OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums General Discussion Forum Off Topics Machinery 1

Some people are very good at drawings
Ian

It seems to have started out as a run-of-the-mill twin head planer which somebody has drawn a few oddball features onto - I don't know why. The amendments have been neatly done though.

One more

That one is s tool-room vertical mill, but he's changed it rather more than the planer. Instead of just adding bits, he's removed the base to make room for the feet. I can't imagine why he removed the table's X-direction feed handwheel - perhaps it was missing from the one he used as a model.

Last one. It is just someone having fun with drawings
Ian
PS I'm a fitter and turner by trade now retired
Worked for the Copper Refiners here in Townsville for 26 years as a Construction fitter, instillation fitter, plant fitter, special project fitter and the last 6 years there in the machine shop mainly working lathes

As I'm sure you know Ian, that one is a general purpose spot-welder. All of the items are from a tool-room rather than a factory floor. Personally I'd be more entertained by the pictures of the actual machines that he began with, but his drawing is obviously very expert and he had at a minimum, some idea of what the machines were for.

All of the items are from a tool-room
You will not find machinery of that size in a tool room a machine shop yes
Ian

Except for the vertical mill the items could be found in a jobbing machine shop, but not a production one Ian. Actually I haven't seen a jobbing machine shop with heavy equipment like that in Australia since the 1960s, and it was all fairly old equipment then. In those old places the boundary between the toolroom and the jobbing shop was a bit blurred anyway, because the toolroom just wasn't big enough for huge machines like the planer, and jobbing work was never taken into the toolroom of course.

The general purpose milling machines like that large-ish vertical could only be operated by a qualified tradesman machinist if you didn't want to end up with a broken column. A full-sized planer or borer was less subject to catastrophic damage - in my limited experience, it was located in the jobbing shop but was only operated by a tradesman borrowed from the toolroom. (If there was a run of a couple of days' work the planer could be run by an experienced production operator provided it was set up and the operator taught the specific job, by a tradesman. I've seen a big horizontal borer run by an unqualified guy who had worked as a tradesman for years, but the tradesmen were horrified and just walked away shaking their heads.) Anyone could operate a large spot-welder but it had to be set up by a tradesman.

We're more or less on the same page Ian - sometimes the foreman of the jobbing shop was a qualified machinist and did the set-ups himself.

Hi Grumpy
I did my F&T apprenticeship at the AIS Port Kembla NSW. In my second year spent one year in the tool room attached to number 1 machine shop and we had nothing to do with the machines shop machines BUT that would change for company to company
We had a number of tool and cutter grinders as we sharpened all milling cutters for the machine shop, repaired mics made up block gauges and these had to be spot on as they were used as test pieces plus many other work which had to be spot on
In Townsville we have a Zinc, Nickle, and Copper refineries which all have their own Jobbing shop for in house work and a lot of other companies have their own jobbing shops for in house work and especially when you head out west to the mining companies though for mostly small work. Mackay and Townsville have some large jobbing shops to handle all the one of jobs from the mines
"unqualified guy" we had that up here and it was called multi skilling where a TA was taught one job on a machine usually a job a tradesman did not like doing, the company thought it was great same job at a lower pay rate BUT after a few 'Opps' they dropped it

Ian

I think there was a time when BHP had to make a lot of tools in-house, because the tooling industry in Australia was not up to the job. Over decades I think they gradually out-sourced quite a bit of that, but not all of it. I don't think BHP did any outside work, so they wouldn't have had a jobbing machine shop.

A medium-sized metal-products manufacturing business was likely to have three types of shop:
- a toolroom to make tools (jigs, dies, fixtures, even special-purpose machines for use in the factory section) for use within the organisation;
- a machine shop which made or machined items for outside customers as one-offs or small batches; and
- a factory section which made items for outside customers on large orders or continuous production. This would include various kinds of manufacturing processes, including machining using hard automation equipment, or later, programmable machines of various kinds.

