and 16" center. I was only making some modifications. I also worked on the reclaim turbine, I asked the cost and the engineers from Germany answered priceless. Good times, really.
I used to work for a R&D military contractor that made nuts and bolts for aircraft/ships out of these awesome alloys. My job was to run a small CNC machine that would etch the logo on the top of each of the bolts and ran a pre quality check before it went to the actual quality control department. Was an awesome job, I won a 100$ raffle my first week there 😂 “the new guy would win the best raffle in a while”, co workers reactions was hilarious.
I've watched a few of these vids by the Titans of CNC, and this one was just as good. I don't know anything about this kind of work, the best ' finish' work I have done was custom residentian kitchen ceramic tile installation. But my Old Man worked for Lockheed years ago., so I've heard some things that I'm probably not supposed to know anything about. Now my EX business partner is sitting on an expensive piece of equipment that I wouldn't put our LLC in hawk for...and doesn't have a clue how it works. Go figure who's going to learn some new tricks, Fast. Thank you
I once worked with a part used as a liner in Pumps for the Mining industry to protect the inside of the pump from slurry and rocks. I was attaching sensors to it to measure abrasion rate
Machinist of dead tree carcass here. The most expensive mistake ive ever made happened when i machined a kitchen counter top. Customer and boss stood next to me when my CNC moved to its parking position and i went to check the fit of the metal sink in the hole i just cut. Fell clean thru, always check for your tool radius correction folks or your holes will end up exactly one tool diameter bigger than programmed. Lesson learned.
I did that for about 3 months cutting granite counter tops on a cnc... junk job. Junk owners. Let's just say it this way
. Immigration got called. When the first officer showed up. Over half the workforce ran out the back door. No bs... and the owner knew it.. he would sit at lunch and drink beer with them. Yet point fingers at us.... no.. I didn't call them. But I look back and that was funny asf.. cough us hack stone in houston.
You can weld wood right??? It’s ok 😂😂😂. Suck ls to hear but great learning experience
Technically that part was priceless, the same exact piece cannot be recast. Anyways interesting knowing when a piece of wood is cut open you're the first human to ever see it.
Rookie mistake
Cutter comp
Spoiler warning: They never show so much as a single frame of the part they machined. It's just a story combined with B-roll of different projects. If you wanted to see the machining of a $50m part I guess you shouldn't have clicked on a video about machining a $50m part, like some kind of fool.
Yeah this is how they make money, ppl think they will show it...😂
Click bait is the oldest trick in the book and the youtube thumbnail is its stomping grounds lmao
This part was probably classified and therefore completely illegal to film in the first place. 🤷♂️
Pretty much every single assembly on a Columbia Class Submarine is classified. They can't show it. Period.
@@Dasycottus THEN WHY MAKE THE FUCKING VIDEO?!
@@Mriya6 Why not make the video just because you plebians don’t have clearance to see the part? It’s still an interesting insight into something that no one here has done in our professional careers.
*NOBODY STARTS BY MACHINING HUNDRED MILLION DOLLAR PARTS*
I thought the career advice - LIFE advice you gave in this video was utterly BRILLIANT. I started my hobby by making a paperboy cap that didn't fit - 4 years later I make £5000 bespoke historical men's suits and I have a 4 year waiting list.
It's always so great to hear about businessess that worked out. As someone who tried a billion things and failed all of them, I can truly admire your sucess. Now, if I did the math right, the billionth first will work.
most big companies do actually start right out the gate at the absolute top level. its the other way around that nobody grows from garage to the top.
Meanwhile machine shops: you need a Masters degree and at least 40 years experience to get this unpaid internship.
do you have a website? id love to check out your work (and maybe add my name to that waitlist). i can appreciate a good suit.
@@akjshdfgkjhsdfgkjsdhfgI second this, would like to check out your website as well.
It was only a $50k piece of titanium about 20 years ago and the company before us had scrapped the part. We were only a small jobbing shop but did a lot of aerospace work and parts for reactors.
We actually ran a test part on a block of aluminum to check our program. The software back then wasn't anywhere as good as today and we weren't taking any chances. The lead time was 3 months to get a new piece of material. I've worked on models and dies that were over $1M but a single part in the assembly was no where near $1M.
I can't imagine the stress of machining a, $50M part. 😮
Same here. To damn stressful
@dafaqis-is supply and demand. If the skill is niche and there is a lot of market demand for it, then skill market value goes up. If there are many people with said skill and are competing to take up the market demand, then skill market value goes down.
