Thread: Making stuff

Interesting idea

Originally Posted by neksmerj

I feel so sorry for those professionals that miss out on "making stuff". "Hi I'm a brain surgeon and I need a part like this", "Hi I'm I'm a baker and I need this".

Can you imagine being an accountant adding up columns and rows of numbers, really? Do you finish up with something you can hold in your hand, "I made this".

Us "ingineers" have the time of our lives, we make stuff.

OK, so you arrange flowers, can you drill and tap a hole in that? I thought not.

We've got it all, maths, measuring, turning, milling, threading and within a tolerance, Can you imagine a carpenter cutting off a piece of timber +/- 2mm with a three foot folding rule. And you can't weld a piece on.

Nah, sorry to all the other trades, us "inguneers' have the best fun, we make stuff! I love this schidt.

I agree we have the best fun but don't dis the wood workers so easily.
3ft folding rulers went out with the Ark and the glues these days are stronger than most wood
These days wood cutting can be done to much higher tolerances. Look up Incra (http://www.incra.com) .

Not only do we (engineers and woodworker) make something you can hold in your hand but its something that's useful and can last for hundred of years.

Originally Posted by BobL

I agree we have the best fun but don't dis the wood workers so easily.
3ft folding rulers went out with the Ark and the glues these days are stronger than most wood
These days wood cutting can be done to much higher tolerances. Look up Incra (http://www.incra.com) .

Not only do we (engineers and woodworker) make something you can hold in your hand but its something that's useful and can last for hundred of years.

Agreed ! Without people like us to design and make things, what on earth would everybody else have to play with

I got pushed into this trade and had no idea what a fitter and machinist did.
Had I known, I would have run at it.
Best trade in the world, though I often wish I could at least make a simple box to put stuff in.
We didn't have heaps of money growing up so I had a job on a chook farm to help pay for schooling. I watched the guys there make a small front end loader (kinda' like a Dingo digger)out of bits and pieces of this and that to dig the manure out from under the cages (before cages became unfashionable).
It blew me away that these guys made a machine out of junk. It started the seed which is still growing.

Phil

A lot of people take a lot for granted...

In our lives from the moment we are born to even after we die we are involved someway in some manufactured good.. But remember great people like surgeons are repairers as well... They use their hands and knowledge and sometimes parts from someone/thing else to fix someone..

Originally Posted by neksmerj

Can you imagine being an accountant adding up columns and rows of numbers, really? Do you finish up with something you can hold in your hand, "I made this".

Us "ingineers" have the time of our lives, we make stuff.

OK, so you arrange flowers, can you drill and tap a hole in that? I thought not.

Yet the bean counters and clerks, on average, get better money than a "lower form of life" fitter like myself. Our society holds up office workers, sports people and cooks as someone to aspire to while the people who really contribute something like engineers, manufacturing and repair workers rarely rate a mention. Yet without them, we'd be still scrabbling around in the dirt.
Go figure.
bollie7

Originally Posted by neksmerj

I feel so sorry for those professionals that miss out on "making stuff". "Hi I'm a brain surgeon and I need a part like this", "Hi I'm I'm a baker and I need this".

Can you imagine being an accountant adding up columns and rows of numbers, really? Do you finish up with something you can hold in your hand, "I made this".

Us "ingineers" have the time of our lives, we make stuff.

OK, so you arrange flowers, can you drill and tap a hole in that? I thought not.

We've got it all, maths, measuring, turning, milling, threading and within a tolerance, Can you imagine a carpenter cutting off a piece of timber +/- 2mm with a three foot folding rule. And you can't weld a piece on.

Nah, sorry to all the other trades, us "inguneers' have the best fun, we make stuff! I love this schidt.

Ken

i imagine the baker looking at all the cool stuff you made, asking: "can you eat it?"

Each to their own. Of course we love this, it's called a hobby. By definition, if we didn't enjoy it then we wouldn't choose it as a hobby! Sometimes I think that there is so many cool hobbies, yet so little time. There are more fun hobbies than I can poke a stick at yet if you delve into too many then you are at risk of spreading yourself too thin. I confess to being torn between steel and timber. I can see the beauty in both but I can't be half decent at both and I only have so much shed space, so metalwork is slowly taking over.

I sometimes think that if you are not very good at making stuff then you probably earn enough money to pay someone to do it for you.

Don't forget, just because you don't make something concrete, does not mean you have not created something. Isaac Newton invented Calculus, thats gotta count for quite a few shed projects I'm thinking!

