Wonderful world of manufacturing: Turning Performance

After watching some TV shows about manufacturing, such as “Modern Marvels” and “How It’s Made,” I started reminiscing about my career in manufacturing. The shows also got me thinking about the many wonders of science and industry I’ve personally been involved with.

Having been in manufacturing as long as I have, you might think I’ve grown tired of the daily grind. On the contrary, I usually can’t wait to get to work each day. I’m appreciative of all the projects I’ve worked on thanks to the companies I’ve worked for. The array of positions afforded me the opportunity to travel to facilities across our great country and Canada, as well as South Africa, Singapore, Belgium and the U.K.

In the U.S., for example, I programmed a FANUC-controlled plasma cutting gantry robot, which was used to help decommission the nuclear reactor that partially melted down in 1979 at the Three Mile Island power plant in central Pennsylvania. At the old McDonnell Douglas facility in Long Beach, Calif., I watched them extract little dings from the tail section of a plane prior to delivery to a customer. And in the deserts of Utah, I trained workers how to weld plastic pipe while a power plant was being built.

I have installed coating systems throughout the East Coast and California, trained people to use robots and coatings for dental and medical implant applications and installed and serviced robots at aerospace companies in Connecticut and Florida. When John Deere was making a comeback in the 1980s, I trained shop floor personnel to program and operate turning centers. At the time, the huge plant was like a ghost town, and I remember seeing a lone farm implement in the staging area at the end of the assembly line.

I’ve been to a heavy equipment building facility in Milwaukee and watched the assembly line produce mining equipment more than two stories tall. Also in Wisconsin, I saw a horizontal machining center that was about 50 ‘ wide × 200 ‘ long. The operator rode with the spindle head unit.