As a programmer for a niche language, i have experienced the ups and downs of skill market value.
That’s because a “machinist” nowadays is on the bottom of the totem pole in the process of getting a machined part made these days. It’s the programmers and manufacturing engineers in the machine shop that make the good money. A machinist now days is basically a glorified machine babysitter. Now granted, that’s not the case in every machine shop or every machine shop inside a manufacturing facility, but it’s absolutely the majority of them. A machinist nowadays bolts a billet to a mount, closes the door, and hits the Run button and takes the part out when it’s done. And even that part of the job is quickly being replaced with automation.
@@Brodozer39 that isn't true at all, especially in job shop work. programs are rarely perfect off the computer. i have to change parameters in the code based on performance, verify that there is no risk of crashing in every setup before and during running, and about half the parts i make i have to make the fixturing myself. and i'm not even a machinist, just an operator.
@@sepg5084 no need to point out the obvious, captain obvious
The parts I make aren't expensive, but they are mission critical to saving lives everyday. I got to see parts that I made enter a human heart in a valve replacement procedure.
Remember making nitinol stents at laserage technologies way back in 1998. Lots of QA traveller paperwork per part. 0ut of 10 only 2 were actually good enough to be put in somewhere in an artery. The stainless ones had a much better rejection rate.
@@christopherleubner6633 Nitinol is no fun to machine.
That's actually really awesome!
brandons9138,
They weren't super expensive at your end, but you can rest assured that the medical supply company that sold them got thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars for your not so expensive parts. It is too bad that those who actually do the work don't make the big money from their sale.
@@AMERICANPATRIOT1945The parts we make are only part of a larger assembly. Our customer sources the rest of the parts and actually builds the assemblies. They have to get paid too. That's kinda how capitalism works. The guy who mines the iron that goes into steel doesn't get his cut of the cars sale price where the steel ultimately used.
I served on a Los Angeles class submarine. Watching this video was cool as hell. I’ve touched every valve on my old boat and touched every machined surface and was super impressed with its craftsmanship
I machined tons of parts for LA class subs. My brother served in the Navy from 1970-1993 as a submariner. Thanks for your service!
I don’t think they actually machined a 50 million part. But he sure talked about it until he was out of breath.😮
They’re probably not allowed to talk about the part itself
hahaha yes these guys are fake as hell...
Titans of Clickbait
Jealousy rears its ugly head. If you ask nicely, they might show you the receipt of the work.
Are you guys serious? Some clients sign a contract that their parts aren’t displayed to the public, they aren’t breaking that for some idiots on youtube
after watching this and reading the comments all I can add is that I am a retired trucker of 30 years,no accident,no tickets and retired with a perfect record.....and,I did stay at a Holiday Inn express one time.cool video,new subscriber here...Happy New Year and may God bless us all.from North Carolina USA
I’m only 17 but I’ve already cut a nerve racking part myself.
I am apart of my high school robotics team and I am the main operator for the cnc router. For our design we wanted to build a 27” diameter turret made of polycarbonate. It tools a lot of prep work in order to get this done. We first cut test pieces out of pressboard in order to ensure everything would work together. But one problem we had was that the material would flex and an edge on the side of the part would be way out of spec. We managed to fix this by putting screw throughout drill holes we made beforehand to secure the part. Next we also tested out feeds and speeds for cutting polycarbonate on a scrap piece of it. We only had one sheet of polycarbonate big enough for the turret pieces so we made sure everything was right. It was nerve racking for the first part getting cut out. Once it finished I pulled it off and check every dimension and they were all perfect. After that I kept getting more and more confident with each piece, until I could almost just let it run without even watching it. In the end every piece fitted together perfectly and the robot we had made qualified us for the world championship.
Woooooohhh you In frc?
@@Vanilla_Icecream1231 yup, going into my fourth season
What team number? I just had my last season of frc and it was crazy
@@williamrosen4475 5462 2PawRobotics
Yooo fellow FRC peep
I remember when I scrap my first part. Boss came up to me, ask me if it will happen again. I said no I saw my mistake and I fixed it. He then showed me the price of that part finished. I then told myself to check 18 times before I hit the button 😅.
Knowing and understanding your mistake is having the right attitude, good for you
That's what makes us better . Not making mistakes but understanding the mistakes we made and how to go about it.