Personally I can't believe my whole life I had my Dad who was a fitter & turner who specialised in hand scrapping and machine tool reconditioning and yet I never showed any interest until he died and I inherited his lathe and some of his tools!

Simon

Originally Posted by simonl

Each to their own. Of course we love this, it's called a hobby. By definition, if we didn't enjoy it then we wouldn't choose it as a hobby! Sometimes I think that there is so many cool hobbies, yet so little time. There are more fun hobbies than I can poke a stick at yet if you delve into too many then you are at risk of spreading yourself too thin. I confess to being torn between steel and timber. I can see the beauty in both but I can't be half decent at both and I only have so much shed space, so metalwork is slowly taking over.

I sometimes think that if you are not very good at making stuff then you probably earn enough money to pay someone to do it for you.

Don't forget, just because you don't make something concrete, does not mean you have not created something. Isaac Newton invented Calculus, thats gotta count for quite a few shed projects I'm thinking!

Newton was no slouch with his hands either, he built the first reflecting telescope and dabbled extensively optics, chemistry/alchemy and lots of other cool stuff.

There are not many Scientists that are outstanding at both theory and practice. In more recent times physicist Enrico Fermi, who was in charge of building the first man made nuclear reactor in a squash court in Chicago, could do all the maths as well as the practical side of reactor construction. It was said he knew exactly when the reactor was going to go critical with the addition of the next load of U fuel and he called a coffee break to make sure everyone was fresh for the big event. He also machined the components for a beta radiation detector he used to test his theory of beta decay which predicted the existence of the neutrino but it was not detected until after his death.

Physicist Richard Feynman who won two nobel prizes for theoretical physics was very hands on as a youngster. He found it very frustrating he could not do as well with his hands at physics as he could with his mind.

Pretty boring life without inventing and making stuff in my eyes. Even when I am not making something I am 3Ding an image on my head of something I want to build

I loved coming up with ideas, but hated production work, I found it too boring. Some of my ideas were the fridge slide for car fridges, Engels, Waecos and the like, (50 different sizes) also mounts on the back of 4WDs for HF radio antenna, Barrett and Codan. Some of my ideas, I modified to allow outboard motors to be pulled out from under shelving. When I sold the business in 2003, there were 14 places making the fridge slides. I made the Chuck wagon storage units for 4WDs, from an adaptation of an original concept from a customer.
Kryn

Originally Posted by Dave J

Pretty boring life without inventing and making stuff in my eyes. Even when I am not making something I am 3Ding an image on my head of something I want to build

Originally Posted by BobL

Newton was no slouch with his hands either, he built the first reflecting telescope and dabbled extensively optics, chemistry/alchemy and lots of other cool stuff.

There are not many Scientists that are outstanding at both theory and practice. In more recent times physicist Enrico Fermi, who was in charge of building the first man made nuclear reactor in a squash court in Chicago, could do all the maths as well as the practical side of reactor construction. It was said he knew exactly when the reactor was going to go critical with the addition of the next load of U fuel and he called a coffee break to make sure everyone was fresh for the big event. He also machined the components for a beta radiation detector he used to test his theory of beta decay which predicted the existence of the neutrino but it was not detected until after his death.

Physicist Richard Feynman who won two nobel prizes for theoretical physics was very hands on as a youngster. He found it very frustrating he could not do as well with his hands at physics as he could with his mind.

TWO Nobel's...That's a bit greedy ain't it ?

Originally Posted by BobL

Newton was no slouch with his hands either, he built the first reflecting telescope and dabbled extensively optics, chemistry/alchemy and lots of other cool stuff.

There are not many Scientists that are outstanding at both theory and practice. In more recent times physicist Enrico Fermi, who was in charge of building the first man made nuclear reactor in a squash court in Chicago, could do all the maths as well as the practical side of reactor construction. It was said he knew exactly when the reactor was going to go critical with the addition of the next load of U fuel and he called a coffee break to make sure everyone was fresh for the big event. He also machined the components for a beta radiation detector he used to test his theory of beta decay which predicted the existence of the neutrino but it was not detected until after his death.

Physicist Richard Feynman who won two nobel prizes for theoretical physics was very hands on as a youngster. He found it very frustrating he could not do as well with his hands at physics as he could with his mind.

Going back a few years earlier, a certain Mr. Archimedes, resident of Southern Europe around Greece is reputed to have designed the Antikythera Mechanism, perhaps the first computer, and as the Greek Civilisation dimmed and The barbaric Hoons from Rome attained the ascendency, this knowledge was lost for nearly 1800 years until the Middle Ages in Europe. What a Shed Guy he must have been.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrfMFhrgOFc#t=22