Posted by Hopper on 08/05/2023 02:04:01:
Posted by Stuart Smith 5 on 07/05/2023 13:40:14:
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But really, the Warco or similar is going to be more like anything your students are likely to encounter in a modern workshop or factory after they leave school these days, so might be a more relevant training machine.
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Unlikely I think – that type of lathe is far less common in the working world than they used to be. Before WW2 almost all production machining was done on manual mills and lathes similar to what I enjoy as a hobby. Not now.
General purpose lathes aren't good for production work because labour costs are high. As a result, general purpose manual machines in industry have been progressively nudged off the factory floor by specialists like thread rollers, Capstan lathes, various automatics, Numerical Control, Computerised Numerical Control, and – today- CAD/CAM implemented on multi-axis machine centres, 3D printers, grinding machines and whatever.
Nowadays general purpose lathes are valuable for prototype work, repairs, one-offs, and simple short-run production, all on a relatively small scale employment-wise. Repair work itself has been much reduced by technical improvements: in the 1950's most garages owned a lathe, now none of them do. It's more profitable and reliable to replace motor parts, not to mend them.
Manual lathes hung on in education but most UK schools and colleges have dumped them over the last 3 decades. It's because very few employers need manual machinists, certainly not on the scale needed when I left school, which was much reduced compared with my father's day.
Depends on what the school is teaching and why, but maybe the 70 year old Boxford lathes should be replaced with a new Boxford Machine Centre. It would need a substantial change to the curriculum, switching from developing hands-on metalwork skills to computer skills including CAD, and modern production methods.
The metalwork, woodwork and Technical Drawing skills taught by my school remain hobby relevant today, but they were old-fashioned compared with industry trends when I was in short trousers.
Modernising education isn't easy – unlike Latin, engineering changes rapidly. Unfortunately, many opportunities are missed because the necessary leaps are too much for the teachers! A friend made redundant early when BT modernised, became a School Technician. The school became an academy, and received a Denford CNC lathe. To my friends knowledge, it was turned on once after installation by Denford to prove it was working, and never used again. Good school, but strong on Arts rather than Sciences, and weak on Technology. None of the teachers had a clue what to do with a CNC lathe, and because actually using a CNC machine wasn't a curriculum requirement, it was ignored.
Providing the Denford was a good idea, but as is common with rah-rah government initiatives, the implementation was botched – no-one had realised teachers would need training, or that the way school performance is measured by exam results positively discouraged actually running the machine. This was 15 years ago, he's long since retired, so possibly the Denford is in full use now. I doubt it, the machine itself is obsolete.
Not a complete waste of a school technician, because plenty of lesser practical work went on but the pupils missed out on CAD/CAM, and no doubt some of them will become Model Engineers inculcated to think a 1947 Super 7 is the best of all possible machine tools…
Dave