Admitting your mistakes is the first step towards fixing them.
I just started machining Titanium for the first time last week. It's been interesting on how different it is from 6061. I'm in my second year of CnC programing and machining at an aerospace company. Its been OJT experience the entire time. Got lucky that they wanted someone with zero experience in machining so they could train me with only good habits from the start. Great channel and get into.
I would suggest that that isn't luck but rather that they recognized something in you. You don't just hand someone with no experience a training spot plus the room and time to properly develop on the job-which is very expensive and uncertain and so constitutes a major financial and operational risk--unless your intuition and observations quite clearly tell you that this person has greatness in them waiting to be brought out. Don't sell yourself short is my message. You got yourself that spot, not something nebulous like luck, at least not primarily. It happened because you have an innate gift
Skateboarder and basshead.
I bet we would get along great 👍
EXO on youtube is both as well
@@BinaryBlueBull "not something nebulous like luck..." Okay... "It happened because you have an innate gift" Uhhh... that's due to.... luck?
Would you be okay being a mentor to someone thanks.
Watching this video , even though I’m not a machinist or CNC tech, I feel pride and this sense of greatness I had back in the 80’s when as a kid I watched videos of this beautiful and amazing nation. I’m puertorican and growing up outside the main land made me always feel like a regular immigrant who didn’t born with a social security number. And till this day I have engraved in my mind the day the Berlin Wall went down. The speeches of the presidents and the classic videos of the big industries and those amazing Popular Mechanic magazines at the doctor office with the future of technology.
I’m an airplane mechanic now. A combat veteran and proud to be part of the world of fixing and creating things.
Watching the gentleman explaining the process of planning and how they feel working on such a work and the magnitude of the responsibility is just mesmerizing.
Thank you to all that works in the different aspects of keeping not only US moving but the entire world.
Wish you all the best
I worked for years machining parts for the aerospace and defense industries. Many huge jobs. It was always a challenge but very satisfying when outside inspectors would come in to verify it when it was finished. I retired three years ago.
Did you manage to make a decent living?
I'm a welder and the company I work for has contracts for the carriers and Columbia contracts, always cool to see another company helping put this whole thing together.
All the parts come together once the welder gets his hands on them.
Not a machinist, but I was a mechanic in a somewhat rural shop. I had to fix a radiator on a Dodge Viper that bottomed out and bent the nipple using a Jack, cone, and hammer.
After that, I was trusted to lift up a 1936 Cord model 810 for a check over. Lifting rare antique luxury cars gives me anxiety.
As a superintendent for a general contractor now, I’m currently tasked with remodeling a medical manufacturing facility while keeping dust and VOC’s contained. One metal shaving on the container of their product will trigger the rejection of millions of dollars in products. No pressure
Easy money
Your mid-video comments about having a strong foundation of skills that you build upon through your lifetime is 100% spot on. None of us were born an expert at any task. One only gets there with repetitive, hard work…..failure analysis…..and a search for improvement. Very nice work!
During Covid my company was installing a new 650 million dollar machine that I became responsible for the automation checkout and commissioning as the foreign install team was ordered to go home (all foreigners) took 6 months. I previously only ever did service and upgrades and had never done a whole machine such as that. Shouldn't have taken that long however the company our customer hired to complete all the wire pull drawings royally screwed up and 85%+ of the IO was wrong.. That was fun!!!
650 million dollar machine?
What kind of standalone "machine" costs that much. Doesn't the term grow into a "facility" or "factory" or whatever after one point?
650 million for a machine, I’d like to know what machine that was
Measure twice, cut once. Theres a pucker-factor for sure doing the high priced parts. I always have somebody double check my game plan or set-up before its run. Sometimes another set of eyes can pick out mistakes or give better approaches to doing things. Teamwork.
Always
I've been machining for forty years and still learn something every day, you can never know it all and that's what feeds the passion.
My most expensive project was machining 6 gatevalve body’s out of 500mm diameter forged zirconium 705. Total worth of 1 million euro. It scared the shit of out me. Not only because of the money but the chips are extremely flammable. But I got it done.
Thanks for the shoutout! Quite the honor to be here 😎
You're welcome... Thanks for the support!
