Things being made too well & the exit nozzle with no exit
Some of the changes in UK manufacturing and difficult to track, Peter Mandelson would have us believe that manufacturing is a growing sector in the UK , where as the figures seem clear there is less work – how so. Well it all seems to come down to automation. Yes manufacturing is growing, we are making more things again, but the fact is this making is done more and more by automation (see previous entry about CNC milling machines in engineering which after loading and setting can be left to make the part).
From makers to machine minders
Output increased and human input decreased
Derek was suggesting that the changes in manufacturing are also because we make things too well here in the UK that manufacturing suffered as the durability outlasts the possible replacement demand. The traditional lathe in the workshop was made in Colchester– we know this because the name is blazoned on the front, the same was found on all the older machinery in the workshop (not so on the newer CNC machines). When Derek and I were discussing the workshop machinery a week or so back he said that in the UK we used to make a lot of engineering machinery. That production moved to Taiwan in the late 1970’s. Don’t know where production is focused now.
Talking of things being too well made, my CAD skills are developing. Working with a set of existing drawings I added surfaces to an ‘exit nozzle’. Up to now we have been working with solid forms and then removing/cutting areas to make the desired shapes. In the exit nozzle approach the sketch is created and then a surface is wrapped over the form. The only thing was when I got to the end of the instructions the exit nozzle had no place for liquid to exit (someone forgot about their design intention there!). So I added one. We are going back to solid modelling next week when the no pointed needle moves on.
Language
Find being in this engineering environment is influencing my working language, as I asked a Foundation student what her ‘design intention’ was for her final show,. It’s not such bizarre terminology for an art and design course but I never used it before starting this residency. Its possibly going to be more difficult to drop a ‘boss exude’ or ‘lofted surface’ into the conversation.
I’m starting to record the many warning notices I get as I instruct SolidWorks to do things it thinks are unreasonable or under/over engineered perhaps.
“The features could not be created because it would produce self intersecting geometry”
What would self intersecting geometry look like anyway?