The ones I've seen ordinarily only employed qualified machinists and toolmakers in the toolroom. There would be a very few fitters and turners, probably attached to the machine shop, and mostly qualified, at least one of whom would be extremely skilled in lathe work, and he would be mostly occupied doing the lathe work for the toolroom. The other F&Ts would be doing machine maintenance throughout all three shops, and would be completing the assembly of tooling after the toolmakers had finished making the components. The heavy machines in the machine shop would mostly be idle, but would be set up for small batches when a contract job came in. The operators in the machine shop were generally not qualified but had or were busy acquiring a lot of experience. They could not set up jobs, but were fairly reliable at performing them once they were set up. I'm sure larger businesses would have had qualified toolsetters to do this, but the smaller ones seemed to borrow a machinist from the toolroom to do the difficult setups, and one of the most talented F&Ts might do the easier ones. It was never clear to me whether they focused on standard trade-classifications in deciding who would do this - all I saw was "Charlie sets up the planer jobs", or "Fred is the only guy who runs the horizontal borer, regardless of what the job is". Charlie and Fred would turn out to be qualified machinists from the toolroom. Poor Fred was not a happy man when he had to put in a week machining standard components on the big borer, but he'd turn out to feel strongly that he didn't want anyone else putting their hands on that machine.

It seemed to me, as an outsider, that the selection of personnel for jobs in those small to medium shops was based on who could do it, rather than strict trade assignments. What people got emotional about - both tradesmen and management - was if somebody damaged a machine. If that happened of course, and that person was not really capable of doing the job properly in the eyes of the senior tradesmen, there would be a lot of irritable and simmering tradesmen.

'jobbing machine shop'
I think there some confusing here on the word 'JOBBING' and "TOOL ROOM"
BHP was New Castle
Australian Iron & Steel AIS was Wollongong (Port Kembla)owned by BHP
The AIS had 3 large machine shops doing jobbing work most of it for them self's

"There would be a very few fitters and turners, probably attached to the machine shop, and mostly qualified, at least one of whom would be extremely skilled in lathe work, and he would be mostly occupied doing the lathe work for the toolroom"

They are all fitters & Turners in the machine shop the last one I worked there was 22 fitters and turners. At the AIS when I was there there was 3 shifts and about 35 per shift all fitters and turners

Lathe work in the toolroom NO NO I did all my lathe work in the machine shop and the Copper refiners had 8 lathes latter on 4 got replaced by 1 CNC lathe The Copper fefiners did not have a tool room only a machine shop like most do

"The ones I've seen ordinarily only employed qualified machinists and toolmakers in the toolroom"

I don't know what they do in VIC but in NSW and Qld that is not the case

I think we are going in circles here Grumpy you have you ideas and I know where I have worked from 18 to 65
AIS 5 years 1 year tool room 4 years machine shop
Army 2 years work/machine shop
Kada construction fitter
Appley constructio fitter
Evens Deaken ship yard machine shop
Mobil oil fitter
Copper refiner fitter/machine shop
Skilled engineering fitter/machine shop

I think I will this thread alone now just going in circles
Ian

AIS lathe

Edit: my previous post may have crossed with yours - I hadn't seen yours when I posted mine.

I did have a guided tour through the Pt Kembla works many, many years ago, but I didn't see the machine shops. You and I have slightly different definitions - I think yours is based on a business focused on in-house work, while mine is based on commercial factories that included a jobbing shop for outside customers. I also think BHP/AIS had a union agreement that provided some rather specific conditions concerning jobs being assigned rigidly to trade classifications, provision of tradesmen's assistants, and other things that were pretty much unheard of in commercial shops. In other words I'm not disputing the accuracy of what you have said, but the only plants in Australia that I have personally visited that had those highly prescriptive union agreements, aside from government operations and government-influenced operations such as defence contractors or factories receiving government assistance, were BHP and oil refineries, both of which had fairly highly contentious industrial climates in those days.

Of course all of that is the way I see things, as a Victorian who has been exposed primarily to places that were trying to sell their manufactured goods and services directly to outside customers at arms-length. I have met many people whose backgrounds were different, and consequently so were their experiences.