@@TITANSofCNChere's some open source information for you from the future look into the magnetic lenz effect. Once you understand this imagine a toroidal array of Center spinning enclosed electromagnets and picture underneath of that a Shaker bed to get particles airborne with the constantly collapsing magnetic fields inducing Eddy currents you can isolate Metals at the center of the toroid and different metals if same particle size will go to different levels... this can be used to revolutionize metals recycling. I think your company has the ability to produce it... all I can do is just give you the information before it is my duty to increase the mining and recycling efficiencies of this planet to increase the total volumetric output of which. HMU if ur gonna do it and have any questions.
I like how they showed footage of them making the part...
Exactly, the comments are just machinists bragging about how expensive their part was. Meanwhile we didn't see any part being made.
Never even came close to making a mistake of those types of magnitudes We were a fairly small shop doing mostly small parts ( still very intricate and accurate) Some were very large quantities and almost everything we did was a repeating part. Probably two hundred or so parts that were repeats. However I can still imagine that feeling. I will share this story though. A good customer had us tool up two CNC lathes to machine a new brass casting . Running 2 shifts we banged them out while a rotary transfer machine was being built. After over 5,000 parts being machined to spec we got a call to stop production immediately. All those parts were just sitting there until they started to assemble them into the final assembly. Turns out they made a huge engineering mistake and couldn’t assemble the unit. We were paid in full but all were scrapped. I’m sure someone there got that sinking feeling. With all the machines and highly skilled people you now have I have no doubt you could take on ANYTHING! Quite impressive to say the least. I do have to wonder though just what would have resulted if you did do a big boo boo .
They weren't million dollar parts but me and my team built many different types of protective equipment for our troops. We always had the mind set that of this wasn't right someone's life is at stake.
Thank you for your service. It is a team effort.
Having been in the Navy and served on 3 different warships, the stuff that people like your team does is beyond impressive! KEEP IT UP!
Well , you talked a much but i saw no 50m part machined
It's for a military submarine so it's probably classified.
@@werk62 That's what I was thinking too. Can't show the actual part for a good reason. Nuff Said!!!!!!!
I don’t do metal CNC work, but I do do wood CNC work, and I’m overall fascinated with CNC’s in general and love your guys channel and work. It’s always been a huge inspiration to me, and I’m constantly pushing the boundaries of what me and my machines can do in my wood shop!
I needed to see this video. I usually make small alum parts, so a scraped part is a few bucks. I recently did 50 pieces of delrin at a material cost of $40/each. Messed up like 7 of them… you feel it for sure
most expensive job we have had so far was around $17k. These parts were small levers that engage with a spring in a plane engine. We made 200 of them out of 7075 aluminum. Ther were lots of learning moments and even a limit switch replacement, but they came out how the were supposed to. We are currently in the process of getting your SVM 4100 and hope to begin taking on government contracts. I am also starting your cert program in my high school manufacturing class. Thank you for showing me what my dream job looks like.
I forgot if it was copper beryllium or beryllium copper (or one of them "doped" using the other) but the workpieces weighing ~3 kg cost us 750k each and had some of the tightest tolerances i've ever seen. There was not a single surface in the finishes product that wasn't ground or EDM'd
Be2cv is the material you are talking about but the raw material price is only around 70 euros a kilo
@@srck4035 then it's not that
@@angrydragonslayer of course it could be the other way around beryllium copper has a matt gold look to it and is pretty nasty stuff. Beryllium in general will kill you insanly fast with the dust
@@srck4035 that sounds more accurate to what we were doing
Argon atmo cleanroom with basically astronaut suits to keep it clean. Had just set up some stuff inside and got offered to do this job as an extension.
@@angrydragonslayer brother you were probably making neuron deflectors from beryllium. Probably for atomic weapons. Or nuclear power. What ever feels better for you
A couple of years ago I was signed to finish a bunch of exhaust manifolds to Koenigsegg. The manifolds where 3D printed in titanium. That material didn`t want to be cut.
It didn`t make it easier when I was told what the price was for each printed part.
The end resault where great and the customer satisfyed.
My most struggeling part, was a ion trap casing assembly für a prototype in 1985. CNC with paperstripe. No display, no haimer 3d measuring device.. made of a special steel. Work 3 months on it. The assembly was 3 kg total.. with 12 parts.19 cncd screws, runs in the first try better than expected. Made by blood sweat and tears 🙂 this parts sold later worldwide a few thousands maschines.
Man, you make me proud. Even I ain't part of your crew. Your make me proud as a humble subscriber that is made part of your world.
