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Appreciation post: The old machine shop at the Tacoma history museum made me rethink my setup.
I visited the museum last weekend and saw a 1940s Bridgeport mill running a part with a jig that was basically just a block of wood and some clamps (which, honestly, looked way more clever than half the fixtures I've drawn up in CAD this month).
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hannahj4925d ago
Did the guy who designed that jig actually trust his hands more than he trusted the machine? There is something about watching someone set up a part with a wooden block that makes you realize how much vibration and rigidity we just buy off the shelf now. They had to know exactly where the cutting forces were going to push, not just rely on a 400 pound cast iron stand to soak it all up. Makes me think we overpay for precision sometimes when a hunk of maple and a few c-clamps would do the same job.
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That "block of wood and some clamps" thing... it's funny how we overcomplicate stuff now. Makes you wonder what they'd do with our fancy tools.
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What if the real skill was knowing how to make the simple stuff work? We've got all the tools now but maybe less of that deep understanding of the material itself. They had to think with their hands in a way we just don't anymore. It's like we traded that gut feel for a digital readout.
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angelamurphy2mo ago
A block of wood? For real? That mill could probably take your finger off but the setup was held together with scrap from a hardware store.
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