This is really great advice especially if you like milling a 50 million dollar hammer.
Machined monel (and monel K ) everyday as an MR in the US Navy back in the 80s - never a $100MM part though lol
I pulled a dent out of the quarter panel of my 1995 Lada and it turned out pretty good
I am not in the field, but this clip is great, the way you talked about building yourself up, learn, sharing and if you stuff know what you did to go forward, inspirational, never expected it.
We all love this chanel, truly at highest level,I'm a second generation machinist, started on cam auto screw machines, and we are proud of our quality, on CNC with in our capabilities, love this channel
TITANs just take out all the grey matter, No one likes feeling stupider than the next person & what Titans & his team have created is phenomenal , just bring it ON
My Dad was a Tool and Die maker.
He used to say that he had 6 inches but he didn't use it as a rule....
He was a joker but he was the best at what he did.
My Dad helped create s "sputtering tool" that could lay uniform layers on surface for Computer Chip manufacturing.
Great video.
Happy New Year!!
Snapped a $400 tool in a $1200 block of material for a gearbox assembly. I thought I was going to throw up. Machine didn't have enough memory to load the whole roughing program, so I broke it into 2 layers and stepped down the Z offset. Didn't change the retract height to compensate. Full rapid into the part. Sad day. Lesson learned. Don't cut corners.
Love your teams attitude to this sort of challenge. There’s a lot to be learned here even if you don’t do machining. 👍
I was drafted out of machinist school to work for Cooper Bessemer in London Ontario Canada making ships engines and pipeline compressors for both centrifical and horizontally opposed piston types. A rough casting for a 48 inch jet engined was well into the millions. 40 long tonne castings were just another day at my 12 foot table Vertical boring mill by Berthiez.I will never forget those wonderful days. DRO was just starting. We all worked on good old dial machines and tape machines. Had to do math all day long. Rolls Royce jet engines powered some compressors. 18 yrs old and in 7th heaven, LOL.
The section about being successful at machining pretty much applies to everything. I'm glad it was mentioned. So many people think they are going to be a god at something because they watched a couple YT videos. IMO, part of the fun is the learning.
Great advise for all. 2 questions. 1- Did you need to purchase any capitol equipment to machine the 50M part? 2- How do you keep that high level team together for a long time.? The large corporations always seem to offer a better employment package than job shops. Most local shops don’t have a very good retention history.
Most expensive was $250k titanium castings that become the main trucks for Airbus
A380 landing gear ... They finished around $1.2 million a piece... Was happy to not have to be doing the actual machining at that point
Most expensive part I worked on was an outer shell of a next gen torpedo. We were tasked to produce three of these prototype parts. Around 15,000 dollars a peice. Most nerv wrecking part were running the program for the first time. It turned out fine in the end.
Back in the days of film, I worked in photo labs. Inevitably, mistakes were made and peoples’ film would be ruined. This is the worst because their photos are gone forever and often can’t ever be replaced.
It was horrible having to explain ourselves to those customers.
This channel makes me want to get into precision machining... very impressive work.
If you are in a first world country then I wouldn't bother as most manufacturing companies are moving production to countries like Slovakia and Mexico right now, a good wage there is £8,000 a year.
The most expensive parts I've machined were steel tubes with copper-nickel explosion bonded to the outside. These were anodes for the navy. Once those bonded pieces of stock got to us they were worth over $10k and they were one of a kind. Getting more stock because you scrapped one was not an option. Those were rather hard to scrap so it was relatively stress free but still I was triple checking everything.
Titan, you deserve the best jobs because you're among the very best machining engineers!!!!!!
As a retired machinist/toolmaker/programmer I can say that, after 50 years in the biz, by far the worst material I have ever worked with was Monel. It is super tough and "sticky" as well, lol.
Most expensive part ive dealt with was about 80k maybe not millions but the stress of that alone had me paranoid. Dealing with Inconel 718 and Monel was a part that took them 6 months to create for me to not being able to say no a job. I quoted it and risked it for the learning part not even money involved.
Alot learned did it without error. Big win
Sort of off topic but I use to work on rail in WA Australia , Talking about $$ if you make a mistake like one of my co workers did , . Our compamy was working for one of the big 2 iron ore produces building a second rail line for them , This necessitated driving track machines on the main line , as in the only line to the port , So one of the track machine operators rushed to get his machine off the track before a ore train was due to use the track , and he accidentally ran his machine though the switch ( Switches are those things allowing a train to go down one line or the other) . The result was the machine broke the switch and took 24 hours to repair . The compensation request was reported to be $100,000,000 , which seems about right . Ive heard of another company seriously considering pushing a $200,000 truck off the track and down a hill (middle of nowhere with an IT loader , because it broke down and was going to hold up a fright train serious business . I was even on a 4 day shutdown with probably 500 guys and 300 pieces of equipment which had been flat beded in from 1600KM (1000 miles ) and due to incompetence got if lucky 1 % of the job done , great fun but ! . The pure waste in railways is astounding , o a train carrying a load of harleys derails , insurance company pays up , alright boys time to dig a hole .
Wow this is just unbelivabel i don't even want to know how nev wrecking it was to make this part or component but it must have been a great feeling to see the finished part
Engine machinist here, I started working on the industry right out of school about a year and a half ago, my most nerve racking experience was doing a full valve job and port on a $8,000 set of big block heads, making sure everything was the same and even was my biggest concern
Congratulations to the TITAN TEAM!! BOOM BABY
I love the mindset shared here. I feel like I got mentored by a team of professionals who want me to succeed. Thank you!
Sincerely,
A Mechatronics Engineering Tech Student
I wish I were 20 years old again. This is truly 21st century science and technology.
I work at an extrusion die shop and the most expensive thing I’ve worked on is a 9” die that was chrome plated and I had to grind it, because of the plating process not everything is perfectly flat but I had to grind the chrome to .001-.002 and if I messed it up they would have to strip it and re-plate it which would delay the part and would be quite expensive. The part was worth about $25,000 so nothing too crazy but it’s the most stressful/expensive part I worked on
Built the first two U212 sub for the Italian navy (worked as PM for the company that built the machine used to build the keel)... and I complete understand your fear, (we worked on Amanox, a stainless steel that it is also magnetical dampening or, to be more accurate, sound dead to magnetic wave making the sub way harder to be found by magnetical anomalies detector) all taht said, the only thing I can add is well done Sir. very well done
Dont want to give to much details, but i started my career about 3 years ago now im running production for a 6million production job. Production sucks but everything im learning along the way is awesome. Love my job and the company i work for i learn something new everyday and i cant wait to see what i do in the future.
Awsome advice.
I cut 3/5 Infrared crystal and EPI layers on million dollar detectors. We use single crystal diamonds to cut Cd,Zn,InSb GaZnSa. Titanium to 0.00006" +/- 0.000020"
Diamonds or CBN tools are perfect to cut , Rockwell hardened steel. Diamonds cut,
Aluminum and exotic plastics well.
Stress and attention to detail will be your best teacher.
Healthy fear gets the job done.
American industry rules!
What kind of detectors?
I'm so glad you said it's a healthy fear to worry about screwing up expensive parts, I worked a Studer grinder as my first CNC job on 3rd shift with only one months training and I was worried about crashing all the time and holding .0001" squareness and parallelism only had one crash and one scrapped part but I couldn't take the stress of being undertrained without support because they didn't have anyone else on third with experience on the machine. Now I run a '68 Bridgeport with the cheaper fixed speed J head and somehow make more.
Ive worked on and machined dimensions on Mold components worth anywhere from $200,000-$1M as an apprentice! I did crash at times but you gotta learn some way😂
I was a full time machinist for 15 yrs, then with lack of work moved and now building and doing on haul fit up and machining. And maybe I will get to touch the part you made soon.
I accidentally impaled a giant Giddings & Lewis horizontal boring mill because I moved the W axis toward the machine with a long part hanging off of it instead of the Y axis. It didn't break anything there was just a giant hole in one of the panels from then on
One of the profound implications of working on that top tier of tens of millions of dollars parts is that those parts and assemblies go into equipment that noticeably impacts the world. You become part of a very small community who have a large impact on how our planet runs and what shapes its future.
Proper preparation prevents piss poor performance .
Mind the 6P´s .
Barry tells the best bedtime storys
Ive literally started my apprenticeship in machining, i spend most my time at work on the manual lathe and i love it, i usually only make washers, spacers and bushes but i always try get them as close to perfect as i can and even if theyre just getting welded straight to a trailer i make sure they come out looking real nice, ive used a few machines but id say the lathe is probably my favourite and literally last week i just got my measuring tools sorted (digitsl calipers being my favourite) and im having a great time working on the cheaper parts but getting them basically perfect, even if i have to make 70 i make them as close to as identical, i hope that this attitude pays off like you guys said 💯
I'm still early on in my journey. Right now I'm merely a Class C operator but I'm always trying to practice outside my job on a rented machine to hone my skills to hopefully become a full Class A machinist, Instead of merely an operator. Most expensive assembly I've worked on is about 3-4k finished at work.
I'm a 15 year old machinist and my most expensive part was probably a $10 assembly of parts for a Scotch Yoke steam engine by Elmer's engines. It took me about 2 weeks on my Unimat SL1000 and I learned a lot even though I've been machining for about a year.
it is amazing how taxpayer money can be spent with Defense and we never have enough money to cover public schools and public safety.
"some of those discussions were passionate" .... nice way of putting it
any time i have high cost or high importance parts i remind myself that i have made parts with those features or tolerances before and that helps to make it not as stressful making the part its the you know you can do this mentality
Good to hear we have men in the nation that are motivated to learn. If you find others that are even remotely interested in this industry please please drag them into it. "We The People" have our work cut out for in terms of the weapons manufacturing efforts we are about to take on. We have done it once. We can do it again. Cheers Gentlemen.
Now, I'm semi-seasoned in lathe machining but I also know that there's a ton I don't know about machining as I keep learning new things from different shops I work in.
The most expensive piece I worked on was a large twin plastic extruder barrel coming in at near 250k USD. I was very proud of the work I did in that shop.
I've moved on to another shop but they do it all, not just extruder barrels and I'm having to learn so much all over again since you don't know what job you're going to get or what material it's going to be made from. I'm finding it a bit daunting but also exciting and a challenge.
We'll see if I hold up. There's days I feel comfortable and confident and there's days I feel lost and unsure.
Got me beat on cost. Most critical and costly project I ever worked on was called a Transit Rail Simulator built for Visteon at a cost of 250k in the mid 90's. It was exactly what it sounds like. A flatbed train car simulator capable of replicating the forces on automobiles when the train would couple and decouple additional train cars. Dimensions were 26f by 8f made from 4x8 sheets of 1/2in aluminum and fit together into a honeycomb structure with full sheets on top. When finished it required a 77000 pound actuator for the tests. It was a welding nightmare. No matter were you were in the shop, you got flash burn due to the reflections (incoming sarcasm) Thank God aluminum doesn't warp because it required 2 linear bearings running the full length. Mind you this was a small shop and Visteon's first choice for a builder was Boeing. They told them they were out of there minds, and they were right. We had to come up with some ridiculous fixes like when we needed to flip it for welding we had no overhead crane so we came up with Pig on a Stake plan. Found the center of gravity, lifted it from either end and we could rotate it with a single hand. We even used Liquid Nitrogen to fit some pins. After the pins were pressed in their rings, we took the rest of the day throwing liquid nitrogen at one another. As far as I know it's the only one in the world.
Any part with a tapping cycle at the end gets my heartrate going! Doesn't matter if it's a 5 dollar part or a 2000 dollar part....😂
I'm amanual machinist and you gave some pretty good advice. Great job guys.
Of Chinese version of this thing - cost by 299.99. sold by amazon. Lost in the woods)
When I decided to start knife making 1 steel flat bar looked cheap ~20USD for a 100cm x 5cm x 0.8cm slab
Coat rises when I have to cut out the blade profile and make an accurate blank then there's the abrasives cost and drill bits that some gets burned up
Worse problem is my cheap belt grinder table that I used to use for making edges 90° to another face, is broken the good part is that I made a few knife blanks before that happened, but if I mess up these blanks my knife making days will surely end
Also the stainless steels are expensive for my budget range for this hobby
So I prefer not to buy them
So now with what I have left and what I learnt for the steel I wasted I've learnt to design and work in a way that reduces the amount of mistakes I can make and to design and spend more time contemplating the process and design for the knife I've decided to make
This channel is an inspiration to me.
Monel: just to put this in perspective I machined 10 bars of this that was 3/8 inch diameter and 1 inch long bar. This customer was charged $190 bucks for this. I ran 20 pieces of 1/2 diameter and 4 inches of bar was charged $2,000 and some change. That material is not cheap. Something that can fit in one hand just put it that way. Crazy to see this much.
It’s only 50 million because they say so, the military says hammers cost 200$, there is no way the material comes close to that price, you guys do fantastic work and should get paid well for doing it.
Monel is expensive, and a 14ft size forging does sound like $12m
It's not the material it's the certifications behind the production of the part that cost money. Not every shop has certs that align with the need and there isn't enough of those shops to go around!
i am only a product designer, and tbh, nearly never was told what the parts i detailed and did the drafts and drawings for, did cost in the end.
BUT - over the last 18 years, i remember a few of the biggest fails that happened, because i was given tasks way over my qualification, experience and without proper supervision.
oh, not to forget... underpayed.
that job ends in four weeks and i am on the lookout for a new one.
I have made parts for the military. A poly-carbonate window for a camera. 27 pages of specs. Made in 1 hour. Massive air-conditioned workshops to make composite parts for submarines. 12,000 pages of specs.
Just got a job machining wood parts for cabinets a month ago after leaving a paint making shop (my first full time job) with no prior school or experience and I'm loving the technical side of CNC and I love operating it. I've caught on pretty quick with the blueprint reading and operating the machine and eventually want to get into metal when I get some years on my belt.
Was curious if some of y'all have any advice for me since I'm basically an apprentice and still learning.
the main question I have is I'm referred to as the CNC operator while the CNC programmer actually makes the script for the CNC to follow. So will I eventually need to learn how to program to make this a thriving career? Are Operators more sought after than programmers or do you typically do both on the metal side?
CNC Machinist with 18 years expired. My most expensive mistake was when l married my ex...
I was machining a very expensive bronze casting at cla-val - Griswald Industries I was only a lathe operator back but I turned castings that were off round so the parts were always close to crashing because they were shaped like cast valve bodies. It was like turning a fire hydrant body... I worked 2nd shift so the day shift guy said he went through the program and updated the tool and offset numbers. He told me that it was ready to run and it was until the last tool. it had a 6 or 7-inch diameter thread and it was probably less than 8 threads per inch so it was a real deep thread and we were supposed to debur the thread after the Higbee cuts with the single-point threading tool but instead of the threader it called up the groover to cut the threads and it wiped them all out. they had to melt it back down and re-pour it and it cost over 20,000 dollars.
Use to machine synthetic sapphire. You do it alot in optical machining. Fun stuff
I routinely turn and mill 5 digit one off printed parts for a large vendor. Running test features and holes in scrap along with single block and dry run is straight up SOP.
No room for error.
Bro that was one inspirational speech I hope every man or woman interested in being a machinist heard that little Anthem good shit…👊🏼✌🏻
Barry, love your guys positive attitude and constructive ways of figuring out a solution to an expensive question and part. Wish I could be that positive, I tend to look at the worse case scenerio and when things go good I'm feeling great about it.
The first time I ever used a lathe in high school to make something was a interesting experience for me cause I am a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to making things. Ya nothing expensive but when you are first learning something new, that can be very nerve wracking as well. Like they say, measure twice cut once. In this case measure several more times to confirm. lol
Best video ever! The part aside, it’s amazing to hear the message. Perfect to apply to so many different people in all areas of life & career
1.3 million dollar drives shaft for power plant turbine, it was shaped like a very large spool with approx 4ft flanges and 16" center. I was only making some modifications. I also worked on the reclaim turbine, I asked the cost and the engineers from Germany answered priceless. Good times, really.
I used to work for a R&D military contractor that made nuts and bolts for aircraft/ships out of these awesome alloys. My job was to run a small CNC machine that would etch the logo on the top of each of the bolts and ran a pre quality check before it went to the actual quality control department. Was an awesome job, I won a 100$ raffle my first week there 😂 “the new guy would win the best raffle in a while”, co workers reactions was hilarious.
I've watched a few of these vids by the Titans of CNC, and this one was just as good. I don't know anything about this kind of work, the best ' finish' work I have done was custom residentian kitchen ceramic tile installation. But my Old Man worked for Lockheed years ago., so I've heard some things that I'm probably not supposed to know anything about. Now my EX business partner is sitting on an expensive piece of equipment that I wouldn't put our LLC in hawk for...and doesn't have a clue how it works. Go figure who's going to learn some new tricks, Fast. Thank you
I once worked with a part used as a liner in Pumps for the Mining industry to protect the inside of the pump from slurry and rocks. I was attaching sensors to it to measure abrasion rate